December 29th marks the 122nd anniversary of the Massacre at Wounded Knee when 370 Lakota Sioux men, women, and children were gunned down as they fled for their lives.
One year prior to the massacre, in Oct 1889, Commissioner of Indian Affairs Thomas Morgan issued a policy paper regarding the native population. “The Indians must conform to “the white man’s ways,” peaceably if they will, forcibly if they must. They must adjust themselves to their environment, and conform their mode of living substantially to our civilization. This civilization may not be the best possible, but it is the best the Indians can get. They cannot escape it, and must either conform to it or be crushed by it. The tribal relations should be broken up, socialism destroyed, and the family and the autonomy of the individual substituted.”
In 1891, reviewing the history leading up to the massacre, Morgan said “It is hard to overestimate the magnitude of the calamity which happened to the Sioux people by the sudden disappearance of the buffalo. The boundless range was to be abandoned for the circumscribed reservation, and abundance of plenty to be supplanted by limited and decreasing government subsistence and supplies. Under these circumstances it is not in human nature not to be discontented and restless, even turbulent and violent.”
In Canada we are currently witnessing a hunger strike by Chief Theresa Spence who is starving herself for her home community of Attawapiskat but more broadly for all indigenous first nations peoples in Canada. She is part of the Idle No More movement that started in early December 2012 in protest to Bill C-45 a budget which includes changes to the Canadian Indian Act regarding how reserve lands are managed, making them easier to develop and be taken away from the First Nation people. The bill also removes thousands of lakes and streams from the list of federally protected bodies of water. It is the abrogation of native peoples treaty rights.
“This is unacceptable. They have made a unilateral decision remove the protection of waterways... Shell Canada has proposed to mine out 21km of the Muskeg River, a river of cultural and biological significance. This ultimately gives the tar sands industry a green light to destroy vital waterways still used by our people," stated Eriel Deranger, Communication Coordinator for the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation.
What the government has proposed is to allow the concept of private property onto tribal reserve lands. What they claim is that by doing so they will "create" wealth. What will really happen is a small group of natives will be granted title to the lands and then be able to sell the land off to developers. This is capitalism at work where one small group gets rich and the rest get nothing. By converting it into private property the land that could not be sold because it owned by the tribe as a whole, suddenly acquires monetary value under the capitalist system and this is pointed to as proof that they create wealth. That the tribe in the future might have no land base at all because the "wealth creators" sold it all off for personal gain to someone wanting to build ski lodges or condos is of no concern to the government. As Proudhon once said "property is theft." Take away that land and make it just another thing that can be bought and sold, where those with the most end up with the most will have an effect of taking away the identity of the people who presently live there.
The human rights organisation Amnesty International has stated that “By every measure, be it respect for treaty and land rights, levels of poverty, average life spans, violence against women and girls, dramatically disproportionate levels of arrest and incarceration or access to government services such as housing, health care, education, water and child protection, indigenous peoples across Canada continue to face a grave human rights crisis,”
One year prior to the massacre, in Oct 1889, Commissioner of Indian Affairs Thomas Morgan issued a policy paper regarding the native population. “The Indians must conform to “the white man’s ways,” peaceably if they will, forcibly if they must. They must adjust themselves to their environment, and conform their mode of living substantially to our civilization. This civilization may not be the best possible, but it is the best the Indians can get. They cannot escape it, and must either conform to it or be crushed by it. The tribal relations should be broken up, socialism destroyed, and the family and the autonomy of the individual substituted.”
In 1891, reviewing the history leading up to the massacre, Morgan said “It is hard to overestimate the magnitude of the calamity which happened to the Sioux people by the sudden disappearance of the buffalo. The boundless range was to be abandoned for the circumscribed reservation, and abundance of plenty to be supplanted by limited and decreasing government subsistence and supplies. Under these circumstances it is not in human nature not to be discontented and restless, even turbulent and violent.”
In Canada we are currently witnessing a hunger strike by Chief Theresa Spence who is starving herself for her home community of Attawapiskat but more broadly for all indigenous first nations peoples in Canada. She is part of the Idle No More movement that started in early December 2012 in protest to Bill C-45 a budget which includes changes to the Canadian Indian Act regarding how reserve lands are managed, making them easier to develop and be taken away from the First Nation people. The bill also removes thousands of lakes and streams from the list of federally protected bodies of water. It is the abrogation of native peoples treaty rights.
“This is unacceptable. They have made a unilateral decision remove the protection of waterways... Shell Canada has proposed to mine out 21km of the Muskeg River, a river of cultural and biological significance. This ultimately gives the tar sands industry a green light to destroy vital waterways still used by our people," stated Eriel Deranger, Communication Coordinator for the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation.
What the government has proposed is to allow the concept of private property onto tribal reserve lands. What they claim is that by doing so they will "create" wealth. What will really happen is a small group of natives will be granted title to the lands and then be able to sell the land off to developers. This is capitalism at work where one small group gets rich and the rest get nothing. By converting it into private property the land that could not be sold because it owned by the tribe as a whole, suddenly acquires monetary value under the capitalist system and this is pointed to as proof that they create wealth. That the tribe in the future might have no land base at all because the "wealth creators" sold it all off for personal gain to someone wanting to build ski lodges or condos is of no concern to the government. As Proudhon once said "property is theft." Take away that land and make it just another thing that can be bought and sold, where those with the most end up with the most will have an effect of taking away the identity of the people who presently live there.
The human rights organisation Amnesty International has stated that “By every measure, be it respect for treaty and land rights, levels of poverty, average life spans, violence against women and girls, dramatically disproportionate levels of arrest and incarceration or access to government services such as housing, health care, education, water and child protection, indigenous peoples across Canada continue to face a grave human rights crisis,”
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