Recently, cavern.vortex.COM!lee (Lee Flier) wrote:
>.......... What we are really dealing with is CLASS consciousness.
>Basically, the feeling I get here in Los Angeles is that it's a crime to
>be poor, or even to appear as though you are not materialistic (e.g. drive
>a beat up car or wear old jeans and T shirts). ...........
>............................................................. And THAT
>is where the relevance to NativeNet comes in: it's the same old differ-
>ence in culture that prompted Europeans to deplore Native people as
>"savages" because they weren't motivated by land "ownership", technology,
>climbing the economic ladder, etc.
This difference has been recognized for hundreds of years. In our time, the
difference is mostly thought of in ecological terms -- rainforests, etc. In
earlier times, the difference was seen in social relations -- among men and
women, adults and children, etc. Either way, the difference is political
and economic -- a different way of living.
Lee suggests:
>Those who would maintain the status quo feel, in many ways, even more
>threatened by people like myself than by Native Americans, because it
>means there are holes in their "New World Order" mentality. It means
>"the system" doesn't make everybody happy, not even "decent white folks
>from nice families."
This threat reaction occurred in the early 19th century to folks like
Andrew Jackson and others who were determined to "remove" the indigenous
peoples from the "frontier." They saw how many immigrants were attracted to
Indian communities, and tried to stop this by legal and military means.
During the period immediately preceding the "Trail of Tears," for example,
Georgia law expressly forbid any "white person" from entering Cherokee
territory without permission of the state government! The "white" power
system had to prevent "white" people from becoming "Indian"!
So, it's pretty clear that there is a historical basis to Lee's comment:
>..................... Cop culture is a way of maintaining this historical
>attitude, and it's an attitude that hurts everyone. Native culture repre-
>sents an alternative to this attitude, and continued repression of these
>alternatives represses everyone, whites included.
I agree completely with Lee's conclusion:
>......................................What we are doing here
>on the net is trying to keep those alternatives alive for all of us, and
>the cop culture is quite a relevent and very present obstacle in our
>attempts.
This is why I am happy that John Veregge (john@pluto.jpl.nasa.gov) opened
this discussion thread. The discussion of police is relevant because it
gives us a chance to think about another way in which the perspectives of
indigenous peoples are a challenge to the ideology of industrial state
civilization.
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Peter d'Errico
Legal Studies Department
University of Massachusetts/Amherst 01003
phone: 413-545-2003
fax: 413-545-1640
email: derrico@legal.umass.edu
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