Firmly erect at the side of Whatcom County Jail in Bellingham, Washington, guarded twenty-four hours a day by an outdoor prying-eye video camera, stands a brightly painted wooden statue of a totem pole and a canoe with two stereotypical Indians.
One in the front and one in the back, the Natives are submissively transporting the first white settlers to inspect the lands over which they have just “acquired” dominion. Superficially, it may appear to be a testament to local Lummi Indian heritage, but, in reality, it is a bow to white supremacy and its imperialists.
This same imperialistic attitude is very much alive today in Canada, the country that the South African governments modeled it’s hated system of apartheid after and the country that extradited Leonard Pelletier even though it was well-established that the U.S. had fabricated evidence against him; Canada, the country that denies the inland natives fishing rights, poisons the Ontario natives with mercury and uranium for the arms race and attacks the natives in Oka, Quebec with police and military might so as to steal land so the good white people can enlarge their golf course from nine holes to eighteen.
This same imperialist attitude is still very much alive today in the U.S. too if one is to judge by this summer’s media bashing of the Mohawks. Newspapers all across the country coordinated what sounded like more CIA disinformation campaigning that distorted and censored the real issues involved in the struggle; a newsspeak attempt to hide or justify the naked instances of racism and oppression played out in Khanesatake (Oka) and Khanawage, another reservation across the river from Montreal.
Throughout the confrontation was going on white “authorities” were coming down hard on anyone trying to simply report the Mohawk’s side of this struggle, and especially against those who attempted to support them. The police and Canadian Armed forces kept supporters, spiritual counselors, and international observers away from the representatives of the First Nations in Oka.
The rare Canadian journalists who remained with the Mohawks in an attempt to ward off more violence and to tell the world what was actually happening, that is, the truth about the oppression of Native Canadians who refused to give in to the white notion of “common sense,” reported having their equipment, film, and videotape confiscated or destroyed and reported daily of being harassed at gunpoint by army personnel. Fresh batteries and videotape supplies were kept from reaching them too
Native spokespersons were openly disbelieved or simply kept out of mainstream media. Most often, their side of the story was ironically paraphrased by white male reporters and few of the acts of violence and humiliation perpetrated against the Mohawks have been voiced in the media, unless they were videotaped.
Many journalists had no idea what the Mohawks were really trying to accomplish in their struggle for self-determination. There is no way they could have. Partly they couldn’t or wouldn’t see beyond their own cultural biases and partly they couldn’t see the forest for the trees because they were too busy trying to rationalize turning a sacred Indian burial ground into a sterile golf green.
The “authorities” and the interests they represent, worked overtime to prevent the truth from being known and dime-a-dozen talking-heads and pseudo-journalists made their job real easy. I happened to be in Bellingham, Washington and witnessed some of it first hand. One of the most abhorrent examples of this fascist propaganda I saw appeared in the summer edition of The Western Front (July 24, 1990) at Western Washington University. With none of the pretense of being sympathetic with indigenous culture, this benign commentary by a summer columnist, Dander Evarts, entitled “Mohawk Indians take the battle too far” was just as transparent in its racism as the totem that stands in front of their jail there.
This editorial is important, I believe, because it represents a prevalent racist, classist, and sexist attitude of whites that serves, on so many fronts, to demoralize and immobilize activists and revolutionaries who are fighting for justice and equality. It is an outstanding example of the Media representing the Establishment instead of those who, like the Mohawks, are engaged in a conflict for economic, political, social, and cultural self-sufficiency.
Without reading the editorial it’s hard to believe the patronizing and down-right meanness that was delivered in this back-seat sermonette. But you will quickly get the idea.
This columnist thought that Indians lacked the most basic common sense. “If they [did]...have any common sense...they’d know they are likely to lose.” He shot so many pseudo-psychiatric labels at Native Canadians — such as “irrational,” “obsessed,” and “insanity” — that one was led to imagine, after reading his column, that all these poor people needed was some therapy to teach them to properly adjust to the dominant white culture. He further psychologized that the Mohawks were “obsessed” with preserving their heritage, and that they “feel” their rights have been violated. He charged that the Indians were just holding a big grudge from days-gone-by and that Native grievances have now become “outdated and irrational.”
He seemed to have a difficult time distinguishing cruel acts of imperialistic aggression from the assertive self-defense of an embattled community, or of oppressed individuals. And just in case his readers didn’t have the same problem, he, like most mainstream reporters, neglected to disclose that it was the police who attacked the Indians in the first place, and on their own land.
As with many White editorialists, Evarts feigned concern that they would alienate “innocent” people by “acting rashly,” and that public opinion would sway against them. He compared the Indians wearing camouflage and bearing guns to the methods of Middle Eastern “terrorists” in spite of the fact that this is exactly the way SWAT teams and police dress for their assaults. (It seems like it’s all in how ya look at it.) He was worried that these militant “Indians” weren’t going through “proper” channels at the same time he admitted that their chances at success would be “slim,” (as the last three hundred years have shown). In so many words, like a lot of other White privileged journalists, he berated the government for “not being tough enough,” not showing “leadership,” and not “cracking down.”
Playing dime-store moralist, the Western Front columnist claimed he didn’t like the golf course either, but that the Mohawks should just “accept” it. Seeming to believe that political struggles have historically been achieved after several reasoned debates, he said he just couldn’t sympathize with the militant Indians because they had “created a violent turmoil that they seemed to enjoy.” (You know — they liked it.) He told these proud besieged people that there is more “dignity” in not fighting back. Advocating the same ineffective pacifism which is taught to women: he told Native Canadians to lie down and enjoy it.
“But,” he added, wiping the sweat from his brow, “at least no blood would be spilled.” He claimed to hate bloodshed, but only some of it. He expressed great concern that “a violent side has emerged in the Mohawk tribe, the scale of which is unparalleled in recent memory.” But he conveniently forgets the Native blood spilled by white male colonizers of this country in the not-too-distant past.
“Statements resulting in blood-shed,” he said “we can all do without.” But it’s always only a matter of whose blood. He was so concerned about the death of one “officer of the law” that the genocide of millions of Native North, Central, and South Americans perpetrated so far disappears in comparison.
After I had read his commentary, I was moved to look up several articles on Mohawk culture, recognized as one of the most politically advanced on this Earth, and then I made a few calls to a friend in Montreal. There are some important facts missing in many of the articles we have all read about the current assault on Native Canadians. The Mohawk people speak simply and eloquently and we should listen to them instead of to dominant culture apologists.
Almost 6,000 Native Canadian Mohawks inhabited nine million acres of land in this area. Nearly all of it has already been stolen by the Europeans who “colonized” Canada and the US, bringing with them alcohol and fatal diseases which have decimated Native nations.
Last year, the municipal council of Oka decided to expand its golf course (and the earnings of its White owners) by razing a white pine forest growing over a sacred Mohawk burial ground located on the last non-reserve piece of land the Natives had been allowed to hold. Historical treaties have been ignored (the Canadian government has been purposely stalling on Indian claims for centuries). The political strategy of whites has always been to ignore First Nations’ demands, break treaties and promises, deny them rights, lie whenever convenient and generally let situations deteriorate, thus creating an excuse to crush rebellion attempts with force. Meanwhile, Whites use their court system to get what they want whenever they want it.
But last summer, the Mohawk people placed their demands at center stage by setting up roadblocks to bring the issue to a head and to stop the white invaders. Instead of negotiating, Canadian whites sent in the police, then the army. But something happened. Lacking “common sense,” the Mohawks refused to back down in the face of this attack.
Is this the working of democracy? Look closer. The 100% white Oka town council rents Mohawk land to the operator of the existing golf course. The mayor of Oka happens (surprise, surprise) to be one of the owners of this golf course. And the judge, who issued the injunction giving Quebec police the go-ahead to tear into the barricade with guns blaring and tear gas flying, happens to be a member of that golf club. (Gee, with friends like these...)
“We’re not savages,” a 67-year-old Mohawk woman told reporters in Montreal. “We’re proud to be Mohawks. We were pushed around for centuries and we’re being pushed again and we’re getting awfully tired of it.” One Mohawk spokesperson commented, “This is an injunction coming down from a foreign government and it holds no weight on Mohawk territory... The land that they are on, the municipality of Oka even, belongs to Kahnesetake Mohawks.”
But who listens to spokespersons when they are women, such as Ellen Gabriel? John Ciaccia, Quebec minister of Indian affairs, was heard to rant that he “didn’t know who he was negotiating with.” Mohawk culture isn’t patriarchal, you see, hasn’t been for thousands of years: women are very much involved in the political survival of the community. They choose clan leaders and negotiate major issues. Definitely not par for a white course.
After the golf judge donned his robe and dropped his injunction, hundreds of Quebec provincial police wearing helmets, combat uniforms, and gas masks attacked a Mohawk barricade and the men, women, and youths holding it. They launched stun grenades and tear gas at the people. Using automatic weapons, they fired hundreds of rounds — a fact which they later denied, despite massive evidence from videotaped scenes.
But police were surprised when the Mohawks, some 200 armed, and about a hundred unarmed, wearing war paint and covering their faces with bandannas, all from the reserve and nearby Mohawk lands, fought back. They threw the tear gas grenades back at the police with their bare hands and, when the police retreated, they used police bulldozers to crush abandoned police cars and strengthen their barricades with them. When the smoke cleared, one police officer was dead. It was reported later that the cop that was killed had been seen shooting at a child running away on a tricycle.
According to The Gazette, Montreal’s major mainstream newspaper, the police were firing wildly, in total disarray, and may very well have killed the officer themselves. The coroner’s inquest revealed that the fatal shot had been fired from ten feet away, while the cops never came closer than 300 feet from the Mohawks. Of course, this fact was not picked up by the media. Since police and the Native Canadians had been firing the same caliber weapons, the evidence was deemed “inconclusive.”
Fortunately, no Mohawks were injured. But a few weeks later, one 70-year-old Mohawk man died from a heart attack after the car he was riding in with women and children was stoned by a racist while mob, who showered the vehicle’s occupants with abuse and flying glass. This happened in full view of the media, outside of the nearby Khanawage reserve, under indifferent white police “protection.”
Was this happening in South Africa? No, it happened at our own imposed borders. So, why are white male columnists refusing to cover it and belittling, along with the White police and army forces, the support that has been amassing throughout the Native and progressive communities all over North America for the Mohawks. Those of us who are listening to what the Mohawks and other Natives are saying realize that this struggle is as much about race and class as it is about the saving the environment — an environment the Mohawks have long fought to protect from short-sighted white exploitation. According to the Cree Indians the next confrontation will happen over another destructive force to the Native’s ecosystem, a hydroelectric development planned for Northern Quebec.
Ugly “mistakes” proved revealing last summer. During the confrontation a child who had almost drowned in a white suburban swimming-pool died while the ambulance trying to get him to a hospital in time was stopped and held back at one of the barricades put up by white vigilantes around Khanawage. They figured that with all the police action, the ambulance had to be for an Indian. Food and medical supplies were forcibly kept from this reservation and from Oka, a fact which most media have ignored or even denied. Observers from the International Human Rights Federation (who were less convenient to silence) who could not be silenced bitterly denounced this blockade condoned and imposed by the Quebec government. These observers were then asked to leave by the Prime Minister of Quebec, whose police forcibly kept them from re-entering the reservation where they had reported on Native civilians starved and endangered by this “low-intensity warfare.”
One Mohawk spokesperson said, “There’s a simple solution to this problem. The land simply belongs to the Mohawks. There is no ifs, ands, or buts. That’s not negotiable. And there’s just no way that we could back down. It’s been said before: at one time we had the whole pie and now they want to take the crumbs away from us. We lost everything.”
Harvey Nicholas, a Mohawk spokesperson, summed it up this way: “People are getting killed because boys want to run around and play golf.”
One Indian Warrior explained in The Montreal Mirror: “Can’t it be understood? We do not have a penchant for conflict and confrontation. We don’t stand around waiting to grab our arms and cry ‘to the barricades.’ We have lives to live, families to raise and enjoy, communities to care for, and dreams to strive for, just as each of you do. Regardless of what you assume about us, we have the same horror at taking a human life or losing our own as you do. That we are willing to kill or die for justice, Canada-wide, should give you, and your governments, some indication of the crisis that years of neglect have brought to the surface.”
Martin Dufresne, a Montreal pro-feminist activist wrote: “Even my well-worn liberal utterings about pacifism and principled solidarity with all oppressed groups are proving false and useless: Natives would be nowhere if they hadn’t armed themselves and shot back, and the slogans safely chanted downtown by my complacent Old Left gaggle do little for those who need action, supplies, effective outreach, real world-wide pressure on their attackers. Every day brings a shift in the physical and ideological battle lines: my moral rhetoric only gets in the way with its ignorance of actual moves, circumstances, victories and defeats. It would be just a way to find a neutral sideline.
"But now that the army has finally pulled out of Quebec, the government has started dragging Natives to court and throwing the book at them in total disregard for the international nature of this conflict. Now that most mainstream journalists have turned to other “stories,” poverty — the main weapon of white adult males — is being used with full force against non-white males. Yet, the First Nations have won a major victory: finding unity in the oppression revealed, forcing us to realize whose side we are on, proving that discourse and appeals to white “justice” are a poor substitute for actual action. They have found their truth in solidarity and a sense of belonging to a nation, worthy of political entitlement, while our own political and ideological system has been revealed to be rotten to the core.”
The Western Front columnist closed his condescending commentary with: “Let’s try a more level-headed approach in the future, shall we?” making it clear he wasn’t addressing the armed whites who, at that time, appeared to be closing in for a kill. But instead of mapping out any “reasonable” strategy for the Mohawks, we would all do well to remember what our own forefathers’ idea of level-headedness was. It was scalping, a practice which the white invaders introduced in the Americas.
The truth is that, up until now, indigenous and other oppressed peoples (women included), most often through no fault of their own, have not taken things nearly as far as they had to in order to protect their own self-determination. That’s one reason why that tacky racist totem still stands by the Bellingham jail that houses a disproportionate number of Lummi Indians for non-violent crimes; and that is why there is no bus route serving the Lummi Indian reservation, a mere twenty minutes outside of town, a fact which the other good white people of Bellingham probably don’t even know.
Today, I and other white Americans are starting to learn some of what Native Peoples have historically endured and are still undergoing in the grip of greedy, white imperialists. And even though I have chosen to examine and practice the tenets of nonviolent resistance for two decades as a means of bringing about political change, I would no more preach pacifism to the Native American and Mohawk Indians than I would to Blacks in South Africa, or to Nicaraguans in Central America, or to the embattled Palestinian resistants on the west bank Gaza strip — or to women facing gender warfare and terrorism everywhere. --Nikki Craft
[With appreciation to Martin Dufresne for the contribution he made to this article.]
