Mid-January 1994
Native Nations declare independence
by Jeff Armstrong
In the spirit of the Quechua prophecy, leaders of Native nations from
North, South, and Central America met in New Mexico to define their own
sovereignty and inject some substance into the hollow U.N. proclamation of
the International Year of Indigenous People.
The condor and the eagle, spiritual representatives of the South and
North, may not yet fly in unison, but indigenous delegates from the Arctic
tundra to the Chilean mountains expressed a high degree of unanimity in
their vision of the future and their experiences of the past.
Representing 40 Native Nations, participants in the International
Testimonial on the Violations of Indigenous Sovereignty Rights complied a
staggering record of colonial aggression by member states of the United
Nations, to which they will forward the evidence through a U.N. subcom-
mission investigating the subject. The opening day of the Albuquerque
conference, held Dec. 9-13, was all the time needed to establish a
consensus that sovereignty is inherent, and that Natives have a right and
obligation to return to traditional ways of exercising it - or risk an
environmental holocaust which will not distinguish between colonizer and
the colonized.
"It is time to settle our disputes so we can move on to solving our
problems," said Susana Atkinson of the Arawak nation, the first victims of
history's cruelest genocide, now emphasized as an "encounter" gone awry
due to "misunderstandings."
"Let us cry out with one voice for freedom through self-determination,
self-determination through sovereignty, and sovereignty through hemispheric
solidarity," Atkinson said. A constituent tribe of Arawak, the Tainos, was
virtually eliminated within 50 years of Columbus' 1492 landing and replaced
with African slaves in present day Haiti and the Dominican Republic.
As was made clear at the conference, colonial greed knows no bounds,
even those imposed by the death of its victims. The Arrow Lakes and Sinixt
tribes, located within Canadian British Columbia, were declared extinct by
Canada in 1956 in an apparent overestimation of the success of its
introduction of smallpox to the tribes in the early 1900's. But the
fiercely independent tribes which refuse to recognize the provincial or
national government, successfully fought for the recovery and reinternment
of 47 human remains from a 3,000 year old gravesite. Undeterred, British
Columbia is now attempting to seize control of the burial ground by
converting it to a park, and is also allowing a road to be built through a
sacred Lil'Wat burial site.
Arrow Lakes-Sinixt burial ground caretaker Robert Watt led the
precedent-setting repatriation effort and has occupied the burial ground
for the last four years. Watt, a nominal U.S. citizen who has always lived
on his ancestral land, has been fighting Canadian deportation for three
years, even though the government has been forced to acknowledge his
tribal origin.
"I think its a political move. They can't get rid of me any other way,
so they try to deport me," said Watt. Likewise, Watt said, Canada refuses
to recognize his and other traditional tribes because recognition would
jeopardize logging and river diversion projects decimating the region.
"They know we won't sell out," Watt said.
As traditional spiritual grassroots leaders, most of the indigenous
delegates were disdainful of tribal government structures offering limited
self-government under federal trusteeship. In the U.S. and Canada,
recognized indigenous governments were established like corporate
management entities, with the federal government acting as a board of
directors retaining veto power over "Business council" or "Tribal Council"
decisions. Traditional natives in the U.S. boycotted the 1934 show
elections ratifying the congressional Indian Reorganization Act.
Their abstentions, however, were counted as votes for the act to
guarantee illusory consent for the unilateral imposition of indirect rule.
A Canadian Native compared the "nation-to-nation" relationship to that of
an employer and employee, since elected chiefs and counselors drew or
still draw their salaries from federal funds.
An example of the inability or unwillingness of tribal councils to
defend their citizens from corporate and governmental depredation was
provided by traditional Dine' people resisting relocation from land they
and their Hopi neighbors hold sacred.
A territorial dispute between the Navajo (Dine') and the Hopi tribal
councils was exploited - if not engineered - by the U.S. government and
Peabody Coal to force the relocation of thousands of Dine' sheep herders
in order to open up an area around the holy Big Mountain to extensive
strip mining.
A handful of Dine' have remained in the area despite continual
harassment from the federal and Hopi governments. According to resident
Kee Watchman, the mining is causing serious pollution of of air, depletion
and contamination of the water, and killing off sacred and medicinal
plants.
"Every time we have a pretty good rain or snow it turns into
pollution, acid rain. Every year it kills a dozen trees." he said.
Peabody's mining operation, already the largest of its kind in the
U.S. is scheduled to include more than 54,000 acres.
Watchman said Peabody Coal is financing Hopi lawyers, while the Dine'
council fails to adequately represent its own people. "The tribal
governments are supporting Peabody Coal. They've been meeting behind
closed doors." A recent settlement offer which would extend 75-year leases
to the resistors is unacceptable, Watchman said. "This is the holy ground
for us and for generations to come."
Like many other nations, the traditional Dine' are reclaiming the
sovereignty they never legitimately relinquished. They have restored their
council of elders and are seeking international recognition. The Dine'
called for a U.N. investigation and are demanding restoration of their
land by the mining company.
Although Native peoples in South face the most immediate threat to
their lives for doing so, they were among the most forthright in asserting
complete independence. A representative of the Kuna Republic (Panama),
Marcial Arias, described the accomplishments possible for a determined
minority. The Kuna militarily defeated a U.S.-backed Liberal party
government in 1925 and now control all access to their country. "The
example our people can give you is that we can exercise our sovereignty
independent of state control," said Arias.
In Chile, the Mapuche Nation is fighting to recover the freedom it won
from Spain in 1810, but lost after the formation of the Chilean Nation-
state. Mapuche leader Jose Luis Huilcaman also requested support for 144
of his compatriots incarcerated in the land recovery struggle and
displayed the most tangible expression of sovereignty, the Mapuche
national flag. Huilcaman said the Mapuche have suffered government
repression for displaying the flag.
Hopi spiritual leader Thomas Banyacya, whose speech to the U.N. last
January fulfilled a Hopi prophesy, repeated his warning that the world
faces global cataclysms if its people fail to return to traditional ways
of living in harmony with nature. As Banyacya spoke in the "House of
Mica," the U.N. General Assembly building shook under the force of 90 mile
an hour winds, as if confirming his words.
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Michele Lord + If you have come here to help me,
+ you are wasting your time.....
+ But if you have come because
+ your liberation is bound up with mine,
milo@scicom.alphacdc.com + then let us work together.
Aboriginal Woman
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