The Dominion - Stewart Steinhauer

Olympic Spirit

Moira Peters — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 09:57:17 +0000

What is genuine Indigenous art?

KUTENAI TERRITORY, TURTLE ISLAND—The day after my first child was born, I carved my first piece of sculpture from a piece of tree root that caught my attention as I sat by a fire. I had been a devout atheist since an early teen rebellion against forced Christian indoctrination, but the finished carving was, in my heart, a spirit guardian for this incredible fresh new human being who had come so profoundly into my life.

Growing up on Cree reserves and in small Canadian towns in Cree Territory, I had never seen anyone, other than the Dene painter Alex Janvier, making what Canadians called “art.” On the prairies, unlike the west coast, there was no cultural tradition of carving. Why I suddenly pulled my pocket knife out and began carving a tree root is mysterious, though looking back thirty-six years later I can see by the timing that it obviously had something to do with the birth of my first child.

The death of my second child, in a car accident, at age three, shook my atheistic view of the universe, at least on an emotional/spiritual level. The action of carving, now stone instead of wood, 14 years on, became a space where my atheistic mind-chatter faded back into oblivion, while my body, heart and spirit worked cooperatively to give physical form to the anguish I experienced with that beloved child’s death.

When an Elder came to me and said he had a message from my dead child, which he had received in a sweat lodge ceremony, I placed a mental pause on my atheism and started attending indigenous ceremonies, a wandering circular journey around and back to where my long-ago ancestors had been driven off of their path.

Births and deaths jostled me along, until I was fully engaged in my own traditional ceremonial life, still a devout atheist whenever the topic turned to Christianity, but now something else as well, most vividly revealed in my stone sculptures. The process of working with stone still felt like time off for good behavior from the ceaseless chattering of my mind, but now my life was suddenly full of Elders and other cultural teachers and mentors. These folks began to explain to me what my sculpture in stone was all about.

They would point out things in my work which I hadn’t seen until they did so, but which were completely obvious. My Elders could read them as expressions, literally utterances, of the Rock Spirit. Also, things like why the spiritual pipe bowl is made of stone, and why the pipe stem is made of wood, were explained. The role of the stone in ceremony, particularly the stone’s special function as spiritual spokesperson for a stumbling, bumbling, stuttering, inchoate humanity, patiently working away at getting the message right, became clear to me.

Twenty years on as a stone carver, and professionally so, but with no formal exposure to western theories of art, I began to encounter non-indigenous artists, and hear their opinions about what they did and why they did it. As my profession as a stone carver advanced, I gradually became aware that most artists, even indigenous artists, if trained in a real art school, took personal responsibility for designing and constructing their art work.

Thirty-six years on as a stone carver I see that the I/me/mine theory of western civilization is shaky, shaken, while still running on blindly over its evolutionary cliff-edge. The lemmings in the middle of the pack are making an anxious discussion about their short-term futures, shouted exchanges are heard above the general din of the stampede, and a few margin-dwelling souls are bolting off in different directions.

The Rock Spirit uses me like any one of the tools I use on my tool trolley, when I roll out into my studio yard. The Rock Spirit pounds on me, knocking off little chips here and there, gradually shaping my consciousness over time. The Rock Spirit contrives to have me leave messages for her/him, in a geological time-scale medium, granite; should there happen to be future human generations, they can contemplate what she/he is saying to them.

Indigenius socialism, through practiced humbility, re-directs the I/me/mine human tendency towards a mother earth/great mystery consciousness. I see this phenomenon as the watermark proof of authenticity of what I'll risk calling genuine indigenous art.

Western societies appropriate indigenous cultural phenomena while almost unthinkingly crushing indigenous realities. A current example is the adoption of various indigenous themes as winter Olympic mascots. By invoking mistanapew, mosom maskwa, mosom mikopeheysew and other indigenous spiritual beings as plush toy souvenirs of the 2010 Winter Olympics, while the entire region where the Olympics are being held is illegally occupied by Canada, is mocking both the notion of law as vigorously promoted by Canadians, and the spiritual relationship between indigenous peoples and the land which Canada claims as its dominion.

All of this passes below the level of consciousness for most Canadians, except, of course, the folks at the Dominion, of Canada.

Gifted with a white privilege suit on his Birth Day, Steinhauer has been slipping back and forth across the invisible boundary between Turtle Island and Canada, since 1952, in his lovely birthday suit. And this is what he saw.

Red Thunder's Gift

Turtle Island Re-Emergent

Maya Rolbin-Ghanie — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 05:08:33 +0000

KUTENAI TERRITORY, TURTLE ISLAND—The genocide of Indigenous Peoples inside the territories claimed by Canada doesn’t end until Canada de-colonizes. As Jean-Paul Sartre recognized when he focused the intellectual power of european philosophy onto the subject of european colonization, colonialism equals genocide. As long as the fair folk of the Canadian State have a colonial relationship with the territorial Indigenous Peoples, then the genocide continues. Canadians left, right and center do not actively advocate genocide. However, there exists an unconscious denial of what Canadians conveniently do not have to witness at close range, thanks to several centuries of apartheid social organization.

Over the past several months, the media collective that calls itself The Dominion has generously offered me a space in the margins to talk to the few of you who happen by. If you’ve been following me, we’ve crossed the invisible apartheid border, looked at the forms of political economy that require apartheid, and had a brief glance at an indigenous socialism from Turtle Island’s past. The ideas I’ve been sharing with you aren’t my ideas. In cultures with an oral tradition, the great libraries of knowledge are held within the ranks of the living, and I’m grateful to those librarians who have gathered, and then passed on to me, some of the enormous storehouse of indigenous knowledge. Now I, in turn, am passing fragments to you.

The current phase of the genocide of Indigenous Peoples will not end by fiddling with the details and single instances of the mechanics of the genocide, for instance addictions, or suicide, or lateral violence. These are symptoms, not causes. For example, I don’t believe that addictions are a problem of the individual, but are individuals' reactions to the cause of the genocide. Colonialism. The entire relationship between our euro-ancestry sisters and brothers, and the remnants of our own societies, indigenous to Turtle Island, is colonial. The structure of modernity, with a representative democracy funded by and responsible to a capitalist economy, based on an extractive, exploitative, minimalist relationship with the natural environment, is colonial. Colonialism kills Indigenous Peoples.

An indigenous method of problem solving involves moving towards the desired solution, rather than away from the perceived problem. Many indigenous knowledge bases propose that human intention has actuating power in the physical world; we affect whatever we place our intentions on, through our conscious attention. If we place our attention on our problems, because we want to repair those problem areas, we unintentionally increase the level of energy flowing to the problem areas. Over uncounted millennia, this observed pattern has resulted in an indigenous social program of focusing on the desired outcome, a group behavior that some european somewhere called spiritual. In Dios, literally “In God.” However, I believe that euro-centric notions of spirituality are as far off base as euro-centric notions of what addictions are, for the same reasons.

Practicing my indigenous knowledge, I conjure an intention: humans as indigenous to the actual physical place where we each are, right now. I feel this "indigenaiety" as a relationship, signaled by the pull of gravity to my great Mother, the earth. You, reading these words, can feel this pull, too. Don’t let the illusion of cyberspace or printspace throw you off balance; call to your floating mind with your heart and flow into the physical pull. In Dios. Without the human-made confusion about God and Man.

The French called us the "Cris," the cryers, from the ceremonial action of making a specific sound set with voice, a syncopated counter-rhythm heard during many lodge-type ceremonies. In our own language we are known as the four-part beings, referencing the mental, emotional, physical and spiritual aspects of being human.

These four aspects are in motion. When they are balanced, you get a smooth ride. Riding the spinning wheel of these four aspects—call it a four directions medicine wheel—I conjure an intention: indigenizing Canada. Having this torture session stop would be nice. Ending the genocide would be great. But that’s not where to put my good energy, my builder’s energy, my creative energy. So I call with a Cree cry into the space between your heartbeats, the drum beat of Mother Earth, syncopated: let’s build social power, you and I.

Traveling the pathway from apartheid modernity to an indigenous socialism for the 21^st century calls for walkers, each walking in our own way, but together, in the same direction. The footprints in the grass are already outlining a pathway, from the Mayan Zapatistas to the Bolivian MAS to the Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela. Even from here I can faintly see the emerging outlines of a communal council system that someday will organically overgrow colonial forms of political economy.

In my ancient culture, the extended family was the core of the regional governance system, with female Elders gently guiding the whole process. A cross-linked communal council system existed inside the extended family structure. One organic possibility for Canada’s future is the re-emergence of extended, family-based, communal councils, where, for instance, Canadian youth, if faced with dysfunctional families of origin, can simply decide to create new extended families of choice.

In the ancient culture, fresh new humans were intentionally created, by adults three generations deep in childcare facility, on an as-needed basis. In other words, the absolute total size of the human population in any one bio-region was controlled by the members of the group acting in concert. Birth control was understood and practiced, sexuality was recognized as the powerful force that it rightfully is, and social systems were evolved to provide safe and complete outlets for all of that extra non-procreative sexual energy for which we humans are renowned.

By using this system, each new child entered an extended family circle where she/he was the center of attention for an adoring circle of adults who defined themselves in relation to her/him. Great-grandmother, grandmother, mother, aunt, cousin, sister were the circle they toddled into. Every effort was made by all of these adults to prevent injury or abuse.

The Cree education system had two childhood phases before one entered adulthood at puberty. Phase one was the above-described building of a central, indestructible core of individual personhood. When children reached a certain age, they were gently moved into stage two, consciously learning how to seek humbleness. By humbleness I mean seeking balance across both human and non-human systems, so that there is no Above or Below.

Cree children had, as companions in search of humbleness, all of their age-peers, and, as role models, all of the adults around them. Within this educational system, fresh new humans matured into adult humans who were fearlessly themselves and knew how to make decisions for individual action based on the best outcome for the whole group.

The entire practice was ritualized into a belief system that relied on the metaphor of ceremony. Each individual carried inside of themselves their own unique understanding of ceremony, while the actual practice of gathering together to perform ceremony created the conditions for the harmonization of individual, society, and Mother Earth. In Dios.

Turtle Island is re-emerging, after a long eclipse under the shadow of the Americas. I see a wonderful opportunity here for Canadian social activists to place intentions on creating an indigenized pluri-national, multi-ethnic space to fit into Turtle Island re-emergent. I ask each reader to consider what this would mean in their personal life.

Thank you for gifting me with this brief space of your attention.

Together, towards Turtle Island.

StarWoman

Indigenius Socialism for the 21st Century

dru — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 04:34:32 +0000

KUTENAI TERRITORY, TURTLE ISLAND—First thing's first: “Indigenius” is not a typo in the headline; it’s an example of the syncretic nature of the Cree language. Cree uses building blocks called morphemes; the genius of the Cree language is that speakers creatively jam morphemes together to create new, more accurate words, with two focuses: humour and poetry. And it’s an action, not mulled over in quiet deliberation, but spit out in the heat of the moment. Language as performance art.

Ready?

By the the beginning of the 21^st century—after the imagined end of history, and much to Euro-origin intellectuals’ surprise—a call for socialism in the 21^st century arose in Latin America, first among Mayan Zapatistas and then spreading southwards across the remainder of Turtle Island.

Socialism for the 21^st century became Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez’s electoral battle cry, where, in spite of the complete and absolute opposition of the privately owned public media, he won election after election on the promise to redistribute oil revenues to the 60 per cent of the Venezuelan population that was desperately poor. Following Chavez’s program of Catholic liberation theology mixed with a smattering of Marx and topped off with hefty doses of pragmatic state capitalism, nation states across the southern continent tilted Left, with the notable exception of Colombia—after Israel, the largest recipient of US military aid in the world.

Like Evo Morales and the Bolivian Movement Toward Socialism (MAS), Indigenous-led social movements throughout Latin America are openly anti-capitalist, because capitalism as a system of political economy means ongoing genocide for Indigenous Peoples and perpetual ecocide for the non-human portion of the Mother Earth Super-Being, of which humans are a part. (See CIBC and Me, Part IV for details.) Coming from a deep history of harmonious relations with Mother Earth, and having already spent millennia in systems of political economy based on simple egalitarian sharing, Indigenous Peoples have something to say about what a potential future steady state global system of political economy could look like.

The first thing I have to point to is the European model of industrial development. It doesn’t work for a multiplicity of reasons, and negates Marx’s theoretical explanation of how capitalism would automatically create a human society filled with workers who will, some day, transform capitalism into a socialist society. From an Indigenous perspective, the Euro-origin industrial model arises from a psychological pitting of human against nature, manufacturing an ideological division that does not exist in Indigenous reality. Further, it posits that something called "scarcity" exists, and that technological development is necessary to better this supposedly natural state of scarcity. Within this imagined dichotomy, nature is wild and humans are civilized; humans living in a state of nature are wild, and therefore not real humans. The real humans live in a state of technologically ameliorated scarcity, assembling vehicles for Ford, GM and Chrysler, with two mortgages and four credit cards. So much for Marx.

From the Indigenous-to-Turtle Island point of view, there is no dichotomy between wild and civilized. There is no such thing as wilderness. When Europeans arrived on Turtle Island they saw wilderness, while Indigenous Peoples saw the space as fully inhabited by culturally developed humans who were living in an active relationship with Mother Earth. Land that was fully, ethically, sustainably inhabited by Indigenous Peoples was seen by Europeans as undeveloped. John Locke’s labour theory of value claims that an Indian’s land is not worth one-thousandth of what the same acre of land would be worth were it located in England. Several hundred years after Locke’s writings, agricultural researchers are suggesting that, if all factors from the global industrial base are included, free-ranging a 60,000,000-head herd of buffalo is most likely the best agricultural use of the High Plains region of North America—exactly the use it was being put to prior to the introduction of Europe’s industrial development model.

From an Indigenous point of view, a logical recommendation for socialism for the 21^st century is a complete redesign of humanity’s global industrial base. The redesigned industrial base has to abandon both the myth of scarcity and the myth of wilderness, while embracing the reality that humans actually are an integral part of an enormous Super-Being, whom Indigenous folks have long known as Mother Earth.

A quick dash back to reality for a moment: we humans aren’t going to voluntarily undertake a task of that magnitude while we are in our current antisocial state of mind. It’s easy to point to the global problems facing humanity and say that our self-induced trauma has shaped us to be the species we are now. The challenging part is imagining the way forward from here.

This brings my imagination to the crucial place: the crux of the matter; the originating point. The human vagina. Not being personally endowed with one, and certainly subject to the same forces noted by psychological studies concluding that a man’s imagination goes there at least once every 10 seconds, I realize I’m fair game for criticism.

However, as a once-popular song might have said had it been penned by an Indigenous lyricist, the vagina bone is connected to the stomach bone, and the stomach bone is connected to the heart bone. In an odd way, that just about sums up gender relationships while being anatomically correct, energetically speaking. Indigenous socialism arises from the relationship between mother and child, the first social relationship we humans experience. Looking into the structure of the social institution of Indigenous motherhood, prior to the cataclysmic assault staged by Christian missionaries hell-bent on their civilizing mission, I see some noteworthy features.

Connecting the heart bone to the head bone, I see the common thread of Indigenius Socialism expressed through a particular aspect of human sexuality. Modern medical researchers call it oxytocin, but you don’t have to name it to know it. Human females experience an inter-human bonding, or a primary socialism, during sexual arousal, sexual activity, sexual orgasm(s!), child birth, breast feeding, communal food preparation, communal feasting, and communal socializing in general, when the mood is non-violent. From the very specific Indigenous point of view found on the High Plains, where all those buffalos were roaming among the playful deer and antelope, pre-Christianized human societies practised a non-hierarchical matrifocal social form, where women’s relationships established the social norms. Men had roles, too, and I’ll get to that in time, but women’s relationship roles, revolving around motherhood, are the key to understanding Indigenius Socialism and the foundation of what I am proposing here as Syncretic Indigenius Socialismo.

In the human brain, there is a formation medical researchers call the limbic node; it is croissant-shaped, with one end arching around to almost touch the other. Almost, but not quite. Electricity-based human nerve impulses can jump the gap; stimulation on either end causes excitation on the other end. Oral receptors are at one end of the limbic node and genital receptors are at the other end of the limbic node.

Those crazy medical researchers! Their studies show that in societies with higher emphasis on general brain development, there is a corresponding higher level of oral-genital sexual activity. French and Cree societies both fit into the higher-brain development category and I’ll gamble a wager on the origin of the Metis Nation from the shared preference for oral sex. Is the Metis infinity symbol really just a clever play on a sideways 69?

The head bone is connected to the vagina bone, as many intelligent people know, and you don’t have to be able to articulate the mechanics of it all to get it. In pre-Christian Cree society, adventures in sexuality were separated from pregnancy by well understood and widely practised plant-based and practice-based birth control. You could have your cake and eat it, too. Women were free to choose when, where, and with whom they would conceive a child. Women chose to have children spaced about four years apart—two or three at most—in a lifetime and had children in age cohorts within their own circle of age cohort sister-cousins. Children grew up with an age cohort of cousins, without the burden of having immediate older or younger siblings and with the benefit of being born into a circle of similarly aged playmate relatives.

Women often chose to have a first child around the age of 16, when their mothers were about 32, their grandmothers were about 48, their great-grandmothers were about 64, and their great-great grandmothers were about 80. It was not uncommon for women to live to 100 years, so up to six generations of mothers could be present in an extended family, with the newborn infant representing the seventh generation. This meant that every new mother was surrounded by a depth of experience in the fine arts of Indigenous Socialism. She was certainly never on her own, without support, trying to care for several, or even a dozen or more children, all her own, often on her own, as was the European standard at that same time in history.

Out of this foundational matrix arose the basic form of Indigenous Socialism. By choosing fathers from across the bio-region, extended family villages were cross-linked with many other extended family villages, in an intricate web that formed the regional and national governance systems. It was literally all in the family. The genius of Indigenous Socialism was that it did not extend from an avant-garde of intellectuals as a theory imposed imperfectly, top down, on a mass population, but instead was an organic product of a matrifocal society. When Fredrick Engels travelled to upper New York State to see for himself Haudenausaunee society in action, he marvelled at how a territorially large and heavily populated region could self-manage without elected officials, judges, police or prisons.

Like technological development, the organization of daily affairs in human society was founded on a completely different paradigm. Men did have roles, but women’s expectations of men were adjusted to account for men’s inherent weaknesses, most notably a propensity towards violence and a severe shortage of oxytocin. The poor dears could only get a blast of the primal socialist juice during orgasm; all the more reason to assist them in attaining as many as possible during a lifetime. Along with frequent orgasms, ceremonial activities also played an important part in reducing the potential stressor on a socialist system caused by an overabundance of testosterone—for instance, the sweatlodge. This wasn’t just an Indigenous introduction; Scandanavian societies, too, recognized the social benefits of immersing men in energy-sapping hot steamy environments for prolonged periods of time.

The Indigenius twist was an emphasis on the latent altruistic nature possibly underlying male humans’ obvious violent nature, as a remedy to the anti-social behaviours otherwise all too dominant. Protocol rituals in a simple sweatlodge ceremony remind and reinforce the necessary immersion of humans in the natural world; many times I’ve heard Elders leading sweatlodge ceremonies ritually comment on how we humans must humble ourselves and crawl on our hands and knees into the lodge, re-entering the womb of Mother Earth. During normal sweatlodge proceedings, water, earth, wind and fire are acknowledged with gratitude, from the perspective of the human family, while reminding us of our survival-based obligations to the circle of natural forces we have emerged from. The combination of intense heat, complete darkness and an extraordinary soundscape often moves participants out of day-to-day mundane realities and into the immediacy of relationship with Mother Earth. Everyone simultaneously has a unique experience and a deeply bonding common experience. Real socialism.

The genius of Indigenous ceremony is that it intentionally creates a psychological space where Indigenius Socialism can come to life, rewarding co-operation, voluntary sharing and spontaneous acts of kindness, while penalizing greed, selfishness and violence. These actions are easy for women, but hard for men—that damn testosterone! Within the ceremonial space, Indigenous women have figured out a method, over millennia, for engaging men, by using the same tactics used with young children. Useful roles are identified and social prestige is offered, while steady, firm Elder female hands quietly steer the ceremonial proceedings from a discreet position in the background.

I realize that we seem to be a long way away from the way of life that Rosa Luxemburg called primitive communism; she was just looking at what Marxists call the mode of production and she didn’t mean the mode of reproduction of the reserve army of labour. A syncretic Indigenius Socialism for the 21^st century has to account, in practice, for both the mode of production and the mode of reproduction and does so by putting the mode of reproduction where it belongs: first. You can’t build a socialist future among antisocial human beings; the 20^th century is a fine illustration of that point.

Becoming pregnant, being pregnant, giving birth, nurturing a new life: here’s where we can see the transcendence of the notions of wilderness and scarcity. Mother Earth is not wild, nor is She short on essential items for Her existence. The same is potentially true for every human mother; the keys are sharing and co-operation. Exactly what a global human society would look like following those two simple concepts is not for me to say, but I can predict something.

Indigenius Socialism will be built by women, for humanity, utilizing everything now in existence, to rise above the barbarism of the present moment. We men can choose to be women’s assistants in this project; it could be an ecstatic experience. Imagine global human population plummeting in a women-led movement, while orgasms per lifetime are skyrocketing. Perhaps the Metis Nation is a signpost to the future: Indigenous Peoples will be Peoples indigenous to Mother Earth—one race, diverse, living locally while thinking globally, wickedly intelligent, one more species among many worth saving from extinction. There is a window of opportunity now, but, if we humans don’t take it, we will just create another one soon. We will eventually choose socialism over barbarism; our Mother told us to.

Gifted with a white privilege suit on his birthday, Steinhauer has been slipping back and forth across the invisible boundary between Turtle Island and Canada since 1952. And this is what he saw.

Mother Earth

CIBC and Me, Part IV

dru — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 23:19:00 +0000

A little complaint about genocide, put into perspective

In May of 2003, Stewart Steinhauer informed the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce (CIBC) that he was stopping his payments on $150,000 of loans.

Steinhauer wrote at the time: "After 'discovering' genocide in Canada, I searched for the villains, and my search led from my reserve, here at Saddle Lake, to the top of the international financial community." As the primary beneficiaries of genocide and the expropriation of indigenous land that continues to drive it, Canada's financial institutions had to be held accountable.

"Unable to ignore, or deny, the incredible suffering being visited upon my family, friends, and all of the rest of the peoples who make up indigenous nations within the boundaries of Canada," wrote Steinhauer, "I began to look for something that I could actually do to affect the situation."

In an exchange of letters published in The Dominion, Steinhauer made his case for withholding payment. "I stated several times," Steinhauer wrote of an encounter with a debt collector, "that I intend to repay in full whatever I owe CIBC, when I am satisfied with Canada's actions in relation to Indigenous peoples, specifically the immediate repeal of the Indian Act, and the honouring of Treaty Six, including back payments, royalties, up-dated annuities, and whatever may be necessary to reverse the genocide." CIBC refused Steinhauer's conditions, and Steinhauer refused to pay.

* * *

Six years have passed since I launched my timid little complaint about genocide in Canada. One outcome has been the opportunity to engage in a whole lot of irritating telephone discussions with collection agency workers tasked by CIBC to harass me in the general direction they would like to see me go, like herding a wild animal out of the bush. Except for the initial response, a letter from CIBC printed by The Dominion in the first installment, there has been no more direct discussion between CIBC officials and myself about my initial complaint.

Other things have happened, too. The global financial meltdown, for one. Suddenly there is a public discussion about the bankocracy in power, and the massive transfer of taxpayer money into private shareholder and management hands, what some commentators are calling the largest theft in history. The geographer, David Harvey, calls it accumulation by dispossession. Take from the poor and give to the rich.

This is the role the historical development of capitalism has assigned to Indigenous Peoples in the Americas: we give, the rich take. Some Indigenous folks have been protesting; my cousin Vincent commented that we've gone from being officially listed as non-persons to being officially listed as terrorists. It's a start, in a way. Now we are at least perceived as existing.

Speaking of terrorists, how about that 19th century philosopher so frightening to almost all modern economists? I have tried to read Karl Marx, but there's something about his writing style and tone that loses me in the space between the capitalized first word in a sentence and the period indicating its end. I don't get the mental picture that a properly constructed sentence is supposed to leave you with. Marx got it all wrong, anyways. Right? Isn't that why absolutely no self-respecting professional economist even bothers to read "Capital"? Kind of a silent ban.

Ah, but forbidden fruit tastes best, doesn't it? The pursuit of forbidden pleasures returns highest yields when shrouded in secrecy; Bernard Madoff would agree. My secret research has been in a style academics call secondary research. I read what folks who've read "Capital" have to say about it, for instance Harry Cleaver's Reading Capital Politically.

And then along came David Harvey's 13-part lecture series, available at davidharvey.org. He's paid to lead a first reading of Capital Vol. 1 at City University of New York. Almost 40 years on in this line of work, you can hear him as he reads selected bits, broadens the meaning with his own examples and discussion, fields questions from his students and provides some outside discussion about Marx and Capital, Vol. 1 in short interview format, with a former student.

For me, it was still mind-numbingly abstract, but by the time I had listened through twice, I was suddenly ready to begin a serious examination of what folks call "the economy." Listening to David Harvey unravel Marx's critique of capitalism while watching Lehman Bros tank and AIG get the first of what has turned out to be a series of intravenous injections of taxpayers' blood, was astonishing. Marx, sitting quietly in the Royal British Museum 150 years ago, contemplating and writing industriously, was talking about the events I was witnessing around me.

From there it was an easy jump to internet discussions about Immanuel Wallerstein's world systems theory, and Giovanni Arrighi's opinions about China's "capital roaders." A description of the historical progression from City States like Venice to not-quite-nations states like Holland, to small nation states with global empires like Great Britain, to continent-sized nation states with global hegemony, like the United States of America, made sense.

All along through this search for meaning I've kept a sharp eye open for any reference to the Indigenous Peoples of what has come to be known as the Americas. In Left literature, such references are always brief: a sentence or two about the absolute destruction of Indigenous Peoples as a footnote in history, a part of primitive accumulation, capitalism's opening stage, long passed... and then no more. To the Left's credit, we at least make the footnote.

By listening to David Harvey I discovered that Karl Marx was engaged in an internal mental debate with David Ricardo and Adam Smith, whose theories are now called classical economy. In the Ricardian/Smithian version of the transition to capitalism, primitive accumulation is a quiet peaceful affair where hard-working individuals make their own breaks, while slothful Others lazily fall back. Those hard working individuals also just happen to be wisely thrifty, accumulating money until it can be diverted from personal consumption and re-deployed as Capital. In the classical and neo-classical liberal accounts of economy, there is absolutely no mention of the invasion of Turtle Island, wholesale destruction of human societies then present, and the absorption into capital stocks of the vast natural wealth of Turtle Island as it became the Americas.

Perhaps with our new designation as terrorists we'll have better luck than as non-persons. Maybe it's like the blues; you've gotta hang in there and do your time, pay your dues, before you get to move into the daylight of becoming just an average human being.

In 2003 I launched an incoherent one-person rebellion against a money property regime which I intuited but could not prove was implicated in the genocide of Indigenous Peoples. In 2009, my new, improved opinion has matured to an understanding that the money property regime against which I rebelled is implicated in genocides all over the planet. (Quite stupidly) from the point of view of its own survival, capitalism is even implicated in global ecocide. Marx lays out the reasons why the system moves inexorably in this direction. He's not the only one to ponder on these things, either. A very active global post-Marxist discussion is currently incorporating Marx's critique of David Ricardo and Adam Smith's classical economic theories, screened through the knowledge gained from the brutal experiences of failed attempts to implement Marxist theory. Ricardo, Smith, and Marx, as well as 100 per cent of so-called professional economists working today, are talking about theories. Actual experience interferes with the smooth operation of all these theoretical constructs, constantly.

I understand now why my property rights are suppressed, while Canadians' property rights are supported, in a property law system that tilts the tables towards the property rights of very wealthy individual Canadians. The key element in the suppression of my property rights is the forced disappearance of my traditional Indigenous forms of property rights, more accurately articulated as a relationship between humanity and non-human life forms (Mother Earth).

The destruction of Indigenous forms of property relationships is an example of activities that occur during Stage One of genocide, according to Raphael Lemkin, the legal expert contracted to draft the UN's Convention on Genocide. By Lemkin's criteria, Canada's Indian Act is an example of Stage Two genocidal behaviour: the forced imposition of the national characteristics of the genociders on the land, and on any surviving humans of the target group. In light of negative world opinion, Canada is edging towards another act of genocide, by incorporating Indigenous Peoples into the Canadian fee-simple property (estate land) law system, so that our original, frighteningly "socialist" property form is obliterated from memory.

I also now understand why money has the highest priority in the commodity chain, and why the folks who deal with the production and distribution of that particular commodity – bankers – have the highest priority in the power chain. I understand how what's called law is actively shaped and managed by the power chain gang, and why no court exists in the world for me to make my case about genocide in Canada.

In the year 2003, when I waved my tiny $150,000 of so-called debt in CIBC's face, in my ignorance, thinking that it might be an attention-getting device, CIBC management was focused on a $2 billion penalty fee arising from their involvement with Enron, a fine they voluntarily agreed to pay in order to avoid more serious consequences. I suppose it was my indoctrination into liberalist ideology that got me to believe that rational folks, when shown the truth, would react humanely. As my mental veil has been rudely lifted in public, my question to CIBC has, over time, transformed into a simple request for them to show me the legal proof, within the liberal structure of international law, of their claim of title to the money property that they "lent" to me. I'll speak more about banks and lending further on, but for now, I'll simply note that their Indian Act has tangled their own feet.

Canadian Indian policy was originally meant as a caretaker regime to quietly nurse Indigenous Peoples into a collective grave; this policy has backfired spectacularly in that, unexpectedly, Indigenous Peoples still exist. These still-existing Peoples are recognized, in international law, as holding certain political, economic and cultural rights, noted in the recent UN Declaration on Indigenous Rights. Canada, one of only four nations that refused to sign that declaration, claims root title to the Dominion of Canada, a title vested in the Crown.

The banks' claim, based on the Crown's claim, is invalid within the framework of international law even though the forces we're calling the Crown have constructed international law for their own purposes. Taken further, this means that all third-party claims based on the Crown's claims are also invalid; for instance, fee-simple title to real estate. Fee-simple is a registered interest in the Crown's underlying claim to root title. Anyone in Canada who holds fee-simple title is directly benefiting from the dispossession strategies to which Indigenous Peoples are subjected. It's a chain reaction caused by Indigenous Peoples' failure to disappear.

What are my choices? As a non-person-cum-terrorist I don't have the psychology to be even the tiniest bit threatening, thanks to being a life-long pacifist. Whether or not that psychology includes cowardice, it's compounded by a philosophical attraction to a long Indigenous history of non-violent problem-solving that always shies away from direct confrontation, while continuously seeking consensual solutions. Both the Mayan Zapatistas and the Bolivian Indigenous-driven Movement Toward Socialism (MAS) have anti-capitalism as the front plank in their campaign platform. Now I understand why. Capitalism is a system that requires exploitation, causes ever-widening gaps between rich and poor (with all it's socially destabilizing effects) and has to mine the environment in ever more extreme ways, leading ultimately to total environmental devastation. The system requires ongoing imperialism, and moves in bubble cycles; war, financial crises and environmental destruction are not aberrations of the system, but key structural components.

I started out with a tiny complaint about genocide, and linking it to the banking industry. That naïve action has opened a doorway to fantasies like a zero-growth economy, with full ecological sustainability, and trade systems based on fair and equitable exchange instead of exploitation, in a global system consciously chosen by folks who have the mental/physical/emotional/spiritual space in their day-to-day lives to devote to this sort of contemplation. All folks. Everywhere. The naïf in me imagines that there could be a genuine democracy, on the foundation of a grassroots council system, to replace the current system of oligarchic rule that uses a managed periodic electoral function to rubber-stamp the oligarchic decisions we now endure.

In 1980, an American Indian Movement activist, Russell Means, made a provocative public statement: "In order for humanity to live, Europe must die." Just more Indigenous terrorist rhetoric, right? Kill Europe?

Perhaps some bankerly folks absorbed his comment into their subconscious minds, and its sublimation re-surfaced as a mass financial suicide attempt in the fall of 2008. Certainly the eight years of Cheney-Bush administration made every effort to drive the US-centric Global Empire into the ditch.

It leaves humanity in a precarious position. The sudden massive transfer of public wealth to private bankers consolidates and centralizes wealth into fewer and fewer hands. Publicly-subsidized debt forgiveness for the rich and layoff/foreclosure/deficit for the poor is the proposed antidote to the present crisis. However, the decay of the US Empire, with no new greater-than-continental-sized Empire looming on the global horizon, presents an ideal opening for power chain gangs. Non-wealthy humanity, the remaining 99 per cent of us, is in such a state of antisocial disrepair that the likelihood of a grassroots democratic egalitarian outcome is remote. The alternatives seem to be a step backward into a dangerous, violent, global non-state, where Blackwater-style mercenary armies provide as much security as possible for oligarchs, or a step forward in human consciousness, beyond the ideologies of elite rule into a stable, global pro-choosing-all-life steady state.

My choices boil down to one simple action: I'll add my one little voice to the global vote on our common human future. I recommend that we humans start an international not-for-profit banking system that makes credit and credit counseling widely available. That would eliminate the need for primitive accumulation, including the accumulation through dispossession tactics that Indigenous Lands and Peoples are subjected to. Ricardo, Smith and Marx all describe the capitalist production cycle as starting with capital. It's a conundrum: if you can make it through to the end of the production cycle and successfully realize the transformation of the commodities produced back into money, you will have, at the end of the cycle, what you need at the beginning. Capital.

You either have to scavenge around, in other Peoples' pockets, figuratively speaking (one of the reasons for imperialism, for your startup capital), or you have to have access to credit. Canada's Indian Act prohibits on-reserve status Indians as individuals or as collectives, such as Indian Bands, from gaining access to Canadian credit markets, by vesting title to all property in the Crown. This vestiture is a component of Canada's ongoing struggle with Indigenous Peoples inside of Canada, where the Crown claims root title to all territory inside of the Dominion of Canada, in spite of the Crown's inability to provide evidence in support of such a claim. Banks cannot engage directly with on-reserve status Indian individuals or organizations because the normal types of security, where banks place claims on property, cannot be enforced.

I unintentionally sidestepped this barrier because of the way that racism's real name, white privilege, operates in apartheid societies. As described in earlier Dominion segments of this micro-saga, unconscious white privilege was interacting with unconscious white privilege whenever I sat in my CIBC accounts manager's office. From 1975 until 2002 this unconscious collusion kept my accounts transactions below the Indian Act radar, and it wasn't until CIBC upgraded their risk assessment programs to include, for the first time, an aboriginal business component, that my unique case came to light.

One fateful day, in the local St. Paul, Alberta, branch of CIBC, during a normal review of my banking business, my accounts manager was instructed by her monitor to press a certain key sequence to enter all information into the new aboriginal business program. From there, a warning popped up on her screen asking her to immediately call risk assessment headquarters in Toronto, followed shortly by a screaming male voice coming out of her phone ear piece, which I could hear plainly from across the office. He unwittingly became one of my informal advisers in the matters now being dutifully reported to you, the Dominion reader.

Section 89 of the Indian Act blocks CIBC from being able to take legal action against me. However, Section 89 also points obtusely towards the fact that, by the letter of the law, I own absolutely nothing while on reserve lands, not even the shirt on my back. The Dominion is not the Globe and Mail's Report On Business, so I probably won't get any feedback on this topic, but if any average Canadian business person was asked to give up all of the their Canadian property rights and forgo access to formal Canadian credit markets, while trying to operate any sort of (legal) business inside of an entire zone existing under these conditions, then they, like I, may try to lodge a complaint.

The UN's genocide clause about deliberately inflicting on a group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part may be argued against in the Canadian situation based on the inclusion of the word "deliberately." However, for anyone who is familiar with conditions of life on-reserve circa 2009, and continuously so since the Indian Act's official inception in 1876, the remainder of that clause is a grim reality.

Luckily this is about an Indigenous reality, where there are always more options. Would you care to dance? And so I dance around in a circle with CIBC, existing under a constant barrage of collection agency psychological operations, often laced with racist comments. But this isn't about CIBC; this about the Canadian banking system.

In western civilization's current system, commercial banks create new money by issuing new debt. The central banks of each of western civilization's nation state members manage the money supply in circulation to sort of keep step with their commercial banks' issuance of new money, and either accelerate or depress the demand for the issuance of new debt by adjusting the interest rate. Theoretically, private banks hold in reserve some proportion of the total amount of debt they have issued, in actual cash, taken as deposits or from the sale of shares.

The new money thus created must be repaid with interest; the interest portion is above and beyond the amount of the principle lent out. This means that new money has to be created somewhere else, the borrower has to be able to get his hands on it, and return it to the bank, along with the principle. For this to happen on an ongoing basis, the entire amount of money in circulation has to continually grow, with new money created through issuance of new debt going towards payment of interest on former issuance of new debt. In other words, a Ponzi scheme.

In order to avoid the Ponzi nature of our current money creation system, we need issuance of credit as a public service, and we need it to be issued without an interest charge. A central contradiction of capitalism is that capitalism requires infinite growth inside a finite space. Logically, we humans need to collectively contemplate a zero-growth economy. There's no good reason why money has to be created by commercial banks; have at look at Richard Douthwaite's The Ecology Of Money, a free read on the internet. And there is no good reason for interest to be charged; it's actually a from of extortion. That an elite group is allowed to create money out of thin air and then charge rent on it will be seen as criminal, some day.

Western civilizationists talk a lot about the democratic rule of law. In my humble opinion such talk is abstract; I for one would like to see this actually happen. Therefore, I also recommend that all Peoples present inside the territorial boundaries of Canada, Canadians and Indigenous, to carefully and thoughtfully end Canada’s apartheid era by undertaking a comprehensive collective action. The days of Indian Acts are over, and a new era of pluri-national, ethnically-diverse, eco-logically, bio-regional governance-by-consensus is dawning. Making credit available as a public service, like education and health care, and like energy and transportation services should also be, is a possible first step towards the advent of an Indigenist society: a Turtle Island re-emergence.

Ninety-nine per cent of the Peoples inside Canada, Indigenous and Canadian, are already paying for it – Canadians through dispossession of tax dollars, and Indigenous through dispossession of resources, land, and life. A major incentive to engage in primitive accumulation through dispossession would be removed if credit were made available as a public service. It's possible that a greener hue of what things look like right now could be produced, quite quickly, if we didn't have the inner driving forces of capitalism that continually push towards bubble crises, war, and ecological destruction.

Political economy is really not all that complicated, once you get the hang of it. Our current crop of bankocrats just make it look complicated.

In all fairness to them, it is extremely complicated to keep a severely dysfunctional system running when in fact it needs to die so that we all can live.

Gifted with a white privilege suit on his Birth Day, Steinhauer has been slipping back and forth across the invisible boundary between Turtle Island and Canada, since 1952. And this is what he saw.

Winter Spirit Bear

Through Canada’s Rez Zone Looking Glass

Moira Peters — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 06:37:03 +0000

Israeli Apartheid Week

KUTENAI TERRITORY, TURTLE ISLAND–Divining the past can be difficult, especially when your crystal ball is a bit smudged; it’s not all shooting fish in a barrel. In this fifth consecutive year of an international effort to call attention to the nature of the relationship between the Israeli state and Arab Palestinians living within and without that or any state, a question has been stirring at the margins of permissible thought.

What would a Canadian Apartheid Week look like? American Apartheid Week? Mexican Apartheid Week? An Apartheid Week for every nation state in the so-called Americas? Except for Bolivia, of course. After the last Bolivian national election, the new President said that Bolivia would no longer be needing a Department of Indian Affairs because the Indians were now the government.

As an Indigenous person, I ask myself if there is some level of hypocrisy going on in Canada if progressives demonstrate against Israeli state actions while continuing to enjoy the benefits of living in an entire hemisphere of apartheid, at home on native lands. Why not do both at once? And while we’re at it, why not join in with an international movement to guarantee the right to life for Jewish folk no matter where they are located?

Before the Empire, under Britain’s fading leadership at that time, declared an Israeli state in 1948, Jewish Palestinians and Arab Palestinians were living comfortably side by side. That peaceful co-existence can be traced back a long ways. As a member of Turtle Island’s Indigenous Peoples, the year 1492 stands out for me, as an important date in history. It’s an important date in Jewish and Muslim history, too: the year that Sephardic Jews and Muslim Moors were expelled from Spain. Where did the majority of Sephardic Jews flee to? The Arab Muslim Ottoman Empire, where Sephardic Jews were valued and appreciated for their skills, particularly in areas of scholarship. It was a reciprocal relationship, with Jews also introducing into Western Christian societies important Arabic knowledge in maths and other sciences.

Sad to say, but Empire has other needs. Now under US leadership, the Empire needs the Israeli state to continue relentlessly on the warpath it started down in 1948, a war of extermination against Arab Palestinians located within the region coveted by Eretz Israel. Eretz Israel is the land promised by the Hebrew Bible’s God to Abraham and his descendants through Issac and Abraham’s grandson, Jacob. This arrangement suits the Empire’s needs quite nicely, namely as a highly developed forward base for Empire’s ambitions in the Middle East. I’ll describe apartheid’s economic functions in more detail shortly, but for now suffice to say that, as long as the Israeli state follows the same exact methods practiced in Canada, the United States of America, Mexico, etc., etc., on down to and past (but now having to avoid Bolivia) then it will all work out... for the Empire.

This calculation leaves out the question of blowback against Jews, no matter were they are located. A thousand years of pogroms resulting from elites setting up Jews to be the fall guys should be enough of a history lesson, but consider the fate of Israeli Jews when Empire loses it’s regional grip. Add in Empire’s weakening of secularism within Arab states and Empire’s strengthening of fundamentalist beliefs, whether Christian, Islamic, Hindi, or Judaic, all united by the common belief that their own God has asked them to kill members of all of the others, and it looks like a sure recipe for disaster. Why would an intelligent Israeli Jew want to travel even one step further down that path?

Is anyone else confused about why the three major world religions that claim to descend from Abraham, namely, Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, all seem so intent on remaining bitter enemies, in action repudiating their own philosophies of brotherly love?

The question at hand, however, is a discussion about an international Israeli Apartheid Week. In all fairness to Israel, Zionist war mongers would have to kill hundreds of millions of Arabs, and occupy 16,430,000 square miles of Arab territory, in order to achieve parity with the apartheid system calmly proceeding, apparently unnoticed, on Turtle Island, in Canada, the US, Mexico, and so on.

An area that size would have to include all of the Middle East, plus considerable amounts of South and East Asia. A territorial expansion of that magnitude is certainly in Empire’s "New American Century" playbook, but clearly not in the cards for Israel. For an accurate comparison between Israeli Apartheid and Americas Apartheid, one must look at the historical record to make stage by stage comparisons.

Avigdor Lieberman’s call for the administration of a loyalty oath to Arab Israelis needs to be compared to the nation state of Canada’s Province of British Columbia, where new legislation is currently under consideration to legally recognize Indigenous Peoples within the boundaries of the province as human beings. Lieberman is ahead of the Province of British Columbia in that he already recognizes Arab Israelis as human beings, viciously prejudiced as his judgement may otherwise be. In BC, I’ll have to wait with bated breath, as the business community battles the Recognition and Reconciliation Act proposals, to discover whether I will become a legal person in the eyes of the law. Since Governor James Douglas' 1858 legal declaration that the lands in the new Crown Colony of British Columbia were unoccupied, Indigenous Peoples within that territory have been non-persons, especially in relation to any type of property rights, Indigenous or Canadian, a declaration still in effect at the time of this writing.

Taken in total, I’d like to suggest that Palestinian Arabs, Jews of the world no matter where located, and Indigenous Peoples of Turtle Island have common cause: surviving genocidal onslaughts. Cynical power players within Arab, Jewish, and Indigenous populations can be seen siding with Empire, no doubt prompted by a misguided sense of Darwinian notions about survival of the fittest. This individualist perspective leaves out long-term analysis, especially an analysis of long-term non-human global reactions. For instance: general environmental destruction, to name just one.

We humans have the mental, physical, emotional and spiritual capacity to turn course, change direction. The recent presidential election in the United States was a collective expression of exactly that desire, immediately subordinated to the needs of Empire. As a not-yet-recognized-as-human denizen of Canada’s Rez Zone, BC division, I’d like to humbly suggest that the solution to the apartheid problem could be more quickly advanced by a solidarity movement involving Indigenous folk, Jewish folk, and Arab Palestinian folk, against Empire in general, and apartheid states in particular.

Canada’s Indian Act and Indian Policy is the acceptable role model for Israel’s apartheid policy, and for South Africa’s apartheid policy of yesteryear. Canada’s Gaza Strip and West Bank were happening in the 1800s: mass slaughters in various colonial frontier encounters, like the Chilcoot War; forced starvation, for instance the sealing off of western prairie reserves as collective punishment after the North-West Rebellion, where up to 50 per cent of reserve populations perished; and the systematic destruction of Indigenous economic, political and social structures that was and still is Canada’s Indian Act.

When I was a child there was a large “NO TRESPASSING” sign, in English, a hundred yards from my house at the edge of Saddle Lake Indian Reserve # 125, obviously meant for Canadians to obey. Centuries of forced separation still play out in the daily lives of Cree folk and Canadian settler descendants; in small towns like St Paul, Alberta, the apartheid is so palpable you can cut it with a knife, and folks on both sides of the now-invisible barriers regularly do.

However, in spite of five hundred years of living this experience, I’d like to suggest that our common cause is much more significant than our presumed differences. This is true for any of the so-called areas of conflict in the post-modern world, where folks tend to focus on gender/sexual orientation, or race, or class, or ecology or authority. From an Indigenous perspective these are all parts of the elephant being described by blind persons as they each touch the portion closest to them. Apartheid systems are just one facet of the global control system I’ve been calling Empire.

As promised earlier, I’ll return to a brief examination of the economic function of apartheid. Apartheid serves as a necessary firewall between human beings belonging by birth to differentiated groups. Differentiated groups are brought into close physical proximity by colonial expansion, which I’ll call imperialism. Imperialism solves some of the inherent contradictions in capitalism, by expanding capital supply through primitive accumulation (expropriation of lands and resources), expansion of non-home markets, safety valve outlets for burgeoning unwanted home population, sources of lower cost labour power, and, in more advanced cases, through the creative destruction of productive property, thereby allowing a new cycle of production to begin by generally reducing previous over-productive capacities.

One problem encountered in the settlement stage of colonial expansion is that humans have the tendency to ignore the artificially imposed differentiations, and spontaneously re-group. Some sort of apartheid policy is necessary to prevent the potentially “destructive” co-mingling of plain human beings. Theories of race were invented to specifically re-enforce this artificial separation.

In Canada, apartheid is still an important social dam holding back a generalized reaction against the ongoing systematic de-humanization that I and all Indigenous Peoples inside of Canada are daily subjected to. The BC Chamber of Commerce is very concerned about the proposed new Recognition and Reconciliation Act because it threatens this apartheid relationship which allows smooth functioning of traditional colonial accumulation through dispossession. Timber. Minerals. Real Estate. Water.

At a moment in human history when the obvious contradictions of capitalism, imperialism, sexism, and ecological destruction are glaringly in-the-face of the human public, amplified by the as yet unrestricted access to information provided by communications technology, a unified pro-life choice movement may be timely.

Without the needs of Empire to sustain, there would be no need for the accumulation by dispossession facilitated by apartheid systems. Scarcity, like race, is an artificially constructed ideology that serves the purpose of Empire. Overcoming the ideology of scarcity is the next major collective undertaking facing humanity. If Jewish Peoples, Arabic Peoples, and Indigenous Peoples of Turtle Island were to unite in an anti-scarcity campaign, properly called a pro-plenty for all campaign if we remember to share, then we would see real, sudden, and dramatic change; the kind of change folks in the US thought they were voting for, the possibility of such a change that folks around the world celebrated ecstatically, on the evening of November 4th, 2008.

I realize that it’s a bit more complicated than that, and I’ll return to economic issues later, but for now I’ve had my say about apartheid. What do you think?

Steinhauer I

Steinhauer III

An Indian Act

Sat, 21 Oct 2006 10:36:07 +0000

A response to an attempt of genocide

A helicopter hovers over the Six Nations' blockade in Ontario. photo: David Maracle

Artist Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun publicly protested after his painting 'Red Man Watching White Men Trying To Fix A Hole In The Sky' was purchased by the National Art Gallery to be shown in their 'Indian Room.' He didn't want his work to be associated with the notional concept of 'Indians.' Earlier in his career, he had been charged with desecrating an official document when he showed, in one of his professional exhibitions, a photographic series of himself firing a high-powered rifle into a target-mounted official copy of Canada's 'Indian Act.' The photographic series was titled 'An Indian Act.'

Indian. There is no such word in any language indigenous to Turtle Island. In fact, there's no such word in any language indigenous to India. Back when Columbus made his historic voyage, the nation we now call India was called Hindustan, and the people there, because of their all-day-every-day spiritual practice, were characterized by the Spaniards as living in God, "in dios."

'The Admiral of the Ocean Seas' – the name given to Columbus by the Spanish Court for only being half a planet off course -- encountered what is now Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Folks there were living in God too. They weren't white folks either and they just happened to be where the flat-Earth mentality folks thought Hindustan must be. Columbus called them Indians, too.

Around 1550, the Spanish Court convened the Council of the Indies to clear up the legal and moral questions surrounding the lands and peoples living in Europe's New World. Despite an impassioned presentation by Bartoleme De Las Casas, documenting the horrors already visited upon the "in God" people by the Spaniards under Columbus's command, the decision was taken to identify all of the peoples in the New World as Indians. To the court, Indians were a monolithic population developmentally lagging behind Europe and in need of the civilizing influence of Europeans. From the conference came the theoretical construction of an international system of wardship, where Europe's men of influence took upon themselves a task that has come to be known as "the White Man's Burden": bringing civilization to the darker 'races' of humanity.

'Indians' and Europe's international system of wardship came together in Canada as "An Act For The Gradual Civilization Of Indians," an official copy of which Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun was charged for desecrating. This act of Parliament is still in effect; we now know it by its short name, the Indian Act.

As my uncle, Mike Steinhauer, likes to point out, all you need to know about the Indian Act is that it says, "The minister may…." The Indian Act gives the minister sweeping discretionary powers unheard of in modern democracies.

The basic notion behind modern democracy is that the people freely give fully informed consent to be ruled and choose representatives to form the government that decides the what, where, when, why and how of those rules. It's called the 'rule of law.'

Although the version of the Indian Act Canada currently uses dates back to 1876, that version was a rolled together collection of legal notions stemming from the 1550 Council of the Indies. In 1876, the people whose lives would become subject to the discretionary powers of the minister were not Canadian citizens, nor were they consulted, nor did they freely give fully informed consent to be ruled by the Indian Act. In fact, the people so ruled did not become citizens of the nation exercising this rule until March 10, 1960, and became so without being consulted, never mind freely giving fully informed consent.

A lot of important events occurred before 1876 and a lot of important events have occurred since 1960, but let's narrow down our focus to the 84-year period when peoples not of the Canadian citizenry -- notionally called Indians -- were ruled by an act of a foreign parliament giving foreign persons dictatorial powers over their day-to-day lives in their own homelands.

Let's start with property rights. Indigenous views of property rights are not the same as European views of property rights, but a concept of property rights did, and still does, exist for indigenous peoples. Under the Indian Act, both original indigenous property rights and property rights as constituted under Canadian law were prohibited. This is still in effect.

The October 1876 version of the Indian Act coincides with the successful destruction of the 60-million-head buffalo herd, seen as a food source for 'Indians' and therefore necessarily destroyed by a concerted joint effort of Canadian and US governments. In my area of Alberta, an internationally binding treaty had just been signed in September 1876, promising that the indigenous way of life would continue as before, but with Her Majesty's gifts on top.

As compensation for agreeing to share some of the land with the Queen's people, indigenous people found themselves trapped on 'lands reserved for Indians,' with an Indian agent and an agent of Christianity, whose orders were backed up by the newly-formed North-West Mounted Police.

In her 1980 'From Colonialism to Economic Imperialism: The Experience of the Canadian Indian,' sociologist Gail Kellough likened the effects of the Indian Act to a forced march through European history because it created a feudal relationship on every reserve in Canada. Writing in 1970, Robertson notes:

"The Indian Affairs Branch is the lord of the manor. The Indian agent is the local manager. The lord has total control over the lives of his serfs, who neither own their land nor rent it. They are "crofters" permitted to live on the land and farm it but not for their own individual benefit. The lord or manager tells them what to plant and when to sow or harvest; he provides the equipment; he tells them when to sell the crop, and at what price."

What Kellough and other well-meaning Canadians looking sympathetically at Canada's "Indian Problem" don't mention is the intentional destruction of the national characteristics of indigenous peoples. Raphael Lemkin, who originated the concept of genocide, called this its stage one. Economy, governance, language, spiritual practice and customary law were all abolished by decree of the Indian Act. During that 84-year period: Indian Act Chief and Councils were established and traditional governance systems suppressed; John A Macdonald ordered forced starvation as collective punishment for the North-West Rebellion; the pass law controlling movement outside of reserves was implemented; and Duncan Campbell Scott's 'kill the Indian and spare the man' residential schools removed up to five generations of children from family homes, leaving the children thus 'schooled' in a mental/emotional state modern psychologists call 'Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.'

The cumulative effects of this 84-year period were:

– Killing members of the group.
– Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group.
– Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.
–Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group.
–Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

For those not familiar, that is the definition of genocide as enshrined in the Genocide Convention, which Canada signed in 1949 and ratified in 1952.

By 1925, social scientists were rushing to reserves to observe the last of a 'dying breed'; it had become common sense to ordinary Canadians that 'Indians' would not and could not survive because of their natural inferiority; Darwinian notions of the survival of the fittest had been applied to human societies and 'Indians' were obviously slated for extinction.

Inexplicably, this monolithic population did not become extinct, as predicted, but instead began a resurgence that carries on today, and explains the forced imposition of Canadian citizenship in 1960 and the continuing development of Canada's 'aboriginal doctrine' in 2006. According to this doctrine, 'Indians' are put through the next transformation, with neither consultation nor consent, on a journey towards becoming 'ethnic Canadians of aboriginal ancestry.' As the Indian Act's full title makes explicit, it's a gradual process. 'Indians' must be contained within the framework of a developmentally backward monolithic dependent population.

The bottom line? Calculate Turtle Island's current market value and GDP and you'll get the picture. There is something called the Great Game going on, the international struggle for geopolitical control of the entire planet. Indigenous Peoples of Turtle Island have been caught up in this game for over 500 years, most recently as pawns called 'Indians' created by the Captains of Industry and the Great Statesmen who claim the right to play the game.

Stewart Steinhauer's response to a genocide attempt in Canada.

Israel, Lebanon and your own backyard

Sun, 15 Oct 2006 11:21:43 +0000

Canada and Israel are the same type of state: a nation state founded on colonialism

Canadians concerned with injustice abroad should also consider the land under their own two feet. photo: Lone Primate

When Israel has reduced its Arab population to three per cent of the national total and that Arab three per cent has stopped resisting and been "pacified," to use counter-insurgency jargon, then Israel will have reached the place where Canada is now. Canada and Israel are the same type of state: a nation state founded on colonialism.

In 1923, Vladimir Jabotinsky--one of the founders of Zionism--wrote 'The Iron Wall,' an essay that laid out a direct comparison between expropriation of the Arabs with the genocide of the indigenous people of North America.

"There can be no discussion of voluntary reconciliation between us and the Arabs, not now, and not in the foreseeable future," wrote Jabotinsky. All well-meaning people long ago understood the complete impossibility of arriving at a voluntary agreement with the Arabs of Palestine for the transformation of Palestine from an Arab country to a country with a Jewish majority. Each of you has some general understanding of the history of colonization. Try to find even one example when the colonization of a country took place with the agreement of the native population. Such an event has never occurred

Israel's actions in the Middle East receive public support from the heads of state of Canada and the US because both are involved in the same type of behaviour.

Canadians rightfully decry the deaths of hundreds of Lebanese civilians under Israeli military attacks, but there is no public outcry over the 2,374 on-reserve accidental deaths in Alberta between 1983 and 2002 recorded by Health Canada. Half of these deaths were suicides, while almost all involved addictions. This is just in Alberta; multiply these numbers by the entire landmass known as Canada and you have a staggering ongoing death toll.

In the pacified stage of colonial oppression, the resistance turns inwards and becomes self-directed. Better to die, or to live under the influence of drugs and alcohol, than to struggle hopelessly in a trapped and tortured situation. Incarceration rates are high, unemployment is high, disabling addiction levels are high, educational outcomes are low, health is poor; and all this happens in an environment micro-managed by Canada's Indian and Northern Affairs Department. Canadians lament the Israeli pass system for Palestinians, the bantustans, and the military control of the Arab population, but these were all aspects of Canada's Indian policy—written right into the Indian Act—between 1876 and 1960.

Things being what they are, the most effective place for well-meaning Canadians to protest Israeli actions is right at home, under their own feet. Canada's elected government can actually do something about this situation, unlike its capacity to right wrongs in the Middle East.

Five contested sites of power -- namely race, gender, class, authority and ecology -- come together in the indigenous struggle for survival in Canada. From north to south, the indigenous peoples of the Americas are leading the resistance to the global colonial madness. If Canada can be pulled out of alignment with the US/UK/EU sphere of influence, and into the Turtle Island-wide indigenous sphere of influence, it will have more impact on the Israeli/US Middle Eastern project than any amount of hand-wringing or fist-waving about a colonial project half a world away.

Why alter the colonial arrangement? Canadians will not act out of pure altruism; you need to see the money. Canada's GDP is over the trillion-dollar mark; $1.3 trillion in 2004 and $1.4 trillion in 2005. What if, instead of the current colonial arrangements -- where a legal fiction called 'The Crown' holds root title to all lands, and the state exercises totalitarian control over Indigenous Peoples through the Indian Act -- we go into a straight business relationship?

'Fee simple' (the term for the current property rights regime where people 'own' property while the Crown retains the underlining title) could be left intact, except with root title transferred from the Crown to Indigenous Peoples, and with the introduction of an annual royalty or rent to be paid to Indigenous Peoples, based directly on Canada's GDP. A two per cent royalty on Canada's GDP would be about $28 billion, which could be paid through the foreign debt repayment section of the federal budget. No new money has to be raised from taxpayers. Scrap the Indian Act, terminate the Department of Indian Affairs, and save about $12 billion that is currently pouring into that black hole built to hide corruption. Indigenous Peoples can establish an international trust fund that we will manage ourselves.

It's a business arrangement. Theft and murder is the business that organized crime is in; it doesn't have to be the business that the nation of Canada is in.

The most effective place for well-meaning Canadians to protest Israeli actions is right at home, under their own feet.

Stewart Steinhauer is an internationally-known stone sculptor who lives on the Saddle Lake Cree Nation in Alberta, where he was born and raised. He is the author of Voice from the Coffin, a book about life on the Rez.

Looking to address global injustice? Stewart Steinhauer suggests looking under your own two feet.

White-Collar Crime

Fri, 08 Sep 2006 23:05:01 +0000

Alberta oil windfall, theft and genocide

Western Lakota drilling operation in Northern Alberta.

Last year the Alberta provincial government mailed out a $400 'prosperity cheque' to every tax-filing resident of Alberta. Currently, there is discussion about doing it again for the 2006 tax year. The prosperity cheques are funded by resource revenue earned by the Province on sales of natural gas and oil; in the past 18 years, Alberta has earned $78 billion in resource revenue.

This year, the modest official government forecast for resource revenue income is in the $7 billion range, but it could be as high as $19 billion. The Alberta Government has the lowest royalty rates in the world, including a 1 per cent royalty on oil from oil sands during operations startup. Even when oil was $19 a barrel, this was, in effect, a public subsidy of the wealthiest by the poorest, but, at $75 a barrel, it is simply theft. Nothing new, and everybody has become inured to this category of theft, but it is still theft, and theft is officially a crime. It is the main white-collar crime. White-collar crime is primarily about stealing money. Accounting procedures seem to work best.

ExxonMobil's Imperial Oil pumps upwards of 200,000 barrels of C4+ per day from their Cold Lake field to Hardisty, Alberta, where it joins with Enbridge's Line 3 and is piped to US refineries. Last year, Exxon posted all-time record profits of $39 billion; this year, each quarterly report sets a new all-time record. Every company operating in the Alberta oil patch is making record profits, including Western Lakota Energy Services (WLES), Saddle Lake Cree Nation's business partner.

Thanks to partnerships with Indian Bands, WLES has grown from a small rig manufacturer just starting out in 2002 with no assets, to the 2005 year-end in which it reported $234,893,000 in assets.

Just to refresh your memory, WLES owns 10 rigs in five separate 50/50 partnerships with Indian Bands, two rigs with my Band, Saddle Lake Cree Nation. Stripped down to its undies, the deal looks like this: We pay WLES what it costs them in cash to build a rig, of which they claim a 50 per cent share in ownership as their profits from building each rig, and then we pay them to operate these rigs. In other words, we are paying what it cost WLES to build the rigs with our 50 per cent ownership, while WLES's share is actually its profits from the sale of each rig.

Here are the statistics from WLES's 2005 year-end financial report: Rig construction earned $9,605,000 in revenue, and WLES's gross profits after net revenue recovery were $5,115000 - that's over 50 per cent. Contract drilling earned gross profits of $45,467,000 - that's nine times the gross profits from rig construction. In addition WLES earned $2,972,000 in management fees and $108,000 in interest from its "Aboriginal" partners.

While we are listing statistics, here's one from Health Canada's First Nations and Inuit Health Branch, Alberta region. In the 20 year period following Canada's official recognition via Section 35.1, Canada Constitution Act 1982, of "aboriginal treaty and inherent rights," 2,374 on-reserve "Aboriginal" people died as a result of injuries and poisoning. Fifty per cent of these accidents, as Health Canada calls them, were suicides. Almost all of these so-called accidents involved addictions.

Health Canada's official explanation for "Aboriginal" suicide is that it is a tragic personal disease. Addictions are explained in the same way. Yet, in the pre-colonial Cree culture, there was no history of either suicide or addictions. Just to prove the point about addictions, we had food, sex and gambling, but no addictions. Now we have severe addictions to those, plus alcohol, crack and crystal meth. Our cultural myths contain admonishing references to all sorts of human vices, for instance abuses of food, sex and gambling, but no references to suicide, at all.

What has changed?

"Aboriginal" Peoples are portrayed as circular folks, worshipping the circle, and, apparently, going in circles. This little story leads us back to where we started out just a few hundred words ago. Those 2,374 dead Indians held something, in law, that the province of Alberta doesn't hold: root title to land and resource, with consequential jurisdiction over said lands and resources. No court currently exists on the planet to hear this case because the white-collars referenced in this article's title encircle the necks of Supreme Court judges, Crown Prosecutors, top RCMP officials, all the membership of Canada's three main political parties, all corporations from largest to smallest, all Christian moralists - especially Canada's four Big Churches - all of the Canadian Academy, and most of the rank and file of Canadian citizenry.

Some more numbers: 29 million Canadians against one million "Aboriginal" people.

Indigenous Peoples trapped inside of the modern nation state of Canada have as a core part of personal identity a spiritual relationship with the land....trite, overstated, circular...and true. When Indigenous Peoples are separated from the land, suicide and addictions become the norm. Canada's GDP in 2005 was $1.4 trillion. Try turning it over and looking at it as theft. Who said crime doesn't pay?

Stewart Steinhauer examines the profits of oil companies operating in Saddle Lake Cree Nation, and asks why some criminals never go to jail.

Canadian Land Claims

Sat, 13 May 2006 18:25:54 +0000

It's the federal government making a land claim, not the Six Nations

The Great Law of Peace is being offered to Canada. photo: NDN News

First the facts: Canada is a settler state located in the northern portion of Turtle Island, formed out of two European colonies established here in the seventeenth century, one by Great Britain and one by France. These colonies were established on the basis of the Doctrine Of Discovery--an outgrowth of the European decision to disassemble the original Peoples of Turtle Island as both individual human beings and as collections of human beings living together in societies governed by the rule of law--and to re-construct these erased people and Peoples as a monolithic dependent population known thenceforth as "Indians," "Natives," and "Aborigines," in need of civilizing.

Modern Canadians will say: "What do the actions of my ancestors in the seventeenth century have to do with me today?"

Modern indigenous people and Peoples are living trapped inside nations based on the Doctrine of Discovery--a legal doctrine now routinely overturned whenever it comes to trial in the international arena--leading tortured lives as "Indians," "Natives" and "Aborigines." This, while modern Canadians and modern euro-ancestry citizens of every other nation on Turtle Island and in other places around the globe--Australia and New Zealand, for instance--enjoy among the highest standards of living in the world.

If this was not the case, then one could respond: "Why, nothing at all."

This brings us to the Haldimand Tract in southern Ontario, running from the Grand River's mouth on the northern shore of Lake Erie in a 12-mile wide swath up the Grand River to its headwater basin. In current mainstream discourse, the Six Nations land dispute is framed in the context of "Indian land claims." Reports mention up to 29 separate claims being made by Six Nations against the Crown's assertion of title. The federal government of Canada and the provincial government of Ontario are establishing a panel to settle these "Indian land claims."

The reality, obscured by three unrelenting centuries of the European invention of "Indians," is that--at least in law--it is the federal and provincial governments of Canada who are trying to make a claim to land, a claim based on the Doctrine of Discovery. The same objection raised at the Henco development site by Six Nations people can be legally raised by various indigenous Peoples, throughout the entire territory currently called Canada. Instead of a panel whose every chair is occupied by a federal or provincial representative, either pale-faced or brown, seeking resolution to "Indian land claims," there should be a panel of non-European, non-Canadian adjudicators seeking resolution to "Canadian land claims."

A panel made up of well-respected international figures like Rigoberta Menchu from Guatemala, Arundahti Roy from India, Linda Smith from New Zealand, and so on across Africa and Asia, would be able to listen to Canada's claims with an open mind and a willing heart. It's not a question of whether the indigenous Peoples of Turtle Island want to share the land with settler populations from around the globe. If that were the case, then there would be no settler nations present on Turtle Island, just as there are no settler nations present in China. The seventeenth century European decision to manufacture "Indians" was based on the European observations of the sixteenth century: The people and Peoples of Turtle Island, while fierce in protection of their way of life, were committed to rule-of-law societies rather than rule-of-force societies, held sharing as a core value and eschewed murder as a dispute resolution mechanism.

At Six Nations we see the outline of this older form of society still intact in spite of three centuries of investment first by European and now by Canadian interests into the complete elimination of this distinct society. Twice, European colonial forces attempted a total eradication of Six Nations Peoples, at one point reducing the Six Nations Confederacy population to one per cent of its former count. To the Western World's surprise, a delegation from Kanawake arrived at the doorsteps of the newly formed League of Nations in 1924, asking for admittance to the organization modeled on the Six Nations Confederacy. Canada's response was to send an armed force of RCMP to Kanawake to arrest the Longhouse leaders, impose an Indian Act-recognized Chief and Council system, and amend the Indian Act to make it illegal for Indian Bands to hire Canadian lawyers to defend their interest in Canadian or other courts.

Astonishingly, in 2006, the Six Nations Confederacy still exists. The people have their language, their constitution--in English called the Great Law of Peace--their original peaceful co-existence agreement with Europeans, the Two Row Wampum Belt agreement, an understanding of their territorial boundaries and of their way of life based on a Clan Mother system that recognizes women as the title-holders of the land, protecting it for the "faces to come" who are the true owners.

The Six Nations Confederacy call themselves the Eastern Door People. They are strategically located on the entrance to the northern portion of Turtle Island. Passing through their territory, one can travel to the geographical centre of Turtle Island by water. Montreal, Toronto, Hamilton, Boston and New York are all located on Six Nations Confederacy lands.

The Six Nations Confederacy was part of the way through a unification process using the Great Law of Peace, which is not only the basis of first, the League of Nations and now, the United Nations, but also of modern democracy. The colonial experience is just a hiccup in this unification process. It's possible that, in spite of several hundred years of genocide, the Six Nations may wish to extend an invitation to Canada to join in unity under the Great Law of Peace. Canada could become a nation in law, could even possibly become a nation of peace. Modern Canadians could possibly enter into a new relationship with the original human inhabitants of the northern portion of Turtle Island, a relationship that the original Peoples have been patiently waiting for, for hundreds of years.

Lastly, the facts: The Six Nations Confederacy cannot be eradicated by any means. The offer to join them under the Great Law of Peace will probably remain on the table. Canadians can accept the offer now, or continue with their attempted eradication for another unknown amount of time.

As a modern Canadian, what would you like to choose?

Native people aren't 'claiming' anything, says Stewart Steinhauer, it's the federal government that's making a land claim on Six Nations' land.

A little story about direct action against the third largest corporation in Canada

Thu, 06 Apr 2006 00:38:14 +0000

In May of 2003, Stewart Steinhauer informed the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce (CIBC) that he was stopping his payments on $150,000 of loans. By "playing the credit game just right" and "looking white," Steinhauer had acquired unsecured credit "unheard of on reserve in Canada." Why did Steinhauer decide to give up the line of credit he had gained through years of work?

Steinhauer writes that "After 'discovering' genocide in Canada, I searched for the villains, and my search led from my reserve, here at Saddle Lake, to the top of the international financial community." As the primary beneficiaries of genocide and the expropriation of indigenous land that continues to drive it, Canada's financial institutions had to be held accountable.

In the exchange of letters that follows, Steinhauer lays out his case for withholding payment, and the CIBC responds to his demands. The conclusion to the saga? "The power guys," Steinhauer later wrote, "like to bluff." But as it turns out, the same power guys are quite aware of international law as it relates to them.

The letters, with Steinhauer's original introduction, can be found on Steinhauer's website, www.indigenius.biz.

Stewart Steinhauer Stone Sculpture
Onicikskwapowinihk, Saddle Lake Cree Nation
May 21st, 2003

John Hunkin, CEO CIBC
Toronto, Ontario

Dear John,

I regret to inform you that today I am asking my local accounts manager to freeze activity on all my CIBC accounts. This seems to me to be an extreme action, given the fact that I owe your corporation $150,000. It's also extreme given my personal history; you can look up the record of my performance while a client of the corporation that you manage, a record spanning the period 1980-2003.

Like my father, grandfather, great-grandfather, and great-great-grandfather, I have worked hard all my life, tried to make a meaningful contribution to society, done as little harm as possible, have no criminal record, and have tried, in my own small way, to build social bridges between Euro-Canadian society, and indigenous society.

However, like my father, grandfather, great-grandfather, and great-greatgrandfather, I have lived my whole life under the colonial rule of the nation of Canada, and, in 2003, am still dominated by Canada's "Indian Act". This is a piece of colonial legislation coined during a period of open genocide, intended to oversee the "extinguishment" of my people, a piece of legislation which the U.N. calls "atrocious".

I live and work on reserve, and I see what goes on here every day, and in my opinion, the genocide continues. In the 1990's, Canada officially apologized to indigenous peoples for having committed a long list of atrocities, and commissioned a 58 million dollar study, the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples (RCAP). The leading recommendation from the study was the immediate repeal of the Indian Act, and the beginning of a new relationship between Canada, and indigenous Peoples.

In 1998, the U.N. released the findings of a 25 year study, "Treaties, Agreements, and Constructive Arrangements Between Indigenous Peoples and States", affirming, for the first time, at the international level, that some minimum requirements of democratic process must be met in order for nations, for instance Canada, to be able to legally claim title to lands and resources, and sovereignty over such territories. In other words, fully informed indigenous nations must freely give consent to such, before it can become legally binding. No such action has yet occurred.

In 2000, Canada's leading indigenous legal scholar, John Borrows, published a paper on the Law Commission of Canada's B.C. Treaty Forum, titled "Questioning Canada's Title To Land: The Rule of Law, Aboriginal Peoples, and Colonialism". In this paper, which, by the way, has not been refuted, Borrows argues that the Indian Act, and Canada's entire relationship with indigenous peoples, violates the international rule of law, and both the 1867, and 1982 Canadian Constitutions.

In 2003, directly contrary to RCAP recommendations, the U.N. position, the virtually unanimous opinion of indigenous peoples trapped inside Canada, and the principled view of the rule of law, Canada is forcing legislative amendments to the Indian Act, (First Nations Governance Act, and up to eight other pieces of legislation), without consultation with, or consent of the group of people who will be affected by this legislation. A 10.3 million dollar smokescreen has been floated by Indian and Northern Affairs Canada to persuade the Canadian public that this action is in the best interests of grassroots indigenous peoples.

However, as one little "grassroot", with 28 years experience of being self-employed, on-reserve, I see this action as Canada's ignoble attempt to ease itself out the backdoor of the Indian Act. This legislative train contains the mechanisms to bring to completion what John Chretien started to do in 1969, with his infamous "White Paper". He now seems determined to push through with it, and has instructed his General, Robert Nault to "wage war on Indians".

Canada could be a great nation. Canada could be an international leader. The question is how can democracy take root on stolen land, where genocide has taken place, and where shattered nations of peoples are held prisoner, in torturous conditions.

I feel that there is a huge crisis of democracy in the world today, directly attributable to the distorted view of democracy held by Ancient Greece, and passed on down to Western Civilization. A privileged, propertied group of males of a certain age and skin colour hold political power, and use this power to fulfill their desires, at the expense of the overwhelming majority of humanity.

My indigenous ancestors had real council democracy, an economy based on sharing, and a spiritual relationship with the universe for guidance. That the colonial forces out of Western Europe, now in the form of modern nation states, for instance Canada, still hold us prisoners in our own lands, in direct violation of their own laws, and the "rule of law", while preaching to the world about the values of democracy, is the height of hypocrisy.

I've studied Western Civilization, out of the sheer necessity to survive, and I've discovered that, indeed, there is a privileged group of propertied males who wield political power, and who have devised a malignantly clever system for "manufacturing consent" amongst populations in so-called "liberal democracies". This elite group also specializes in manufacturing war, and requires war as a means to drive their economic structure.

Now we wind around to the relationship between what I'm doing today, at the local level, and the "big picture". Watching the events on the global stage, I can't help but notice the similarities between, say, the recent events in Iraq, and the events in what is now western Canada, 127 years ago. Starvation and war, forced subjugation of a peoples, stripping of resource, colonial rule, all under the guise of bringing civilization to a "lesser" people. Who benefits? I can see only one group of people who can possibly benefit, and then only in the short term. This group is the people you work for, John, a group whom I'll call the investor class. I don't mean the mass of small or institutional investors, like the ones ripped off in the Enron scandal; I mean the 100 million dollar plus net worth investors, but really concentrating in the billionaire league. So I raise my concerns to you, using the only thing you are obligated to care about, money. By Canadian law, I owe your corporation about $150,000.00. I'm formally refusing to repay that debt, and I draw your attention to the relationship between the Indian Act and Canadian banking. That debt is fully unsecured.

Doug Reynor, at CIBC risk management in Toronto, pointed this out to my local accounts manager, Lorie Hartley, St.Paul, Alberta CIBC, in a tone and manner which can only be described as humiliating, both for Ms. Hartley, and for myself. To her credit, Lorie Hartley has chosen to see me as a human being, caught in an unjust situation, and has done exactly as all my previous account managers have done for the past 23 years; found ingenious ways to bend, not break, unjust regulations. I've legitimately qualified for all the credit that CIBC has extended to me, and, over the years, have probably paid more in interest to your corporation than the principle amount I currently owe.

If I was to assess what CIBC has "earned" out of the Canadian economy, and assess my legitimate share, as one of 600,000 "registered Indians" who still legally hold title, I'm sure it would be much more than $150,00.00. If I was to assess what Canada has drawn, illegally, from my land, at the cost of much death and suffering to my people, this sum would be staggering. This wealth is accumulating in the hands of the investor class, the group you are obligated to serve.

As the Noble-prize winning economist, Milton Friedman, says, CEO's have one obligation only, and that is to their shareholders. Shareholders, in turn, want one thing, only, and that is "profits". The "invisible hand" of the market place is supposed to magically turn the grossest form of personal greed into a greater good for all humanity. Somehow, market economists like Milton Friedman forget to mention the accompanying "invisible boot" that holds us "grassroots peoples" down by our necks. It's the heel of the conqueror.

I may be absolutely powerless in your world, the world of "real people", but I still have my one little voice. I'm asking you, in the most humble way possible, to bring my message to your "large" shareholders. Genocide is an unacceptable "market externality". Wholesale destruction of the planet's ecosystems is an unacceptable "market externality". If Margaret Thatcher's famous TINA acronym, about capitalism, (There Is No Alternative) is true, then it's not cause for rejoicing amongst wealthy elites, and their "hired guns"; they should be weeping with the rest of us because it spells suicide for the human species.

I, for one, do not for a moment believe that the current economic structure is the only possibility. We humans need to overcome our institutions of racism, gender oppression, class division, and "human-centricism", in order to survive on into the future. We already have everything we need to build "share" economies, true democracies, and other features of sustainable living systems. Everything is at hand, in abundance. We just need to shift our perspective. I invite you, John, to join myself, and many others, in reenvisioning a world which humans are part of, not dominant over.

I will be delighted to repay my debt to your corporation in full, when these structural issues briefly mentioned here are addressed in full, and to my complete satisfaction. Please help me stop the genocide of my people. I can no longer continue to live as a tactic collaborator in that genocide. Can you, and the shareholders you represent, continue to "profit" from our death and destruction?

In friendship,

Stewart Steinhauer

c.c.: Prime Minister Jean Chretien, Honourable Robert D. Nault, Future Prime Minister Paul Martin, David Dodge, Bank of Canada, Gordon M. Nixon, Royal Bank of Canada, W. Edmund Clark, Toronto Dominion Bank, Peter C. Godsoe, Scotia Bank, Tony Comper, Bank of Montreal, Globe and Mail, CBC, Amnesty International, Special Rapporteur For Indigenous Rights Rodolfo Stavenhagen, Permanent Forum On Indigenous Issues, U.N.

The CIBC responded:

Steinhauer's second letter:

Stewart Steinhauer Stone Sculpture
Onicikskwapowinihk
June 9 th, 2003

Clarence Layne
Senior Manager
Director's Office, Customer Care

Dear Clarence,

The empathy which your corporation has for my plight ignores the fact that your corporation is a third party to an international agreement between Canada as the second party, and my nation, the Cree nation, as the first party. That agreement is known in Canada as Treaty 6, and both Canada, and the U.N. have recently acknowledged that this international agreement is valid, and currently binding on all parties.

Any contract which I have signed with your corporation hinges on your corporation, and the country of Canada, abiding by the spirit and intent of Treaty 6. As the country of Canada (second party) is seriously in breach of its' obligations under international treaty, all third parties are automatically so. Unfortunately for your corporation, and your shareholders, you do not have legal title to any of the Canadian-based assets which you claim to have title to. I should think this would be of real concern to your major shareholders.

Perhaps inside your "world" of "rational wealth maximizers", you see my actions as an attempt to "maximize" my own profits; I realize that what I am motivated by is completely obscure to you, and I'm not trying to blame you, or anybody else, for this state of affairs. It is a truly unfortunate situation which has been allowed to arise. The question is: Who will have the courage to make the changes needed to "rationalize" human existence, here on our beautiful Mother Earth?

Although I am a Cree man, that doesn't make me "child-like in perpetuity". At the time of Treaty 6 signing, my ancestors recognized the absolutely essential need for learning "the cunning of the white man". We had 100 years of residential school.....imagine having your children forcibly removed from your home by the RCMP, placed in institutions where they were subjected to every possible form of abuse, where annual mortality rates ranged from 30% to 60 %, and, when they were returned to you at age 16, they were permanently traumatized, spoke a foreign language which you didn't understand, and they hated you, and everything about your way of life. 100 years, Clarence. When I say Canada is in breach of Treaty 6, I mean genocide. Genocide is not a "slight" breach, and I think your major shareholders should be very concerned about that, too.

I'm going to stop beating around the bush, now, and get to my point. You can jail me, you can kill me; if it was good enough for Big Bear, it's good enough for me. Canada is not a democracy. Canada is a plutocracy run by people like the major shareholders in your corporation. They also run the U.S., U.K., and all other so-called liberal democracies. I realize that you aren't allowed to agree with me, but I also realize that you know I'm telling the truth.

Yes, my concerns are political, and that's why I am trying to bring them to the attention of the real rulers of the world. Ask John Hunkin to tell his bosses that they are endangering their own future existence by their current actions. It's not too late. My people have survived 510 years of genocide, and we can't be killed off. In signing Treaty 6, my ancestors agreed to share the richness of our lands with your ancestors, the Europeans. In spite of all that your nation has done to us, we still agree to share. We await your decision to join us on the next evolutionary level.

In friendship,

Stewart Steinhauer

c.c. Paul Martin, future Prime Minister of Canada, David Dodge, Governor of Bank of Canada, Gordon M. Nixon, RBC, W. Edmund Clark, TD, Peter C. Godsoe, Scotia Bank, Tony Comper, BMO, Rudolpho Stavenhagan, Special Rapporteur to the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, the U.N.

The CIBC responded:

Dear Mr. Steinhauer,

I refer to your email to Clarence Layne August 21, 2003 regarding collection of your CIBC debt. I have been asked to respond in his absence.

CIBC has contacted the bailiff service and the collection agency that is acting on CIBC's behalf, to ensure that they are aware of Section 89 of the Federal Indian Act and to notify them that, in your case, your loan does not fall within the parameters of the act. Therefore, CIBC has requested that they close their file and CIBC's National Recovery Area will send your file to lawyers, to pursue legally.

Mr. Steinhauer, CIBC does not accept your offer to repay the principal of your debt only upon the establishment of a Cree Business Development Bank but will continue to pursue the debts owed to it, as allowed by law.

Thank you for making us aware of your concerns.

Yours truly,

Joanne MacLeod
Senior Manager, Director's Office, Customer Care

Steinhauer's account of what happened next:

Then the bailiff called. I warned him over the phone that he had no legal right to enter my reserve. A week later he drove into my yard, accompanied by a tow truck. I wrote up this report immediately after he left:

Report on attempted seizure of personal property, August 22, 2003

At about 6:00 P.M., a small grey car approached my home, somewhat hesitantly, stopped, backed up, drove forward, and finally pulled up behind my pick-up truck. A man, who subsequently introduced himself as Dick White, from Serv-It Bailiff Services Inc., headquartered at 9844-106 St. Edmonton, AB T5K 1B8, was writing on a piece of paper as I approached him.

As we talked, he walked to my pickup, and placed the paper under the windshield wiper on the driver's side. I began our discussion by informing him that he was trespassing, and could be charged; he seemed nonchalant about my statement, and described what he was about to do. Then a tow truck pulled up along side my pickup, awaiting Dick's orders.

A long discussion followed during which I made my position as clear as possible; finally Dick White phoned his superior at head office, and after a long conversation with him, asked me to talk to his boss. The phone man introduced himself as Martin, and we engaged in a long discussion of my purposes for refusing to make current payments. I referenced genocide, and gave examples of what sort of conditions we face, here on reserve.

After my long phone conversation with Martin, Dick sent the tow truck driver away; I reiterated the illegality of his presence on my reserve several times. He chose to ignore my comments about trespass, but eventually began to ask for help with formulating a response to give to CIBC. I asked him to write up a request to meet with the regional director general of Indian Affairs, whoever the bank wanted to send, and my legal counsel. He refused to write that request down, but instead tried to get me to name a time of repayment. I stated several times that I intend to repay in full whatever I owe CIBC, when I am satisfied with Canada's actions in relation to Indigenous peoples, specifically the immediate repeal of the Indian Act, and the honouring of Treaty Six, including back payments, royalties, up-dated annuities, and whatever may be necessary to reverse the genocide.

At about 7:00 P.M., Dick White left my residence, to return to the city. He seemed tired. He did at one point have a short private conversation with the tow truck driver, and I did feel that they where planning something for later. Later when? At one point, early in the confrontation, I dialed 911, and reported a trespass; the operator asked if I felt that my life was threatened, and when I said "No" she asked me to phone the RCMP complaint line for non-life threatening events. I was searching for the local RCMP number when Dick invited me to talk to his boss.

I'm not sure what caused them to change their minds about repossessing the truck right there and then. In part, it must be because I look white, in part it must be that, even though they aren't sure of my position, they may be concerned, for themselves, that I'm right.

The whole event felt very confrontational, although Dick's manner was "professional" at all times.

End of report. A week later, I visited the local CIBC (St. Paul), on a separate matter, and, in conversation with the local bank manager, heard confirmation that the bank does indeed, know all about how Canadian law relates to Indian reserve lands. Bluff. I'm not interested in stealing money from the CIBC, I'm interested in stopping Corporate Canada from "making a killing" off of indigenous lands, and indigenous resources.

And that's my little story.

Letters exchanged between Stewart Steinhauer and the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce.

Panarchists To The Rescue

Thu, 02 Feb 2006 17:13:45 +0000

Out Of The Pan And Into The Fire

"Coming Home From Buffalo Mountain" by Stewart Steinhauer. photo: Stewart Steinhauer

This, the fourth and concluding article in a series intended to introduce the readers of The Dominion to an Indigenous perspective, has had an unintended consequence for the author of this series. The necessary research, communication and dialogue has instead introduced the author to the Canadian perspective on Indigenous issues. This introduction comes complete with the assurance that Indigenous issues are not just dead issues, but are so deeply submerged in a 500 year long campaign to eliminate Indigenous Peoples from the world stage, that bringing forward a discussion amongst the general Canadian population becomes impossible. While completely discouraged, the author intends to finish the task at hand, and so now turns to the concept of anarchism.

While interviewing Noam Chomsky, Ziga Vodovnik, an Assistant/Young Researcher in the Department of Social Sciences at the University of Ljubljana in Slovenia, makes this point about anarchism:

"Ordinary people often confuse anarchism with chaos and violence, and do not know that anarchism (an archos) doesn't mean life or state of things without rules, but rather a highly organized social order, life without a ruler, "principe." Is pejorative usage of the word anarchism maybe a direct consequence of the fact that the idea that people could be free was and is extremely frightening to those in power?"

As commonly understood in Canada today, the "pejorative usage" referred to above implies that anarchy means "without order," further implying that this lack of order will naturally result in a state of chaos, random violence and wanton destruction. The wealthy and therefore powerful have invested heavily in promoting this "pejorative usage." They rule the grassroots people fearfully: the powerful have invested a lot of wealth, generated by the grassroots people, into setting back the day when these people will be free.

Before the civilizing mission from Europe reached my homelands, here on the northern prairies, my ancestors did not have a "principe." Zealous firearms/firewater traders and over-zealous Black Robes (Jesuit Missionaries), backed by the Imperial Might of Western Europe, invented the headman system for us, so that we could escape the nightmare of our highly organized social order without a ruler. Now, thank God, we have Indian Act Chiefs and Councils, responsible to and directed by the head naughty boy, himself, Mr. Minister. Under a "principe," our former orderly home and native lands, now the Rez Zone, are characterized by chaos, random violence and wanton destruction.

In my first language, nehiyawewin, fresh new words are coined, on the spot, out of pre-existing word components (morphemes), to describe something new. Listening to great orators vying with one another in public story telling contests was the theater of the pre-colonial culture. Bearing witness to brilliant minds spontaneously creating new language that tickled us at the borders of our capacity to comprehend was fireside entertainment. Aren't the sound stages created in the free spaces of the human imagination incredible?

Following humbly in the footsteps of my ancestors, although nowhere near to that caliber of linguistic inventors, I've decided to take the prefix "pan" and add it to "archy" to invent a new word that more closely describes pre-colonial horizontal organizational structures. I'm going to suggest that this transformed word, "panarchism," explains why we are surviving the largest longest running genocidal campaign in human history, and in fact, holds a kernel of hope for humanity, if humanity's sincere desire is to avoid the collective species suicide we're currently contemplating.

To gain a true understanding of panarchism's highly organized social order, you must go down the path called "spirituality." It's not an easy path to start down, because the Black Robes, and their spiritual heirs, bar that path. To explain what I mean, I'll quote a bit from Ellen Meiksins Wood's "Empire Of Capital" (Verso, 2003):

"Christianity had to be transformed from a radical Jewish sect, which opposed the temporal authority of the Roman Empire, into an ideology supportive of imperial obedience. This transformation can be traced from St Paul to St Augustine, both of them Romanized imperial subjects – one a citizen of Rome in its imperial ascendancy, the other as Bishop of Hippo who witnessed the imperial decline – and two of the most ingenious ideologues any empire has ever produced. In their hands, Christianity became not a politically rebellious sect of a tribal religion, but a universal spiritual doctrine that sought salvation in another world and rendered unto Caesar his unchallenged temporal authority.

"This transformation would not have been allowed to occur if the Roman imperial functionaries had not recognized the utility of a universal religion, the first of its kind, as an instrument of imperial order. The notion of a universal church, as distinct from the traditional local or tribal cults, which included Jewish monotheism, would probably not have emerged if the Roman Empire, itself, had not been conceived as universal, claiming to represent a universal human community."

Access to spirituality denied by order of the Pope? The panarchism I see operating every day, in the Stomach of Empire, here at Saddle Lake Last Nation, is not a "politically rebellious sect of a tribal religion". This panarchism is definitely universal, but refers more to "the universe" than to "all humans". Indigenous panarchism is rooted in our Great Mother, and hinges on the notion of our "property relations" with Mother Earth. Here's a short racialized story, featuring two fictional "races" of human beings, to try to provide a glimpse into the mysterious world of indigenous panarchistic property relations.

The Whiteman came up to The Indian, pointed at the ground, and asked, "Does this land belong to anybody?" The Indian said, "It doesn't belong to me." The Whiteman looked nervously around, saw no Real People watching, said, "Then it belongs to me," and stood back to see what would happen next. As the saying goes: "Shit happens." Centuries later, The Whiteman is still saying, "This land belongs to me." The Indian has learned to speak, think and dream in Whiteman ways; she/he opens her/his mouth and says:

"It doesn't belong to anybody, but we are sharing the use of it, and anyone else who wanders along can have a share, too. We're sharing with the sun, moon and stars, with the blue sky and the clouds, and the rain falling down, and the rivers, lakes and oceans, with the birds flying overhead, and the animals walking, hopping, and crawling around, with the insects and all of the even tinier creatures, including the ones way too small to see, and the grass, and trees, and all of the plants, as well as the earth, and the rock below…none of it belongs to us, or to any one of the entire list of beings just identified….but we all have a share. That share belongs to us, but we can't go take it. Our share is a gift to us, and comes with a responsibility. It's a reciprocal relationship; we can lose our share if we fail to reciprocate.

"Our personal share is not a commodity. It cannot be bought, sold or traded. Our share ceases to exist when separated from each one of us. The potential for our share comes into existence at the exact moment of our conception, and continues to exist until the exact moment that we slip away from this world. Our personal share is determined by the laws of harmony and balance, to each according to their need, from each according to their ability, in an interconnected web."

This four-part introduction to an Indigenous perspective was undertaken in an attempt to look for allies from amongst the general Canadian population, and, as Delegate Zero, the Zapatista subcommandante formerly known as Marcos, has pointed out, the place to look is below and to the left. Boy, nothing down here but anarchists and Marxists, and you're downright unfriendly towards the notion of spirituality, for the very good reason pointed out by Ellen Meiksins Wood, above. That makes for quite a gap between the position I am trying to articulate, and the place where you Canadians below and to the left are.

As if messing around with anarchy isn't bad enough, now I'm going to ruffle some Marxist feathers. Panarchism challenges Marx's concept of historical materialism, not to deny it, but to point out that, as anyone studying quantum mechanics will be quick to confirm, there is more to the material world than meets the eye. In fact, scientists complain that sub-atomic particle physics is completely mysterious. In order to understand the stuff of the universe, western scientists whack things apart and then watch and record what happens. Indigenous epistemology proceeds by creating a space in which we can engage directly in dialogue with so-called "things," in order to understand. We call the creation this research space "ceremony." To the western scientific mind developed by of thousands of years of a specific set of traditions, this method of research is absolutely mysterious.

Perhaps Western Civilization's insatiable lust for material objects stems from this delusionary positioning of self as objective observer, a Descartean talking head, while the indigenous methodology brings deep satisfaction from the experience of being directly involved right in the mysterious, without any need to de-construct or rationalize the experience. Indigenous ways of knowing calm fears of scarcity, like a fresh newborn human at mother's breast. More spiritual understanding brings less material need. Archeological records show that indigenous technology in my homelands was in a stable steady state for at least twelve thousand years. The recordings of the first missionaries onto the northern plains show that the folks they met living here had most of the day free to play, sing, laugh, visit, tell stories, engage in ceremony, contemplate, recreate and celebrate. Going all the way back to the 16th century, missionary writings show the Black Robes' frustration with this state of affairs, widely encountered across the territory now called Canada.

In pre-colonial Nehiyaw ceremony, we opened spiritual invocations with "mamotowsit," "the Mystery." The Black Robes convinced us to use "mamoway ohtawimaw," literally "Our Father," instead, but, no matter what words are used, indigenous Elders regularly hear the inaudible and see the invisible. Physicists' superstring theory, with its seven additional coiled up dimensions and at least two flows of time, is an acceptable explanation for the question: "Where do our spiritual grandmothers and grandfathers, whom we encounter in ceremony, come from and go back to?"

Panarchism's challenge to the notion of "rationalism," a philosophy that could be summed up as "the view that the world consists of phenomena that can be understood, reduced to basic principles, and manipulated," comes from the fact that our "grandmothers" are not rooted in human concepts of time and matter, but in Mother Earth and the mysterious universe beyond. Indigenous Peoples are not lefties in a Marxist or any other sense; perhaps Karl Marx was an incipient indigenist who had the great misfortune of being born in Europe in the 19th century.

Yes, I am typing these words on a computer. Yes, they may be broadcast on the Internet. Yes, this instantaneous capacity to exchange ideas globally is an example of historical materialism in action. However, consider this: As well as the computer and the Internet, I have the sweatlodge. In the sweatlodge I meet with my grandmothers and grandfathers. These ideas I'm trying to communicate via computers and the Internet are not my ideas. These ideas are not shaped by computers and the Internet. Rationalism meets panarchism. As one insignificant individual Indigenous being, I welcome Western Civilization's Peoples to Turtle Island.

One of the Real Indians, a little man named Gandhi, who somehow reminds me of a little Cree-Ojibwe man named the Big Bear, was asked what he thought of Western Civilization. His response was: "It might help." Now, if you'll just stop trying to destroy us, we may be able to help you with Gandhi's suggestion.

Stewart Steinhauer sets readers straight on the meaning of anarchy and how 'panarchy' offers some hope for the future.

Did you hear the one about...

Mon, 24 Oct 2005 16:40:52 +0000

Deconstructing a Canadian Indian in the privacy of your own home

Steinhauer hammer finishing around lettering at base of "Surviving Genocide".

A light snow was falling onto the green grass. Looking at it through the window, Steinhauer felt the familiar twinge of depression that always accompanied the first snowfall. Some like it hot, and that was Steinhauer's preference. On the other hand, the first snow was the Cree signal for the change of seasons; with an unexpected flicker of excitement, he realized that story-telling season had rolled around again, and Wesakeychak could appear at any moment, strolling across the cyber-landscape.

Hmmmm. Deconstructing Canadian Indians in the privacy of your own home? Reverse engineering intellectual property? That's a tall order for a short space. Flipping open the Master's toolbox, he grabbed the monkey wrench and tossed it into the cogs of the Machine. For a nanosecond, things lurched to a halt, and, in that short space, Steinhauer said:

"Canadian Indians, circa 2005, are a social construct created out of the remnants of Indigenous Peoples surviving genocide by subjecting them to a social engineering project spanning several centuries. As such, they can be properly thought of as the intellectual property of western civilization, Canada division."

Steinhauer wet polishing syllabic lettering on "Surviving Genocide".

Steinhauer looked at his atomic clock; there wasn't much of that nanosecond left. Reverse engineering. Was it going to be like playing country and western music backwards, where your dog comes home, and your spouse and kids, too, and there's a great crop, and you get to keep the farm? Looking back in his own family lines, Steinhauer saw ancestors from the Cree, Ojibwe, Metis, Mohawk, Irish, and Scots Nations. In true colonial fashion, his only functional language was English, just like most other modern Cree, Ojibwe, Metis, Mohawk, Irish and Scots people.

With terrifying force, the Machine spit the monkey wrench across a half-vast universe, and time slouched on again. Enough day-dreaming on the job, thought Steinhauer, it's back to work. Getting out his reverse engineering tools, he sighted down that slouching time line of his ancestors, past row upon row of engineered humans. If he wasn't going to be intellectual property of the Canadian sector of western civilization, then who would he be? Tanya Wasacase had explained how identity is a function of a way of life, rather than a function of skin, hair, or eye colour, or any of the other theories of identity proposed by western civilization. Indigenous language activists, wishing to remain anonymous, had explained how language is the spiritual/ mental/ emotional/ physical story-telling voice which interactively shapes and describes that way of life. With a sudden startle reaction, Steinhauer realized that reverse engineering must begin at home; slamming shut the Master's toolbox, he got up and took the few short steps from his office to his home.

That night he had a dream. A medieval siege catapult was lobbing plague-bloated corpses onto Turtle Island, from across the big water. Countless millions of African Peoples were being dragged under that water, chained together in a seemingly endless line. The sky was dotted with mushroom-shaped clouds, while turbulent weather buffeted the surface of the earth. A full moon stood just clear of the weather, on the eastern horizon, and onto its surface a giant satellite-mounted projector was casting an alternating set of images, going from the Coca-Cola logo to Dick Cheney's face mouthing "War Is Peace" to the Pepsi logo, then back to Cheney, endlessly.

The following morning the first fall snow had melted away, but the chill of the coming winter had definitely stayed. While the Italian steam pot bubbled up espresso from the Zapatista coffee grounds, Steinhauer fired up the laptop and contemplated addictions. Deconstructing Canadian Indians has got to have something to do with addictions, doesn't it?

From liberalism he picked out individualism, and re-branded it as isolation. From the liberal concept of private property he picked out the enclosure of the commons, and re-branded it as dislocation. From the global order created by the crossing of individualism with private property he picked out labour as a commodity, and re-branded it alienation. Steinhauer was about to say "combine this unholy trinity, and you could make an addiction out of absolutely anything", but the steam pot started making those come and get it noises that all true coffee addicts can't resist.

Finished work "Surviving Genocide" on display in Steinhauer's drive-through sculpture park. A note on drive-though viewing: please do not attempt to feed or pet the sculptor.

Around the base is carved: "Genocide has 2 phases: the destruction of a national identity, and the imposition of a new national identity on the land & peoples.

The uprights have the four pillars of western civilization at the bottom, racism, patriarchy, imperialism, and capitalism, while at mid-point the four legs of some indigenous societies, humble kindness, sharing, honesty, and determination, appear.

If resistance is futile, then why bother trying to organize a resistance? Points #201 to #203 from The Final Report On A Study Of Treaties, Agreements, and Other Constructive Arrangements Between States and Indigenous Populations, United Nations Economic And Social Council, Commission On Human Rights, Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimination And Protection Of Minorities, prepared by Miguel Alfonso Martinez, Special Rapporteur to the UN, the product of 25 years of study into the subject, said:

201. In this context, let it be said that the Special Rapporteur's historical research has shown, in his view, that not all indigenous nations made the wisest of choices at all times. That is to say, at some crucial moments in their history, some indigenous nations were not capable of putting the need to unite among themselves over their individual interests, even though unity was necessary to confront properly encroachment on their sovereign attributes. This was true even when the ultimate intentions of the newcomers were already apparent. The terrible consequences inherent in allowing themselves to be divided appear not to have been totally perceived.
202. In addition, on more than one occasion they seem not to have recognized the advantages and disadvantages, in all their dimensions, nor the final consequences, of a policy of alliance with European powers. This can be said both of those who adopted this policy of alliance in line with their own on-going fratricidal struggles and of those who decided to favour one of the non-indigenous powers over the others in the military confrontations that took place in their ancestral lands.

203. Further, it is also apparent that they could not fully appreciate (or that they widely underestimated) the questionable role played, and still played, in many cases, by religious denominations or their representatives as effective instruments of the colonial enterprise in its various stages.

Finished work "Surviving Genocide"

Around the two-piece table top section, in Cree syllabics, is carved: "My grandchildren (says a spiritual being's voice speaking to a future generation yet unborn), the Great Mystery will always be here to help you. How? By you loving one another unceasingly, perserveringly, forever."

In the invisible space beneath the base lies the remains of 100s of millions of indigenous Peoples. By Raphael Lemkin's description, the survivors are in the second phase of genocide. The Master's tools, racism, patriarchy, imperialism, capitalism, are labeled on the uprights, but, rising above them is indigenous law, labeled as humble kindness, sharing, honesty, and determination. At the upper rim, the rock spirit speaks, in a pre-columbian voice, to a generation far in the future. Above, the buffalo spirits (male energy) mount the mother earth sweatlodge (female energy), and new life streams from within her.

Then again, what if resistance is fertile? Inside Steinhauer's coffee-addled brain, a thought flitted past. "We can't get together to fend off the fiends, but we can sure get together to make babies". It brought to mind the old Cree couple who lived nearby the Catholic Church on their reserve. It was a Sunday morning, and the old woman was admonishing the old man to hurry, and change into his church clothes. The bell started to ring, and she rushed into the bedroom to urge him on, only to discover him half undressed, and in a peculiar state. When you're old, sometimes things don't work when their supposed to, and then, by surprise, suddenly do when they're not supposed to. The old woman grabbed him and threw him down on the bed. "What are you doing?" he cried. "We'll be late for church." Hoisting her long skirt, the old woman replied, "The church will still be standing there next week, but I'm not so sure that this will be."

But if le pièce de résistance, fertility, is futile, what then? Feeling at a loss, Steinhauer remembered old Pete Gregory's words, describing an experience he had one day, as he sat by the roadside watching life go by, on the Okanagan Indian Reserve # 1. A real estate salesman stopped to ask for directions. "Do you know which way to Kelowna?" Pete looked at him and said, "I don't know". "Well then, which way to Vernon?" "I don't know." Exasperated, the salesman said, "Don't you know anything, old man?" to which Pete responded, "I know I'm not lost."

Yeah. We're not lost. If we can stand our ground, keep our languages alive, keep on making babies, keep at least the memory of our way of life alive, we'll never be lost.

Part four: Panarchists to the rescue

In a continuing series on genocide and colonization, Stewart Steinhauer explains "how to deconstruct a Canadian Indian in the privacy of your own home"

Drilling For Oil And Gas

Fri, 07 Oct 2005 01:41:07 +0000

Down At The Intersection Of Racism, Patriarchy, Capitalism, And Imperialism

illustration by Sylvia Nickerson

Whether it's turtles all the way down, or the mysterious forces of quantum mechanics, Turtle Island stands on something. The multi-millennia old human societies existing on Turtle Island stand on something, too. Sitting in the circle at a pipe ceremony, I'm reminded of this foundation, because it's "written" right into the pipe ceremony. The pipe is offered to our relative, the bear, and we ask that, when we see the four legs of the bear, we will remember the four legs of indigenous society: humble kindness, sharing, honesty, and determination.

The European society that arrived on our shores aboard Columbus' ships was also based on a foundation. In homage to Ancient Greece, the wellspring of western civilization, I'll use the image of hand-carved stone pillars, holding up the superstructure of modernity. Perhaps genuine members of western civilization may not agree with me, but I see these pillars as human-crafted social institutions, built over a 5500 year period with a lot of blood, sweat and tears. These pillars are racism, patriarchy, capitalism, and imperialism, and I can't think of a better example of these pillars in action than Canada's Indian Act.

In 1876, the subjects of the Indian Act were not Canadian citizens. Approximately 85 years passed before they were; I was about ten years old when I was arbitrarily made a citizen of Canada. When I researched international law to see by what legal mechanism a nation passes legislation over people not its citizens, the report I got back, from several professional sources, was that there is no legal mechanism. I believe that the correct term for this mechanism is "imperialism". Imperialism is the oldest of the four pillars of western civilization.

The 1876 version of the Indian Act was formulated to send indigenous Peoples on a forced march through European feudal history, in order to prepare us for some future entry into capitalism. When looked at through the sociologist's lens, we see indigenous Peoples as serfs, the Indian Agents as local managers, and the Minister of Indian Affairs as the Lord of the Manor. The notion, in the 1800s, that indigenous Peoples needed to be brought up to speed in order to join civilization, is a display of racism ("you're subhuman") and patriarchy ("this might hurt, but I'm doing it for your own good").

The real point of the Indian Act is genocide; the forced march through feudalism was just an exercise to occupy bureaucratic minds as they went about their routine desk-killer functions, perhaps most vividly demonstrated by Canada's poet laureate, Duncan Campbell Scott. However, as another Scotty poet, Robbie Burns said: "The best laid plans of mice and men aft gang aglay." Ottawa's thumb-twiddling exercise inadvertently protected indigenous Peoples from a full exposure to capitalism. Delgamuuk, which established the legal principle of Aboriginal Title, was an alarm bell wake up call. Did somebody fall asleep at the switch? It's the 21st century, and we still have the Indian Act, with its feudal relationships. The crux of Canada's dilemma today is that the physical genocide has failed, and there are still indigenous Peoples who can access, though oral history in indigenous languages, a shadowy image of the past, with its political and cultural implications for the future.

If we look into the shadow past, as people like the late Harold Cardinal did, we can see the faint outline of a non-racist, non-patriarchal society. The first lost and wandering European "explorers" were greeted by Cree Peoples as "kiciwamwinihwak", a term literally translating as "distant cousins". At that time, identity was assumed to be based on a way of life, not skin, hair or eye colour, as Tanya Wasacase has brilliantly argued in her Empty Mirror thesis, available online at darknightpress.org . Over the passing centuries, the term "wapskewiyas" has been added on, literally translating as "white meat"; our distant white meat cousins have brought the concept of race to us, and most indigenous Peoples have embraced this concept.

Those first lost and wandering Europeans were men, traveling thousands of miles from home without women. What kind of people behave like this? In pre-European contact societies it was well understood that we men are very insecure about our value to society, having, as we do, just one essential task to perform. Over time, indigenous women created roles for men to calm this potentially disruptive insecurity, ingeniously weaving us into the fabric of society. Here, on the northern prairies, that society revolved around the grandmothers, and ghost shadows of that matriarchal past still flit about. For instance Cree people who can't speak Cree still know one word: "kokum", literally, "your grandmother". In ceremony, the grandmothers sit in the background, observing the Elder men performing ritual, ready in an instant to discreetly correct any errors of commission or omission. The grandmothers hold the oral history of the People. Even modern family structures show the ghost shadow; women still have children with two, three or four men. Legitimacy is conferred upon the child by the mother, not the father. And, of course, like everywhere else in the world, "existence" work is performed by women.

Shadows of the past are one thing, but you don't need to hunt for ghost shadows to see the outline of a former matriarchal society. You can do as I have done, take tobacco to an Elder woman who still knows her role, and sit down to listen to the whole picture being reframed.

However, two centuries of fur trade, culminating in the Treaties and the Indian Act, taught us about patriarchy, and, along with racism, most indigenous Peoples have embraced that, too. The so-called traditional Cree headman system is actually a product of the fur trade, amplified by the Treaty negotiations, and broadcast by the Indian Act. In 1876, Treaty Commissioner Alexander Morris records, in his autobiography, bribing Cree men to think of themselves as "Headmen". Then, in a special addendum to the 1876 Annual Report to the Indian Department, he worries about having created a class of Indian men who will think of themselves as the Queen's servants. These worries bore fruit in 1990, when Canada's Supreme Court ruled that Chief and Councils are a legal arm of Indian and Northern Affairs Canada.

Did I say "embraced"? Perhaps "clung to" is more accurate than "embraced". Imperialism, with its state monopoly on organized violence, can have a huge influence on how people choose to live their lives. Sir John A MacDonald formed the North West Mounted Police to, in his own words, "keep the Indians and Metis of the west under a firm hand until the settler population far outnumbered them." Today, the RCMP, descendents of the NWMP, are busy in Haiti, helping to train former paramilitary and military thugs, including convicted murderers, as the new Haitian National Police, a police force who actively arrests, tortures, and murders Haitians based on their political beliefs.

In 1992, a constable at the nearest RCMP detachment, in St. Paul, Alberta, told me that the St Paul RCMP detachment was known as a "rough holds" training center. New RCMP officers come fresh out of the Regina training headquarters, the place where Canada hung Louis Riel, and get some real on-the-job training; the seven Indian Act Bands surrounding St. Paul provide perfect rough holds training opportunities. How many indigenous People have died in custody, or as a result of RCMP actions, or as a result of RCMP inactions?

I asked this question of the Commission for Public Complaints Against the RCMP; months passed with no response. Then I received an apology for the delay in responding, followed by another long interval. Finally, I discovered that the head of the Commission was having difficulty with the RCMP, and had gone to the national media with her tale of woe. Under these kinds of conditions, I could argue that we've adopted racism and patriarchy as a temporary survival tactic, to physically survive the genocide unleashed by imperialism. But what about Capital?

Capitalism is the most revolutionary force ever visited upon humankind. It sweeps into a region and blows away all of the pre-existing social institutions, replacing them with capitalist laws of motion. The imperatives of competition and profit-maximization, the compulsion to reinvest surpluses, and the systematic and relentless need to improve labour-productivity and develop the forces of production override all other concerns. This is plainly seen in Haiti, today: what does the poorest country in the western hemisphere have that made it worthwhile for the US, Canada, and France to join forces and stage a military coup to overthrow Aristide's democratically elected government? Why, that most basic commodity of all, the one that builds all other commodities: labour. Just ask Canadian corporations like SNC Lavalin, or Gildan Activewear, or Andy Apaid, Gildan's main subcontrator in Haiti.

Certain unmentionable economists have speculated that a primary driver for genocide on Turtle Island has been the unwillingness of indigenous Peoples to see ourselves as a commodity. Mentionable economists have called this reluctance "backwardness", and used it to justify….well, genocide. The ignoble savages have, in the meantime, been resisting comodification, giving rise to pow-wow circuit jokes like: "Why can an Indian man make love all night, while a White man can't? Answer: Because he doesn't have to go to work in the morning!" Don't you just love racism and patriarchy dolled up in buckskin? Ah, but the heady days of feudalism are coming to an end. Ready or not, Canada is preparing me for full participation in capitalism, with or without my consent, whether I understand what's going on, or not. Canada wants to solve "my problem" by putting me to work.

If we turn a blind eye to the phenomena of "offshore outsourcing of labour", our local "aboriginal" politicians have begun echoing the political mantra of "jobs jobs jobs". Here, in northeastern Alberta, "jobs jobs jobs" means oil and gas. So what kind of political animal is this "jobs jobs jobs" beast?

There are two types of work: existence work, and exploitative (capitalist) work. My search of history, both written and oral, reveals a prequel to post-modern society, perhaps the first leisure society, right here on the northern plains. Important technology was held in intellectual property form, rather than in physical property form, and existence tasks included contemplation, discussion, play, ceremony, travel, recreation, celebration, and procreation, along with the usual concern for "food, shelter and clothing". There was nothing nasty, short or brutish about day-to-day life in any way.

In contrast, capitalist work, under the guise of providing food, shelter, and clothing, is actually a totalitarian social control system, producing so-called "wealth" as a mere by-product. Over 5 millennia, racism, patriarchy and imperialism have provided a good measure of totalitarian control, but, arising in agrarian England in the 1600s, capitalism nicely completes the control system. This gang of four work together, through something called "the market", with the first three providing excellent profit-making "externalities" for the fourth.

Okay. Over in this corner, badly bruised and beaten, we have our rag-tag Indian Act Bands, and over in the other corner we have the global oil and gas industry….got the picture? The Delgamuuk bell rings, and oil and gas comes out swinging.

Yes, Exxon-Mobil, Royal Dutch Shell, and the rest of the gang are here, but we're going to get out the microscope, and focus in on two energy corporations acting locally for their global thinkers. First is Western Lakota Energy Services, with its two income streams: building state-of-the-art drilling rigs to sell to Indian Act Bands, and performing contract drilling. Isn't that cute, sticking "Lakota" into their corporate name, with a feather as a logo? The feather in their cap is the recent announcement of the appointment of Victor Buffalo, former Indian Act chief for Samson Cree Nation, to their board of directors.

Looking at Western Lakota Energy Services' (WLES) Q2-05 report, I see that their EBITDAS (earnings from continuous operations before interest) have increased by 155% over the same reporting period in 2004, and net profit has increase by 188%. Looking at WLES' two income streams I see that gross profits from contract drilling for Q2-05 are $11,955,000, a 117% increase over last year's Q2. WLES reports the construction and sale of three new rigs in the Q2-05 period, for revenues of $8,982,000, reporting gross profits from rig construction, after net revenue recovery, to be $4,886,000.

A 50% share in one of those three rigs was sold to my band, Saddle Lake First Nation. WLES has 50% share limited partnerships with 6 so-called "First Nations", a term, by the way, coined by Canada's Justice Department, and handed off to the National Indian Brotherhood at the time of the formation of the AFN, as a diversionary tactic. Is that the Metis war cry of "we're being left out again!" I hear? The Metis Nation of Alberta has a 50% share in a WLES drilling rig, too.

Correct me if I'm right, but it looks like Indian Act Bands pay WLES what it costs WLES to construct a drilling rig, with WLES' 50% share being the profits from the sale of those rigs. WLES then operates those rigs, performing contract drilling, charging these Indian Act Bands management fees, and also making private loans to these bands so that they can pony up their 50% share. WLES' 2004 annual report states that so-called FNs (those FN Indians!) paid WLES $755,000 in management fees, and $111,000 in interest.

This is the second drilling rig that Saddle Lake First Nation has purchased a 50% share in; Saddle Lake leadership's reasoning for partnering with WLES in drilling rigs was to create jobs for band members. According to my math, capitalist jobs equal assimilation equal genocide. Grass roots band members haven't fallen for it. Saddle Lake's on-reserve unemployment rate ranges from 70% to 90%, but very few band members have stayed at the drilling rig work. Those who tried to work on the rigs have found the combination of racism, patriarchy, imperialism and exploitative labour overwhelming. As a result, WLES primarily employs non-indigenous people to perform contract drilling with Saddle Lakes' 2 rigs.

Contract drilling, hmmm? It's time to introduce Encana, formed in 2002 by a merger between the Alberta Energy Corporation, a privatized provincial energy corporation, and the Canadian Pacific Railroad. Encana is one of the largest regional energy corporations, who, as part of their operations, hire contract drillers, and is therefore WLES' main employer. Both of Encana's parent corporations got their assets from illegal expropriations of indigenous property. Alberta's 1931 Natural Resources Transfer Act, source of Alberta Energy Corporation's assets, violates Treaty Six, as do the CPR's land grants. Alberta's Premier, Ralph Klein, publicly stated that Alberta doesn't have to worry about the implications of Delgamuuk because Alberta is covered by Treaties with indigenous Peoples. Treaty Six, for instance. Premier Klein believes that Treaty Six is a land surrender. However, the UN, which featured Treaty Six as the best example of a negotiated Treaty between a modern nation-state and nations of indigenous Peoples, at the conclusion of the UN's 25 year study on such treaties, agreements, and constructive arrangements, agreed with our Elders. Our Elders have always maintained that Treaty Six is a shared use agreement, and that, in spite of genocide, indigenous Peoples still agree to share.

Alright, I'll culture a little sample of WLES in my Petri dish, and slip it under the microscope. To solve Canada's Indian Problem with "jobs jobs jobs", my band, Saddle Lake, purchased a 50% share in a drilling rig. Against my express wishes, I and my fellow band members put up the cash for WLES to build a drilling rig, through a combination of band funds and borrowed money. WLES built the rig, and it immediately went to work for Encana, in the natural gas-rich "greater sierra region" in northeastern BC, which, believe it or not, is Cree territory implicated by the Delgamuuk decision.

BC's Premier Gordon Campbell is following the practical solution employed by Alberta in the Lubicon situation: get in there and exploit as much resource as possible while the whole issue is being thrashed out. Last year I overheard a comment made by a Saddle Lake manager, reporting that Campbell's government was paying Encana a $100,000 per hole incentive to drill as many holes as possible, as quickly as possible, in the greater sierra region.

Let's check the score card. Saddle Lake gets a 50% limited partnership in 2 rigs, with an accompanying debt of about 7 million dollars, no permanent jobs, and few temporary jobs, while WLES gets paid in cash what it costs them to build these rigs. WLES then gets to perform contract drilling with these rigs, being paid a premium by Saddle Lake to manage the rigs, as well as being paid interest on the loan that they've made to Saddle Lake so that Saddle Lake can purchase the limited 50% share. Saddle Lake First Nation helps WLES help Encana help Gordon Campbell's BC government in the emergency action of drilling as many holes as possible in unceded Cree territory in northern BC.

WLES and Encana get national awards, and lots of positive media coverage about their humanitarian efforts to help the "poor Indians", and Gordon Campbell gets re-elected, while the whole bunch of them rob us "poor Indians" blind at every step.

Sweet deal! And, if you consider Canadian law to be legal, it's all legal.

Our local band leadership, almost all men, all deeply indoctrinated into racist, patriarchal thinking, want to impose the "jobs jobs jobs" mantra on our band population. After all, they have to; they've been given their marching orders by Ottawa. By Canada's laws, our Chief and Council don't represent us, they represent Indian and Northern Affairs Canada. Every three years we have a little psuedo-election to see who will be the next local representatives of the Department of Indian and Northern Affairs, while in the background, this Department pulls local Council's strings. Hidden in the deeper background, transnational corporations, and the global wealthy elite who "own" these corporations, pull the Department's strings.

Nowhere in any of this discussion do I hear reports of the petro-chemical industry's links to global warming, the global cancer epidemic, and resource wars without end. In the 2004 film, "The Corporation", Dr. Samuel Epstein, an expert witness, says, "If I put a gun to your head and shot you, it's murder. If I knowingly expose you to something which will kill you, it's the same thing." He's talking about the petro-chemical industry.

My proposed solution? Here goes the broken record: adhere to international law, recognize indigenous Peoples' title to land, and sovereignty over that land, which will place us in the "owner" slot. Then we can see if the genocidal assimilation project has succeeded in crippling the four legs of our society. Back in the day, when we were savages, there was plenty for all.

Under capitalism, with its planned scarcity as a cover for the "natural" and "inevitable" rise of privilege, enshrined in individualistic liberal philosophy, there can never be enough to satisfy even one man's greed. When I quit using alcohol, in 1980, I met an elder at an all-night AA meeting held in a tipi, who said: "The white man tried to borrow our ideas for democracy and for communism, but he got them both wrong." Karl Marx had become fascinated by indigenous philosophy, towards the end of his life; the Brits, in a UK-wide poll, just voted Marx as the most important philosopher of all time.

Perhaps the real "Indian Problem" is that we had a minimum of 15,000 years to develop social organization independently from Europe; the keystone of our social organization, our intellectual property, was invisible to the Euro-centric eye. 160 years ago, one of the most advanced European thinkers was starting to catch a faint glimmer; how much time do we humans have left to figure it out, before we stupidly destroy our lovely little nest floating in space?

Next: Reverse-Engineering Intellectual Property: How To Deconstruct A Canadian Indian In The Privacy Of Your Own Home.

In his second in a series, Stewart Steinhauer looks at oil companies on indigenous land in Alberta, and the mantra of "jobs jobs jobs"

Insurgency In Occupied Alberta

Tue, 16 Aug 2005 14:22:59 +0000

A Voice From The Coffin

In the late 1800s, on the northern prairies, Cree leader Mistiyamaskwa (the Big Bear) warned Cree Peoples about the advance of western civilization, which he likened to a "rope around the neck". The Cree syllabics on the glacial till granite boulder base say: "I am the big bear. There never will be anyone who can put a halter, snare or noose around my neck." The surface of the grey basalt stone bear has been fluted to represent the original fur trade gun barrels. A naturally-occurring fault line runs through the neck of the basalt bear, echoing the Big Bear's warning. Sculpture and photograph by Stewart Steinhauer

At the 2005 commencement ceremony held at the University of British Columbia, all of the indigenous students receiving degrees refused to shake hands with UBC's Chancellor, former BC Supreme Court Justice MacEachern. They refused because of MacEachern's use of a quote from Thomas Hobbes' "Leviathan", in reference to the case known as "Delgamuuk", saying that before the "civilizing mission" from Europe entered the Americas, "aboriginal" peoples' lives were "nasty, short, and brutish".

The description "nasty, short and brutish" is fairly accurate, but MacEachern got the sequence of events wrong. After 513 years of invasion and occupation, my Peoples' lives have become nasty, short and brutish, as a direct result of Europe's "civilizing mission". Life on the rez, circa 2005, is not just random mayhem, although non-indigenous Canadians may think it so at a glance. On-reserve mayhem is carefully micro-managed by Her Majesty's loyal government servants, including Indian and Northern Affairs Canada, the Justice Department, Health Canada, HRDC, and a host of other federal and provincial departments all making their best effort to contribute to the civilizing mission.

One need only look at Canada's Indian Act to see the process in action. Here is legislation enacted over Peoples not its citizens, which destroys all of the social institutions which make Peoples what they are, and imposes a Euro-centric system designed to achieve total control over the lives of these target Peoples -- at least those who physically survive the destruction of their way of life.

Does the average Canadian have a problem with this? When Canadian Prime Minister Chrétien criticized Indonesian President Suharto's human rights record at an APEC Summit meeting, Suharto's rejoinder was: "You've got your Red Indian problem".

Canada's Indian problem. I've been hearing about this problem all of my life. W.E.B. Debois, the first African-American to graduate from Harvard, asked the question, "What does it feel like to be born a problem?"

Naming the problem is problematic. Is there a problem? Whose problem is it? What does this problem look like, and how does it operate?

After the "Delgamuuk" decision came down – tying the legal definition of Aboriginal Title directly to a right to land, and declaring formal consultation with Aboriginal peoples to be the minimum requirement of development on disputed land -- Canada began scrambling to cover its suddenly exposed backside. The Canadian government now has a huge team working feverishly to develop what Her Majesty's servants call "the Aboriginal Doctrine".

In 2000, indigenous legal scholar John Borrows published, on the Law Commission of Canada's website, under the Treaty Forum section, a paper titled "Questioning Canada's Title To Land". This paper carefully detailed how Canada's Indian Act violates the Canadian Constitution, international law, and the concept of "the rule of law". Borrows also demonstrated that the Canada state did not have legal title to land, nor legal sovereignty within the borders of the territory known as Canada.

We're getting down to the heart of the problem, the heartbeat of our Great Mother. Land. The indigenous insurgency in Alberta comes down to a call for Canada to adhere to international law, and recognize Indigenous title to land. The major shareholders and their corporate managers of energy corporations like Exxon Mobil, BP, and Royal Dutch Shell, to name a few, have other ideas, for oily reasons; powerful forces are keeping Canada from following the rule of law.

This distain for the rule of law, when it does not suit the interests of the powerful, is not a new phase in the history of Canada, or of western civilization. I came across a petition signed by my great-great grandfather, Henry Bird Steinhauer, and his son, Arthur, my great grandfather, among others, addressed to Canada's Lieutenant-Governor Archibald, calling for recognition of Indian title to land. The petition, dated 9 January, 1871, reads:

"We as loyal subjects of our Great Mother the Queen whom your Excellency represents, wish that our privileges and claims of the land of our fathers be recognized by Commissioners whom your Excellency may hereafter appoint to treat with the different tribes of the Saskatchewan…our friends the plains Crees, who have not been taught as we have, think that their lands and hunting grounds shall be taken from them without remuneration. As loyal subjects of our Great Mother the Queen, we pray that all the privileges and advantages of such subjects may be granted to us as a People by your Excellency's Government."

In 1871 the Canadian state had something else in mind. Ward Churchill, the American Indian Movement historian, calls it "a little matter of genocide". In Churchill's book of the same name, he quotes from Polish jurist, Raphael Lemkin, speaking in the pages of Lemkin's seminal work, "Axis Rule In Occupied Europe", published in 1944. Lemkin had this to say about genocide:

"Genocide has two phases: one, destruction of the national pattern of the oppressed group, the other, the imposition of the national pattern of the oppressor. This imposition, in turn, may be made upon the oppressed population which is allowed to remain, or upon the territory alone, after removal of the population and colonization of the area by the oppressor's nationals."

So, what's the problem?

Canada has joined the "trillion dollar club", a group of nations whose annual GDP is over one trillion dollars; in 2004, the latest year available on the StatsCan website, Canada's GDP is listed at 1.3 trillion dollars. In the same year, Canadian consolidated government revenues were about 459 billion dollars. Canada sits with the G-7 nations, although, because Canada's Head of State is a queen from England, a country apparently famous for its queens, Canada can't sit right up at the G-7 table.

In Canada, the question of who owns the land, and who exercises sovereignty over that land, is no small matter. The illegally appropriated land and resource acquired by the Canadian state are essential to its membership in the trillion dollar club. The problem, for Canada, is that Indigenous Peoples with claims to the land stand in the way of the continued massive accumulation of wealth. For Canada, the solution has been what Ward Churchill called "a little matter of genocide".

In Canada, genocide does not follow the pattern set in Nazi Germany, where Fordism met Taylorism, in places like Auschwitz. "Work will make you free" said the sign over the gates at Nazi death camps. As Dean Nue, Professor of Public Accounting, at the Haskayne School of Business, University of Calgary has argued, in his Accounting For Genocide, Canada's bureaucrats have been hard at work.

Professor Nue goes so far as to call these bureaucrats "desk killers", whose policy decisions, taken in far-off Ottawa, have a lethal effect when they hit the Rez. When Sir John A MacDonald ordered a ten year cessation of rations to reserve-bound Indigenous Peoples, in 1885, as collective punishment for what Canadians call "the Frog Lake Massacre", western reserves experienced death tolls of up to 56%. Article II, subsection c, of the UN's Convention on Genocide says: "Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part."

What if your conditions of life make suicide appear to be an attractive option? Suicide is epidemic on reserves across Canada. Last week, on my "Rez", a twenty-something man hung himself in his bathroom; he was the third in his family to commit suicide. Was that the third or was that the fourth suicide at Saddle Lake Cree Nation this year? Ah, but who's counting, anyway? Just one more "good Indian"; you know, the dead ones.

As far as solutions go, I hate to sound like a broken record, reiterating what my great-great grandfather, and on down through the generations to me, have been saying all along, but as long as Canada deals in broken promises, I'll have to be a broken record.

As one "bad Indian" (not dead yet) I say to Canada, and to the Canadians who -- actively or passively -- give the Canadian state its legitimacy: Adhere to international law, recognize Indigenous title to land, recognize Indigenous sovereignty over the land, and cease and desist with the social engineering project known as "Indian Policy". I've been studying the situation for over half a century now, and the only other option I can see is for Canada to continue with its little matter of genocide.

Next: Down At The Intersection Of Racism, Patriarchy, Capitalism, and Imperialism: Drilling For Oil And Gas.

Nicknamed 'Apisicikakakis' (the Magpie) because of his irksome behaviour, Stewart Steinhauer enjoys dragging out the garbage, and scattering it around in public for all to see.

In the first installment of his "a voice from the coffin" series, Stewart Steinhauer looks at Canada's "little matter of genocide".