Wotanging Ikche--nanews07.022

Gary Night Owl (gars@netcom.com)
Tue, 25 May 1999 18:46:45 -0700 (PDT)

Articles sorted by: [ date ][ thread ][ subject ][ author ]
Previous article: Debra Krol: "Re: on Kosovo"

_ __ _____ __ _ __ ___ ____ _ __ ___ O
' ) / / ') / / ) ' ) ) / ) / ' ) ) / ) O o O
/ / / / / / /--/ / / / ___ / / / / ___ O o O
(_(_/ (__/ ( / (_ / (_ (___/ '__/_ / (_ (___/ ' O o o o o O
____ _ , ___ _ , ___ VOLUME 07, ISSUE 022 O o O
/ ' ) / / ) ' ) / / ' May 29, 1999 O o O
/ /-< / /--/ /-- Cherokee planting moon O
__/_ / ) (___/ / ( (___, Mohawk big leaf moon
KANOHEDA ANIYVWIYA Ha-Sah-Sliltha Otapi'sin Atsinikiisinaakssin Un Chota
Es'te Opunvk'vmucvse ni-mah-mi-kwa-zoo-min Aunchemokauhettittea
Ximopanolti tehuatzin, inin Mexika tlahtolli
( N A T I V E A M E R I C A N N E W S )
This issue contains articles from Big Mountain, Triballaw & Nat-Film Lists;
Settlers In Support of Indigenous Sovereignty; Newsgroup: alt.native
UUCP email; http://worldpeaceday.com/1999/ http://wintercount.org/

Articles appearing have been previously posted for public dissemination
and/or permission for inclusion has been secured.
Letters of authorization are on file. A list of those granting permission
to repost their words in this issue are listed at the end of part A.
I thank each of you for allowing your words to be shared with the people.

IMPORTANT!!
-----------
To all who send copywrite protected articles, make very sure you have
permission from the copywrite holder (a newspaper, the AP, a magazine, an
author) because a new law is now in effect that says you can be prosecuted
even if there is no monetary gain. Just because a newspaper has a website
where it posts some or all of its editions does not grant permission for
their redistribution. Be careful and be sure you pass on the items you do
with full permission.
In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, all material appearing in
this newsletter is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a
prior interest in receiving this information for educational purposes.
<----<<<< >>>>---->
This newsletter is a way of keeping the brothers and sisters who share our
Spirit informed about current events within the lives of those who walk the
Red Road.
++ It may be subscribed to via email by sending a request from your own
internet addressable account to gars@netcom.com
++ It is archived at http://www.nanews.org
++ There is also a hyperlinked version of the Current Issue at
http://bearvisions.com/NativeNews/NEWS.html

Borries Demeler advises AISESnet doesn't exist anymore, instead there is now
NativeNet where people can search for archives of Wotanging Ikche issues:
_ All past AISESnet archives (1992-1998) can now be found in:
http://aises.uthscsa.edu/discussion/
_ All new messages will be archived in:
http://nativenet.uthscsa.edu/archive/nn-dialogue/archive.html
The mailing address for AISESnet/NativeNet the lists have changed.
Please make a note of the new address.
The old address aisesnet_discussion@listserv.umt.edu should *NOT*
be used any longer. Instead please use:
nn-dialogue@nativenet.uthscsa.edu

Downloading Wotanging Ikche on AOL From: MAANG1419@aol.com <Valentina>
Just thought I would share some info. I could not download on to a .txt
because I kept getting the message (when I tried to retrieve it) that the
text editor could not handle the volume. This time I downloaded it on to
a .doc and when I retrieved it out of file manager, IT WORKED.

"Indian kids lose touch with their traditions in cities. Their
traditions are gone. Sports can elevate them to different levels.
They become part os something."
__ Clark Tall Bull, Cheyenne, co-founder Blue Pony Lacrosse Program

O'siyo Brothers and Sisters!

This space is the only place in this newsletter where I open up and speak
about things which I believe matter. The rest of the newsletter belongs
to those who write the articles, and to the readers who give them place to
be received. Often, I express concern over problems I think we have the
power to resolve.

This issue I wish to send thanks to Shirley Bruised Head, education officer
for Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump, near Fort Mcleod, Alberta. This special
lady reacted as many of us do to the countless photos on display in books
and museums that are simply identified as "Plains Indians at a Gathering"
or maybe "Blackfoot Hunting Party" that trivialize the people depicted in
the photos as just some more nameless Indians.

She took it upon herself to identify and give names to the people
displayed at the Head-Smashed-In-Buffalo Jump Museum and other provincial
museums, mostly of Blackfoot people and Stoney people. She has founded
Lost Identification Project: A Journey for Rediscovery. She hopes the
"rediscovery" will come, to not only the nameless faces in the photos, but
also to their living descendants.

Pride in who we are has been tarnished by the countless misdepictions
in media and in educational materials. It's an honor to recognize the
efforts of this lady.
=/\=/\=/\=/\=/\=/\=/\=/\=/\=/\=/\=/\=/\=/\=/\=/\=/\=/\=/\=/\=/\=/\=
I have received a copy of Leonard Peltier's book:
Prison Writings: My Life is My Sun Dance, edited by Harvey Arden.
The official publication date is June 26, 1999. Advance orders are being
taken by the Leonard Peltier Defense Committee.

This is not just another autobiography. It is a walk on a path only few
can even imagine. If your next book purchase is your last book, your 100th
book, or your only book this needs to be that book.

PRISON WRITINGS: My Life is My Sun Dance, by Leonard Peltier, edited by
Harvey Arden, forwarded by Ramsey Clark, introduction by Chief Arvol
Looking Horse. St. Martin's Press. ISBN # 0-312-20354-3

Peace! Night Owl
, , Gary Night Owl gars@netcom.com
(*,*) P. O. Box 672168 gars@nanews.org
(`-') Marietta, GA 30227, U.S.A. gars@igc.apc.org
===w=w== Fax: 770-528-9643

----------- News of the people featured in this issue ----------
- Ceremony for Ingrid Washinatowak - What is a Treaty
- World Peace and Prayer Day - Hunting Rights
- Backlash - Hunting Method
- Spiritual Beliefs - Bit of History
- Comment on Whale Controversy - Full Disclosure of Truth
- Way of Killing that is Sacred in Canadian Peltier Case
- Indians Walk 80 Miles for Bones - Wolverine Again
- Mexico Rebel Leader Denies Reforms Threatened with Imprisonment
- House OKs Land Treaty Restrictions - Native Prisoner
- Kee Begay and Kee Shay Letters - Angel of the Morning
- First Lady Ignores Big Mt. - A Hundred Years Ago
- Your Support is Urgently Needed - Book Review:
- Drought Warning Goes out My Heart is on the Ground
to Navajo Ranchers - Poem: And They Hide
- Cherokee Elections to be Monitored - Verse: Hawaiian Book of Days
- An Ungrateful Nation - Upcoming Events

--------- "RE: Ceremony for Ingrid Washinatowak" ---------

Date: Sun, 23 May 1999 20:19:20 -0400
From: Pablo Lonesome Wolf <lonesomewolf@surfree.com>
Subj: Ceremony for Ingrid Washinatowak

By Pablo Lonesome Wolf
5/22/99
On the steps of The Cathedral of St. John the Divine, in NYC are people
of all colors, people dressed in many different kinds of clothing.....
Some in ribbon shirts..some in African robes... some in Moslem dress and
head coverings. Women, men, old, young speaking English, Spanish, French,
Arabic.... They came from Minnesota, California, Guatemala, Palestine,
South Dakota, Vermont..... They are Elders, Professors, Singers,
Ambassadors, Poets...... They numbered over 2,000.
At 7 P. M. they all go inside the vast Cathedral to see a screen and a
number of monitors all with the same picture, that of Ingrid
Washinawatok El-Issa, Flying Eagle Woman, Menominee,. Elder at a young
age, Internationally known Indigenous People's Rights Champion,
Indigenous Women's Role Model, whose enthusiastic charisma and energy was
snuffed out on March 4th, 1999 as she was assassinated after being
captured in Colombia by FARC.
The lights dim and a violin Sonata is offered, followed by A Prelude and
Fugue on the piano. And then 8 or 9 guys come up and sit around a drum,
The Silver Cloud Singers start an honoring song. Though the Singers are
amplified, the drum and the song bounce off the walls of the cavernous
cathedral, giving hair-raising ethereal quality to the ancient melody and
words. You know you have entered sacred space..........
First a prayer and then one by one they come, offering tribute to the
the late wife and mother, sharing stories of her triumphs, her spirit,
her humor, telling of the vacuum left by her crossing..... Names you
know... others you don't... All of whom were effected by her smile, her
direction and her example..... Jake Swamp, John Mohawk, Audrey Shenandoah,
Margo Thunderbird, Clyde Bellecourt, Agnes Williams, ..... H.E. Mr. S. R.
Insanally, Ambassador Permanent Representative of the Republic of Guyana
to the U.N.....Esmerelda Brown, representing Nobel Laureate Rigoberta
Menchu Tum..... Many more..
The group Ulali & Shy Woman First sang first acapella, then with hand
drums, and then joined by other women, sat, sang and drummed at the big
drum, the heartbeat of Indian spirit. The progress of women back to the
traditional place of strength, wisdom and power. Ingrid would have liked
that.
John Trudell read a poem and then reminded those assembled that the case
has not been solved and should be.
A very interesting slide show took place being accompanied by three
ladies from the Spiderwoman Theater
And the final speaker, Ingrid's husband of 17 years, Ali El-Issa who had
his best friend snatched from him without even a chance to say goodbye; A
man who has helped so many of those connected to Ingrid in someway, to
grieve; A man who's strength is obvious; who's compassion is enviable,
and who has allowed his part in the partnership to remain in the shadows
in loving deference to his wife.
Another honoring song and one by one we leave the sacred place never to
be the same again, with a new perception of our friend Ingrid. We leave
the sacred place inspired to try to harder to carry on as Ingrid taught us,
with enthusiasm, kindness and reverence.
##
The Flying Eagle Woman Fund has been created by the family and friends
of Ingred Washinatowak to commemorate her work and values, in partnership
with the Fund of the Four Directions.
Contributions can be sent to: The Fund of the Fourt Directions 8 West 40th
Street Suite 1610 New York, New York, 10018
##
Permission is granted to quote all or part of this article, giving credit
to the author

--------- "RE: World Peace and Prayer Day" ---------

Date: Mon, 24 May 1999 20:14:31 -0400
From: Gary Smith <gars@netcom.com>
Subj: World Peace and Prayer Day

http://worldpeaceday.com/1999/
http://wintercount.org

>From Chief Arvol Looking Horse

As keeper of the 19th generation Sacred White Buffalo Pipe of Peace, I,
Chief Arvol Looking Horse of the Lakota, Nakota and Dakota Nation, would
like to invite the world to recognize June 21st as a day of prayer for
global healing. Our traditional indigenous ways are the way to strengthen
our bonds and healing for our Mother Earth. We are the "root nation",
Hutkan Oyate, with responsibility to turn the life of our Mother Earth
around. It is now evident, with even the scientific findings, that our
course is leading to the endangerment of our tired Mother Earth. We are
now in the midst of what is prophesied as the crossroads, faced with
either disaster, chaos, diseases, with tears from our relatives' (Mitakuye
Oyasin) eyes, or uniting spiritually with all nations upon Mother Earth.

This is a calling for the world to seek out the sacred sites and bring
awareness to the energy and connection that exists there to our Mother
Earth. In the past, there has been clear research findings of people
coming together spiritually, praying for a healing, and our Mother Earth
responded with a visible positive energy shift.

This year we are completing the circle to the South direction in Costa
Rica. This journey started in 1996 at Grey Horn Butte, Wyoming and circled
to the North in 1997, to the Cree Nation of the Joseph Big Head
Reservation, and then to the East at the Sacred Pipestone Quarries in 1998.
Costa Rica has been chosen as the Southern site to complete the circle
because of the need to support what is already established there with the
efforts of the University of Peace and its non-military existence. We are
inviting the surrounding Indigenous Peoples of the South and all
Indigenous people of the world to either join us or go to their sacred
site if it is not possible to journey to Costa Rica.

According to our star knowledge, June 21st is a time to pray. We have this
only chance to unite spiritually. In our way there is no beginning and no
ending to continue to work toward peace and harmony for our Mother Earth
so there is much healing for our nations of future generations.

May peace be with you, all life upon Mother Earth.

--------- "RE: Backlash" ---------

From: MarthaET@aol.com
Date: Sun, 23 May 1999 10:12:03 EDT
Subj: Backlash - including death threats, obscenities - prompts call for
tolerance

Mailing List: TRIBALLAW (triballaw@thecity.sfsu.edu)

Backlash - including death threats, obscenities - prompts call for
tolerance
By PEGGY ANDERSEN
Associated Press Writer
SEATTLE (AP) - Death threats, obscene telephone calls and racist venom
in response to the Makah Indian Tribe's first whale hunt in decades have
shocked religious leaders here, who called for tolerance and respect.
"The issue is one that really touches on religious freedom," said Nancy
Vineberg, executive director of the American Jewish Committee's local
office and a member of the multi-denominational Church Council of
Greater Seattle.
"Being a country founded by people fleeing religious persecution ... I
think we need to accord the Indian nations at least that amount of
respect," Vineberg said Thursday.
Protesters at the Federal Building here held a candlelight vigil Monday
- the day the Makah killed a whale - with protest signs bearing such
messages as "Save the whales, kill a Makah."
"We live in Seattle - a city named for an Indian chief ... and we have
so little respect for the people who were here" when Europeans arrived,
Vineberg said.
Protesters maintaining a presence in the Neah Bay area near the Makah
reservation have decried racism, but say it would be racist not to
oppose a hunt by Indians when they oppose whaling by others.
"When it gets into the race issue, I don't support that at all," said
Kenny Clark at the Oregon-based anti-whaling group Sea Defense
Alliance's headquarters at Sekiu, about 20 miles east of Neah Bay.
"I don't see it as a race issue. It's about an animal that people feel
very passionate about and people are just angry. I think some of those
people maybe are racist," Clark said.
"The religious aspect I really don't think most people are taking into
account," he said, adding he was angry at the Makah "not for their
religious beliefs, I'm angry at them for basically making a trophy out
of this animal they killed."
Much of the backlash voiced on talk-radio shows had to do with what
people said were contradictions between the lives Indians lead today and
ancient traditions, Vineberg said.
"It struck me you could say this about any religious group in this
country," she said. "We hold onto our religious traditions because they
give our lives meaning."
Many were upset by television footage of the kill, Vineberg noted.
"I'm sure if we watched deer hunting live, or the slaughtering of beef
live," many people might swear off meat, she said.
Anti-whaling groups have complained that the tribe was not properly
reverent when the 30-foot whale was pulled ashore at Neah Bay. The Makah
had asked media crews to respect their privacy during religious
ceremonies and prayers, which were not televised.
Misunderstanding about Indian culture is an ongoing problem, said Janine
Bowechop, executive director of the Makah museum.
"We get it all the time - 'I thought you people respected the Earth and
its inhabitants.' I don't know of any Native Americans that have been
vegetarians," she said.
For thousands of years, whales have been central to Makah culture. The
Makah consider the relationship to be one of mutual respect, and honor
the whales for their sacrifice, she said.
"The songs and ceremonies are centuries old," she said. "It's difficult
to articulate - it's difficult that we even have to articulate why this
means so much."
Makah officials say the tribe at the tip of Washington's Olympic
Peninsula has received hundreds of threatening calls. On the Internet, a
Web site made to look like the Makah's official site was posted, but
with anti-whaling and anti-Makah words and pictures.
Other tribes that supported the hunt also received threats, including an
anonymous caller who threatened to bomb the school at the Puyallup
reservation near Tacoma. A Puyallup canoe was on hand when the whale was
beached Monday.
"It's just not acceptable behavior to be threatening Indian children in
school, calling in death threats to tribal leaders," Vineberg said.
"I've had phone calls here telling me, 'I've got ... a gun, tell me who
you want me to go after,"' said Clark with the Sea Defense Alliance in
Sekiu. "I tell them there's been one death out here already (the
whale's) - we don't need more. Go to the firing range if you want to
shoot something."
Bill Wassmuth, a former Roman Catholic priest who now heads the
Northwest Coalition Against Malicious Harassment, noted some responses
apparently are borne out of long-held prejudices.
"While some people are objecting out of concern for the whales ... in
many cases it's clear from the language being used that this is simply
an occasion for people to express their anti-Indian bias and racism," he
said.
The Makah are guaranteed whaling rights under their 1855 treaty - the
only Indian treaty to contain such a provision. Some opponents suggest
such treaties are outdated and should be scrapped.
"I don't know what to say to those people," Bowechop said. "The Bill of
Rights was authored a long time ago, and so was the Constitution."
Fortunately, she said, "I think a lot of Americans take pride in
honoring contracts made even 150 years ago."
The National Marine Fisheries Service, which monitored the hunt, agrees,
said spokesman Brian Gorman.
"The United States has such a clear obligation to the Makah Indians. ...
That to ignore it or in some tortured way to reinterpret it would be a
terrible error," he said.
"We are, as a government, neutral on whether the Makah should hunt -
that is their decision to make," Gorman said.
"We are certainly not neutral on the Makahs' treaty right to hunt
whales. That is a non-issue. They have it, it's written down, the United
States government agreed to it..." he said.
"It's easy to support something you agree with. What's much more
difficult is to stand by an agreement that makes a lot of people
uncomfortable," Gorman said.
The Makah "gave up thousands and thousands of acres of land in exchange
for articulating a right that they always had anyhow - to fish and hunt
and whale and seal in their usual and accustomed places," Gorman said.
Al Ziontz, recently retired as the Makah's tribal attorney after 36
years, participated in a New York-area talk show about the hunt
Wednesday and found the callers' sentiments "frightening - not only the
anti-whaling, but the intolerance toward the idea of any Indian
exception to mainstream culture."
Some contend the whale - a 30-foot, 5-inch female - was too young to be
taken. Sea Shepherd Conservation Society leader Paul Watson, also
featured on the radio program, called the Makah "baby-killers," Ziontz
said.
It was an immature whale, but "certainly not a calf," Gorman said. The
Makah were barred from targeting females with calves.
"As far as the conditions of the management plan are concerned, from the
time first harpoon was thrown until the time butchering of the carcass
was completed, everything went according to plan," he said.
NMFS reported 80 percent to 90 percent of the edible meat and blubber
had been removed from the carcass by 3 a.m. Tuesday, the work done by
tribal members and a visiting Alaska native with whaling experience.
Critics complained he was paid for his help.
"We paid this man in eagle feathers and gifts," Bowechop said.
Seeking expert advice was "practical and logical," she said. "Even this
we're being criticized for."
http://www.trib.com/HOMENEWS/STATE/MakahWhaling.html

--------- "RE: Spiritual Beliefs" ---------

Date: Thu, 20 May 1999 20:00:46 -0700
From: John Wm Sloniker <johnwms@SERV.NET>
Subj: Spiritual beliefs

Spiritual beliefs propel both whalers and foes
http://www.seattletimes.com/news/local/html98/whal_19990520.html
by <esorensen@seattletimes.com> Eric Sorensen
Seattle Times staff reporter
NEAH BAY, Clallam County - For anti-whaling activist Jonathan
Paul, the defining moment came at the age of 15, when he dropped a
large rock on a chickadee wounded by a friend.
"It changed my life, like that," Paul said.
For Donny Swan, 23, it came Monday as he put the second harpoon in
a gray whale, helped pull it close to the surface, and dove into the
water to run a towline around its tail.
Paul's moment convinced him it was wrong to kill - anything.
Swan's moment, part of the Makah Indians' first successful whale
hunt in more than 70 years, crystallized the purpose of his tribe's
quest and justified one of the most controversial hunting trips in
local history.
"There are no words to describe it," Swan said. "I felt the
ancestors were out there spiritually. It happened at the right time
and the right place. I think it was meant to be."
The two men could not be further apart. Paul was born to wealth;
Swan, like about half of his tribe's members, is unemployed. Paul is
a radical environmentalist who was bent on stopping the hunt in which
Swan played a central role.
Both believe their missions are driven by religious conviction.
"For us to protect the whales is the most honorable and spiritual
thing we can do," said Paul, who is with the Sea Defense Alliance.
The controversy over the hunt was different from other environmental
battles, which more often pit ecologically minded activists against
business concerns or, more recently, property-rights proponents.
Spirituality was gasoline on the fire here, giving both sides a
conviction without compromise. It transformed a few ragtag groups
into organizations of incredible will and resolve.
It infused an environmental and animal-rights dispute with the
emotions of a religious war.
When the notion of a Makah whale hunt started gathering steam more
than a year ago - after the International Whaling Commission cleared
the way for the tribe to take up to five gray whales a year - some
people in Neah Bay wondered whether a crew made up of so many rough-
edged bachelors was up to the task.
"There was so much doubt in the community because of the mix of
men that were in there," said tribal member Ryland Bowechop. "If you
knew these guys before, you wouldn't recognize their personality,
their physical appearance, how they speak in public now. We have
treatment centers that aren't able to do that for people."
The turnaround began last June, as whaling captain Wayne Johnson
had the crew out paddling nearly every night. Over time, they got
stronger. Several quit drinking for the hunt. They grew closer
together, sweating and praying.
Darrell Markishtum, a Makah fisheries-management technician and
the crew's unofficial chaplain, took to teaching them Makah words.
"It took a lot just to get to this point," Markishtum said the
other day. "A lot of training, a lot of prayers."
Twenty miles away in Sekiu, the closest source of fuel and moorings
off the Makah reservation, protesters last fall began their own rituals
as they awaited the hunt.
Chuck Owens, a former commercial fisherman from Joyce, Clallam
County, and co-founder of the Peninsula Citizens for the Protection
of Whales, remembers the evening of Oct. 1, around a campfire. Nearby
was a 3-foot sculpture of a whale with beaming children riding on its
back. Two women sang a song, "The Last Leviathan," about the last
whale to die on the planet.
"It was really a spiritual moment when we sat around that campfire,"
said Owens, whose group periodically blocked traffic at the
reservation entrance.
Spirituality is hard to define as it is; environmental spirituality
can be even harder to pin down, though it has been attempted by people
such as Henry David Thoreau and John Muir.
"There is no church here," said Rik Scarce, a sociologist and
historian of the environmental movement who teaches at Montana State
University in Bozeman. Scarce and Jonathan Paul were held in a
Spokane jail for nearly 160 days in 1992 and 1993 for refusing to
testify about an Animal Liberation Front activist who was believed
to have vandalized laboratories at Washington State University.
Environmental spirituality is not always obvious, Scarce said.
It might be practiced in odd, on-the-spot gestures, such as putting
a rock in the crook of a tree to thank the natural world, or the
fireside drumming of Earth Firsters. But it's persistent, he said.
"It's something that they wear constantly, the way Christians wear
a cross around their neck," he said.
In general, environmental spirituality embraces the notion that
all living things are connected. The feeling can be particularly
dramatic when it involves a 40-foot whale.
"You kind of have this mutual understanding that you want to
check each other out," said Cheryl Rorabeck-Siler, an Oregon biology
teacher who kayaked past the whales while preparing to block the hunt
last fall. "He's purposely coming over to say, `Hey.' That instant,
where you can reach out and touch them, is pretty neat. An animal of
that size and magnitude and intelligence is something special."
Paul Watson, the anti-whaling activist of the Sea Shepherd
Conservation Society, whose 95-foot boat Sirenian threatened the
hunt for months, took to fighting for whales after a bison appeared
in a vision in 1973 and told him to protect "the bison of the sea."
He said his resolve was only steeled in the mid-'70s when, during
a Greenpeace protest, he looked into the eye of a whale rising out of
the water after it had been harpooned.
"I said at that moment I would do everything I could in my life to
protect the whales," he said.
In a world of things so sacred and profane, a controversy such as
the Makahs' hunt gains an extra depth and edge.
"The argument gets notched up another level," said Scarce. "It's
not vaguely about values, but it's about spiritual values - and
spiritual values reflect that which is most important to a culture.
The sides lock horns, and it is a struggle to the death. In Neah Bay,
it was a struggle to the death of a whale, and one side won."
It was a struggle indeed. On Saturday, Rorabeck-Siler rode a
jet-powered ski between the Makahs' hunting boat and a whale, similar
to what Watson had done with fellow Greenpeace volunteers more than
20 years earlier.
"It's rare that we win issues," said Jonathan Paul, whose
Sea Defense Alliance had two boats taken by the U.S. Coast Guard.
Rorabeck-Siler's personal watercraft was seized, too.
"It's so rare in this world. We don't compromise. We don't go
halfway. We go for our goal. So we don't win a lot."
Meanwhile, the Makah hunters talk a lot about the hunt going
according to plan, both technically and metaphysically.
Markishtum spoke reverentially the other day of the quiet on the
water as the crew headed out Monday.
"Everything was just right," he said. "The crew was together.
It was focused on what it had to do."
In earlier hunts, the crew had been towed to the hunting grounds.
This time, the hunters arrived under their own power. There were no
other boats in sight.
"Just us and the whales," Markishtum said. "It was incredible,
just being alone with nature. In our training, we've always been
alone, so we felt at home. With my brothers, there was nothing we
couldn't do."
They took the first whale they saw. It sounded three times, rising
so close at last that the harpooner didn't need to throw his weapon.
After the whale was killed with two .50-caliber shots, the crew
struggled to keep it from sinking. Swan, who was to sew its mouth
shut, couldn't get his scuba tank to work.
He jumped in without a respirator or mask.
"As soon as I hit the water, it was a major adrenaline rush," he
said. "I felt the ancestors there. My great-grandfather's birthday
was three days ago. I was saying, `Happy birthday, Grandpa.' It was
real touching."
Information from Seattle Times staff reporter Chris Solomon
is included in this report.
Eric Sorensen's phone message number is 206-464-8253
His e-mail address is: esorensen@seattletimes.com
Posted at 07:59 a.m. PDT; Thursday, May 20, 1999
E-mail Comments to Editor : Opinion@seatimes.com
Seattle Times: Table of Content
http://www.seattletimes.com/news/
The Seattle Times: Search Archive
http://www.seattletimes.com/extra/search.html
The Seattle Times: Browse by date
http://www.seattletimes.com/todaysnews/browse.html
Seattle Times: Special Reports
http://www.seattletimes.com/news/special/
Permission requests and information
http://www/seatimes.com/general/info.html
Copyright (c) 1999 The Seattle Times Company
http://www.seattletimes.com/news/general/copyright.html

--------- "RE: Comment on Whale Controversy" ---------

Date: Sun, 23 May 1999 21:42:53 -0400
From: Janet Smith <jans@atlcom.net>
Subj: Comment on Whale Controversy

> Isnt that what has been happening all along ... divide and conquer.
>
>> Now we hear of threats to the Makah and even other Indians. It is the
>> old racist hatred rearing

That is exactly what has been happening for five hundred years. The
invaders from across the water saw quickly that they could create envy and
suspicion among us. Many of our tribes had lived as uneasy neighbors and
had warred anyway -- it's not accurate to say we had lived in great peace
and harmony with no warfare. So it was easy to inflame old feelings,
especially by using new fears, and introducing new and more powerful
weapons, and by providing alcohol to dull judgment.
Yes, the Makah traditions are shocking to some and even offensive. I
daresay that if people knew some of the less well-publicized realities of
Lakota traditional ceremonies that are still practiced, there would be a
storm of controversy about that, too (and no, I am not going to discuss
the details and feed that storm). But far more threatening to some people
than any shock at the violence or potential danger to the whale population
is the fact that the Makah's insistence on their treaty right to hunt
whale is a small step toward tribal sovereignty. I'm not talking about
any people on this list who are worried about tribal sovereignty. I'm
pretty sure the vast majority, if not all of us, firmly support the return
of sovereign rights to the Indian nations. I'm talking about others
OUTSIDE our group who stir up outrage and suspicion among us against each
other each time we take a step that makes us more financially independent
or increases our legal right to make our own decision ("look at what THEY
are doing? Isn't that terrible!!!" Somebody ought to DO something to stop
them!"). These people don't care as much as they say about whales or
gambling addicts. Their concern is that Indians are becoming "Indian"
again -- stepping away from the several-centuries-old pressures to forget
our traditions and language and become mainstream suburban consumers who
are nominally Christian out of us. And they are falling back to their old
familiar tactic of turning us against each other to suppress each other
for them, rather than facing us like real people themselves.
Those who hate our ways know many of us love animals. They know we are
concerned about vanishing wildlife -- and they prey on our sensitivities
and our fears, just as they always did. Folks -- I don't believe
wildlife is the issue truly pushing this controversy. I know most of you
are truly upset by the things you saw on the media, and I think you were
INTENDED to be upset by this and divided against the Makah people. Think
about it. When did you last see any Indian nation or individual get THIS
much air time on national TV? Indian people walked 500 miles to save not
just one, but many of the last wild herd of buffalo in Yellowstone Park
from the guns of Montana this winter. Did they get this much air time? I
don't think so. Instead, a week after the walk, an Indian newspaper
published an article personally attacking the walk's leaders, questioning
their past histories and motivations. And the Montana DOL won in court
the right to shoot the buffalo. See a pattern here? Each winter elderly
people die suffering from the cold and hunger on the South Dakota
reservations and more of the youth of many tribes die of addiction. We
don't see shock and outrage about this on TV and these are human beings.
Ask yourself why. Who profits when Indian people are set against each
other?
Whether or not you are personally appalled at the Makah's traditions --
I beg of you not to get caught up in the trap of trying to subvert their
struggle for sovereignty -- their right to make a decision some of us may
not personally approve of. Do not get caught up in the arrogance of
assuming they "need to pray" (presuming they have not because they haven't
come up with the answer somebody with different traditions likes) or
assuming THEIR traditions need to change because somebody else doesn't
care for them. My Creek tribe has not applied to the Makah for approval
to restore Creek language and traditions. We would only hope for their
support in our right to do so. Please lets give them the same support
instead of supporting those who would undercut the rights and sovereignty
of us all.

--------- "RE: Way of Killing that is Sacred" ---------

Date: Sun, 23 May 1999 21:54:14 -0400
From: Janet Smith <jans@atlcom.net>
Subj: [FWD: way of killing that is Sacred

A friend posted this on a private list. Sadly, he doesn't even feel
safe posting it openly. He's experienced too much pain already due to
divisiveness among his own people. He did, however, give me permission
to pass it on if I withheld his name. I believe the ideas he'd shared
are worthy of attention.
Thank you, my friend, for sharing!
Janet
------- FORWARD, Original message follows -------
There is a way of killing that is Sacred.
This is something that non-Indian people either never knew, or it's
been gone so long from their cultures that they've forgotten it entirely.
Sadly, we too have forgotten it. Most of us; the Makah are an
exception.
We kill every time we breathe, every time we move, every time we walk or
take a shower. For good or ill, and I am not one to argue (well....not
much) with Creator about this, the cycle of Life is also a cycle of
Death. If we believe in the eternal Spirit in all things, then why do
we continually find exceptions to argue about? That Spirit is changing
forms--like clothes--all the time. Sometimes that Spirit is a
Whirlwind, dancing down the road dressed in leaves and dust. At other
times it is a Whale, swimming through the ocean. The WAY in which the
form is changed makes a difference to that Spirit, not the FACT of it.
I drive past a barren stretch of land that was only yesterday covered
with living breathing pine trees and I hear their pain and feel their
sorrow. No one said please; no one said thank you. They just took
them. Killed them.
That's why all the things made from trees and earth and stone--cars,
computers, even that Safeway ribroast my wife spoke of--have no life, no
nourishment, no spirit. Because they are simply taken, as though
because we are two-leggeds with this "evolving consciousness" we have
the right to kill and change and modify everything around us without an
ounce of respect.
Far from being villians, the Makah people may be some of the handful
left on the face of the planet who remember to say please........and
thank you.

--------- "RE: Indians Walk 80 Miles for Bones" ---------

Date: Fri, 21 May 1999 08:02:13 -0500
From: berryj@okstate.edu
Subj: (FWD)Indian News 05-21-99
Roger Iron Cloud
FirstNations Listserv
202.358.3252
rironcloud@acf.dhhs.gov

Indians Walk 80 Miles for Bones
.c The Associated Press
5/20/99
SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) -- As a truck loaded with the bones of their
ancestors made its way from Massachusetts to New Mexico, more than 200
Pueblo Indians were walking on an 80-mile pilgrimage to be there when it
arrives.
The Indians were using the route their ancestors took 160 years ago,
when disease and warfare decimated Pecos Pueblo. Most of the survivors
moved to Jemez Pueblo, now a small community of scattered adobe houses
about 50 miles north of Albuquerque.
To unify the tribe and reconnect with their culture, a large group of
people from Jemez Pueblo left on foot Wednesday. They headed through the
high red rock area of northern New Mexico through the Sangre de Cristo
Mountains toward Pecos National Historic Park, about 15 miles east of
Santa Fe.
There, on Saturday, they will meet a truck that is bringing home the
bones of 1,912 people excavated between 1915 and 1929 in New Mexico's
upper Pecos Valley by archaeologist Alfred Kidder. The pueblo plans a
burial ceremony at the monument.
Harvard University handed over the remains Tuesday in the largest and
perhaps most scientifically significant transfer under the 1990 Native
American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, which requires the return
of Indian artifacts.
The bones, plus objects to be returned next week from Phillips Academy
in Andover, Mass., represent the foundation of scientific knowledge about
early cultures of the American Southwest, said James Bradley, director of
the Peabody Andover museum.
Jemez Pueblo Gov. Raymond Gachupin said the walk to the Pecos monument
was a way for the entire community to get involved.
"I think it's mostly to pay tribute to our ancestors to give us an ide a
of the pain and tribulations that they went through," he said. "For them,
it was a matter of survival. For us, it is a matter of respect."
Walkers on Wednesday, the first day, included the young and old. Some
wore traditional attire of a cotton dress, sash belt and moccasins, while
others were in sweats and running shoes.
According to the Jemez creation story, Father Sun warned that if the
people neglected or forgot the traditional ways, he would take their lands
for someone else. Today, the culture remains strong: Children in the 3,
200-member tribe learn their traditional language, Towa, before English.
"Other pueblos are losing their language," tribal official Cruz Toya
said. "The reason we are here is to show the people, our ancestors, we
care. By doing this we also teach the kids our language and culture.
Hopefully, they will carry this on and tell their kids the history we
made."

--------- "RE: Mexico Rebel Leader Denies Reforms" ---------

Date: Fri, 21 May 1999 08:02:13 -0500
From: berryj@okstate.edu
Subj: (FWD)Indian News 05-21-99
Roger Iron Cloud
FirstNations Listserv
202.358.3252
rironcloud@acf.dhhs.gov

Mexico Rebel Leader Denies Reforms
By MICHELLE RAY ORTIZ
.c The Associated Press
5/20/99
LA REALIDAD, Mexico (AP) -- The leader of Mexico's Zapatista rebels has
dismissed election reforms by the ruling party, saying an upcoming
presidential vote will not be any more democratic. Whoever the victor, he
said, his movement would continue to push for Indian rights.
The ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, has decided for
the first time to hold primaries to select a candidate to run for
president in July 2000 elections, instead of following the tradition of
having the incumbent -- in this case President Ernesto Zedillo -- pick his
successor.
In a rare interview with a foreign reporter, the Zapatistas'
Subcomandante Marcos said Tuesday that Zedillo was just trying to appear
that he is expanding democracy -- while the system will still allow his
political machine to control the choice of nominee.
The man seen as Zedillo's personal pick, former interior secretary
Francisco Labastida, got a boost Wednesday when two potential opponents,
Veracruz Gov. Miguel Aleman and Social Development Secretary Esteban
Moctezuma, announced they would not run in the Nov. 7 primaries.
That leaves two other major challengers: Tabasco state Gov. Roberto
Madrazo and former Puebla Gov. Manuel Bartlett, who is also a former
interior secretary.
Marcos, wearing his trademark black ski mask and holding an AR-15
assault rifle on his lap, said Zedillo's free-market cadre within the PRI
is determined to put a like-minded candidate in place rather than an old-
-style populist favoring big government, which would describe most of the
other contenders.
The president is also under pressure to keep differences between the two
PRI factions from exploding -- as many Mexicans believed happened in 1994
when PRI candidate Luis Donaldo Colosio was assassinated at a campaign
rally.
"The main goal is not to choose a candidate, but to choose one without
bloodshed," Marcos said. Marcos said his Zapatista National Revolutionary
Army will continue to make the same demand of the next president --
greater justice for Mexico's poor Indians.
"Our demands will not change," he said. "The attitude of the Zapatistas
toward this new head of federal government will be the same regardless of
which political party it is."

--------- "RE: House OKs Land Treaty Restrictions" ---------

Date: Fri, 21 May 1999 01:14:27 -0500
From: hdqrs@worldnet.att.net
Subj: President Nixon started this land giveaway to the UN; and Now
the Demo's want to keep it going!

Mailing List: TRIBALLAW (triballaw@thecity.sfsu.edu)

House OKs Land Treaty Restrictions
By JIM ABRAMS Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The House moved Thursday to give Congress veto power
over U.N. land designations, with supporters saying that such international
actions threaten the property rights of Americans.
The bill, opposed by the administration and with poor prospects in the
Senate, would require congressional consent before any federal land can be
included in an international land reserve. It is aimed specifically at two
U.N. programs -- biosphere reserves and World Heritage areas.
Supporters, led by Rep. Don Young, chairman of the House Resources
Committee, said the Constitution gives Congress alone the authority to
manage federal lands. Young, R-Alaska, said decisions on land use are "a
responsibility of Congress, not some U.N. committee of unelected
bureaucrats."
Opponents said the bill addressed a phantom problem because the
designations give the United Nations no control over U.S. lands and change
no U.S. laws. Several lawmakers said the proposal was motivated by
unfounded fears of the United Nations.
"It caters to the suspicions and the conspiracy theories of extreme
organizations and individuals," said Rep. Joseph Hoeffel, D-Pa. "This
really ought to be entitled the American land paranoia act," added Rep.
Jay Inslee, D-Wash.
Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt, in a statement, said: "President Nixon
signed the World Heritage legislation as a way of exporting one of
America's best ideas, our national parks. I am sure we can expect the
Senate again to ignore (the House bill), which is all it deserves."
The bill, which passed by voice, gives Congress veto power over World
Heritage areas, a program started by a U.N. agency, UNESCO, in 1972 to
identify world sites of exceptional interest and universal value.
There are 20 sites in the United States, including 18 national parks such
as the Statue of Liberty, Independence Hall and Yellowstone.
The bill also would end all 47 existing U.N. biosphere reserves in the
United States unless Congress authorizes them by the end of 2003. The
program, established in 1968 for the study of environments around the
world, includes the Southern Appalachian Biosphere Reserve, which covers
six states in the southeast.
The bill would also affect 16 wetlands sites under a third U.N. program.
Rep. Bruce Vento, D-Minn., who opposed the bill, won acceptance of an
amendment that would also give Congress authority to stop mining, timber
harvesting and other foreign commercial activities on U.S. lands. Those
activities, he said, represented a greater threat to the nation than the
U.N. designations. The vote was 262-158.
The Republican majority tried unsuccessfully in the past two congresses to
move similar bills. In the last Congress the bill passed the House but was
never taken up by the Senate.
----
The bill is H.R. 883.
AP-NY-05-20-99 1850EDT

--------- "RE: Kee Begay and Kee Shay Letters" ---------

Date: Thu, 20 May 1999 03:34:23 -0800
From: Robert Dorman <redorman@theofficenet.com>
Subj: Kee Begay & Kee Shay Letters

Mailing List: Big Mountain List <bigmtlist@hotmail.com>

From: DINETAH29@aol.com
Date: Wed, 19 May 1999 22:17:51 EDT
Dear Big Mountain Supporters,
This letter from Kee Z. Begay was sent certified, return receipt requested.
As you will notice, Kee never received a five-day notice prior to
impoundment. Please mention this when you call the BIA.
Thanks,
Yours sincerely,
Marsha

Kee Z. Begay
P.O. Box 869
Pinon, AZ 86510

To: Ms. Heather Sibbison
Counsel to the Secretary
US Department of the Interior
1849 C Street NW Mail Stop 4140
Washington, DC 20240

To: Ms. Hilda Manuel
Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA)
US Department of the Interior
1849 C Street, NW Mail stop 4140
Washington, DC 20240

My whiteface Hereford cow-NI/MH was impounded on April 20, 1999. I never
received a five-day notice of intent to impound, not prior to the
confiscation or at anytime thereafter.
On May 3, 1999, was the first time that I heard that my animal was
impounded.
I first found out about this when one of my family members saw a Notice
of Intent to sell my impounded cow in the Navajo Times. This notice said
that my cow would be sold at the Valley Livestock Auction in Holbrook, a
public auction on May 5, 1999. Publishing notices in the Navajo Times is
also of no use since we do not read English and since I have no
transportation I was unable to do anything on such short notice. And
furthermore, this notice in the Navajo Times does not fulfill your proper
notice requirements since this was the first time we heard our cow was
impounded. It is before impoundment occurs that we are supposed to be
served a five-day notice.
My cow was illegally seized without proper notice as required in 25 CFR.
This has caused me great suffering. I am in a helpless position, I cannot
speak, read or write English. My wife and I both suffer health problems
and I have a heart condition and just got discharged from the hospital on
April 30th. On May 3, when we found out we had no way to even contact the
BIA as we have no transportation and we had to watch our beloved cow sold
at auction even though we never received a five-day notice. This means that
our cow was stolen away from us and we were unable to stop it.
How much suffering must we endure at the hands of the Bureau of Indian
Affairs (BIA)? I know this letter will not give me back my cow but I
request you take action to remedy this situation. This is not the first
time the BIA has violated me. Please make sure this is the last time.
You don't even follow your own laws which request prior notification be
served. Therefore, I request you immediately replace my cow by giving me
2 cows for the hardship this has cause me. If you do not do this, then
you are saying you want this abuse and violation to continue. And if you
do not replace my cow, then I request that you give me all the money
collected for my cow at public auction.
I urgently request that your BIA officials travel with a Dineh translator
as most of my people do not speak Hopi or English. I also request a full
set of records of the sale of all animals bearing my brand sold at auction
since a neighbor told me they saw an impoundment trailer coming from here
full of cows.
Please respond to this letter immediately.
Yours sincerely,
Kee Z. Begay
cc: Robert Carolin, Superintendent
U.S. Department of the Interior
Bureau of Indian Affairs
Hopi Agency
P.O. Box 158
Keams Canyon, AZ 86034
====================================
From: DINETAH29@aol.com
Date: Wed, 19 May 1999 22:18:09 EDT

Dear Big Mountain Supporters,
This letter from Kee Shay was sent certified, return receipt requested to
Wayne Taylor, Chairman of the Hopi Tribe. It is our hope he will grant an
extension of time to Kee Shay so that we can obtain copies of the Ordinances
cited in this Order.
Please keep the pressure up.
Yours sincerely,
Marsha
Kee Shay
P.O. Box 203
Kykotsmovi, AZ 86039

May 17, 1999

Wayne Taylor, Jr.
Chairman, The Hopi Tribe
P.O. Box 123
Kykotsmovi, AZ 86039

Dear Mr. Taylor,

I am submitting this written response to the Office of the Chairman to
verify that I received the Proposed Order of Exclusion on May 7 by US mail,
also seen hanging on the wall of the Kykotsmovi post office.

This date of May 7th represents the earliest date of receipt since no notice
appeared in the Navajo Times during the week of May 6, 1999 and no notice
appeared in the Navajo Hopi Observer during the week of May 5, 1999.

Therefore, counting 15 days from May 7th, I have until May 22, 1999 to
submit a complete response. However, of significant importance to the merit
of my response, I must ask for a 30 day extension beyond May 22 until June
21, 1999 in order to obtain copies of the following documents and have time
to review its contents:
- Ordinance 46 which I believe is the Exclusion Order
- Ordinance 43, which I believe is the Grazing Ordinance
- Unknown Ordinance number prohibiting unauthorized placement and/or
construction of dwelling and associated structures on the Hopi Reservation
and
- all other Ordinances that apply under 2. You have violated other
ordinances.....

Please send me copies of all these Ordinances and notification that you have
granted me an extension of time in writing to my address. And upon receipt
and review of these documents, will submit my response prior to June 21,
1999.

Yours sincerely,
Kee Shay
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
You are on the BIGMTLIST, a moderated mailing list of Big Mountain
relocation resistance information (not discussion or debate). To
unsubscribe, email redorman@theofficenet.com with "unsubscribe" in the
subject header. For non-list members receiving this post as a forwarded
message, you may subscribe by emailing redorman@theofficenet.com with the
word "subscribe" in the subject header. For Big Mountain and other
activist internet resources, visit "The Activist Page" at
http://www.theofficenet.com/~redorman/welcome.html
Also, for great internet tools please visit:
http://www.msw.com.au/cgi-bin/msw/entry?id=1271

--------- "RE: First Lady Ignores Big Mt." ---------

Date: Thu, 20 May 1999 09:34:36 -0800
From: Robert Dorman <redorman@theofficenet.com>
Subj: First Lady Ignores Big Mt.

Mailing List: Big Mountain List <bigmtlist@hotmail.com>

From: Bahe Yazzie Katenay <byk@dana.ucc.nau.edu>
Subj: 1st Lady Tour......

Greetings Supporters,
Since I'm Dineh and this Turtle Island (North America) is my ancient
country, I have every right to state my opinion and refer to any
government official as appropriately as possible. No apologies necessary.
First Lady, "Hilter" R. Clinton is no different then all the other leaders
of this 'male-dominated' society. The Big Mountain Sovereign Dineh Nation
resistors, mostly women elders, have written numerous letters to this high
government official. There was several personal but official letter that
members of the Weaving for Freedom (Dineh weavers collective) send to the
First Lady, and asking for her to visit the weavers homelands and witness
the situation that the resistors are subjected to.
The First Lady's secretarial office have responded but there was no direct
response from the First Lady. However, despite all the important letters
brought to her attention she chose to "preserve" asphalt-nature trails at
the Grand Canyon and a rusty telescope that sits on a hill in Flagstaff,
Arizona. She stopped in Flagstaff last night just to take a look at Mars
and at another star. Her speech basically stated that it is most important
to save every "treasure" that are endangered throughout America. Last
night in Flagstaff she said, "There are many places, just like in your own
back yards, that are facing endangerment. These very unique sites are
well-document, many have accumulated archaeological informations and many
of the sites still hold hundreds of artifacts. So, I just want to make all
of you aware that, we should not just take this for granted." Mrs.
"Hilter" R. Clinton obviously doesn't think that the last traditional
society like in Big Mountain is not endangered, or that it should be
considered as a treasure.
As Americans, I would like to suggest to you all and others to immediately
write to the First Lady that she missed a natural society (that is only a
80 mile helicopter ride from Flagstaff) which needs their cultural and
land preserved. Tell her that she definitely knew where she was at and her
ignorance shows an overall "American mentality" of denial the 'ethic
cleansing' that is occurring in this country. Anyway, just state to
her in a kindly manner than how I have stated my feelings.
Again, thank you to all for your time.
In the Spirit of Barboncito, Bahe

--------- "RE: Your Support is Urgently Needed" ---------

Date: Tue, 18 May 1999 09:25:19 -0800
From: Robert Dorman <redorman@theofficenet.com>
Subj: YOUR SUPPORT IS URGENTLY NEEDED!

Mailing List: Big Mountain List <bigmtlist@hotmail.com>

Date: Tue, 18 May 1999 02:34:25 PDT
From: "Alternative Avenue Arts & Apothecary" <altave@excite.com>
YOUR SUPPORT IS URGENTLY NEEDED!
The Dine'h people at Big Mountain, Arizona, desperately, urgently need
your help to stop the human rights violations being committed against them
by the United States government. They have been given the ultimatum that
they are to be off their sacred land of Big Mountain by February, 2000.
The media has been curiously silent about this entire issue. The Dine'h
people need your help to force the national media to make public the
atrocities that they are having to endure. They also need your help to
continually remind Congress, the President and Vice President that the
laws that were enacted to cause the mistreatment of the Dine'h people must
be repealed. Time is running out for the Dine'h people--and for us all.
Imagine that what is happening to the Dine'h people is happening to you
and your family. The Dine'h people living at Big Mountain on the HPL (Hopi
Partitioned Land) in Arizona are the victims of violations of human rights,
including starvation, denial of water, forbiddance to gather firewood for
heat during the winter, theft and mistreatment of their livestock, and
attempted genocide, all at the hands of the United States government. All
attempts to take the matter before a court of law have been blocked by
the government that is perpetrating the crimes. Don't take my word for it;
but don't ignore it, either. Learn the heartbreaking details that can be
seen and read in the many articles and photographs accessible via
http://members.xoom.com/senaa/index2.html.

The land upon which they now live has always been holy to the Dine'h and
Hopi people; and until the government stepped in, the two tribes willingly
shared the sacred site. There is no land dispute; and according to both
the Dine'h and the Hopi, there never was. The dispute was a fabrication
by the U.S. government designed to clear the area so that Peabody Coal
Company can strip mine the sacred site. That fact becomes painfully clear
when the chronology is studied. (http://www.applicom.com/vbm/Chron.htm)

Read the accounts and study the photos carefully.
Remember as you read these accounts that this CAN happen to YOU!
If the U.S. government can, at its whim, pass laws and enact bills that
deny the Dine'h people virtually all human, civil, and Constitutionally
guaranteed rights, even the right to life itself; then that same
government can do the same thing to anyone! The government's behavior in
this case renders hypocritical and worthless the entire foundation of the
Constitution and all other laws of this nation, that foundation being the
Bill of Rights.
If the foundation of the United States government is destroyed, how can
the government itself survive? For what purpose did all the American
soldiers since the signing of the Declaration of Independence fight and
die?
Since the first European immigrants began colonizing this continent and
the government that would become the United States began constructing
itself, it has mixed its mortar with the blood of the indigenous people,
formed its bricks from the flesh of our ancestors, and reinforced its
walls with our ancestors' bones. We cannot change the past by reliving it
in our minds. We can only remember the bravery of our ancestors and the
bitter lessons that we have learned from those experiences. But we CAN
change the future by refusing to allow the United States government to
continue its massacre of our people, and that is EXACTLY what is
happening to the Dine'h people at Big Mountain.
The difference between this and past massacres is that, instead of using
overt military force to destroy the Dine'h with bullets and bayonets, the
government is resorting to the Nazi's early tactics of masked genocide,
using starvation, thirst, exposure to the elements, imposed helplessness,
and radiation contaminated land and water to eradicate people who stand
between government and the almighty dollar. This Dine'h massacre is also a
massacre of spirit, killing the spirit of independence and attempting to
mold from the broken remains a spirit of weakness and dependence. At the
same time, because the government's own laws forbid such atrocities, it
enacts new laws to legalize its cruelty. To justify these new laws, the
government fabricates stories of "land disputes" between the Hopi and the
Dine'h.
The truth is that the puppet Hopi and Navajo Tribal Councils that were
originally created by the U.S. government for the sole purpose of signing
mineral rights over to the U.S. government and mining companies created
the illusion of a land dispute that did not exist in real life.
The only land dispute that existed (and still exists) was that Peabody
Coal Company and the government wanted to mine the land that both the
Dine'h and Hopi people have held sacred for centuries. To do so, however,
would violate the Dine'h and Hopi's Constitutionally guaranteed freedom to
exercise their religion and the guarantee that the right would not be
infringed. To solve this dilemma, the new laws that were written made
criminals of all who refused to leave their sacred lands and stripped them
of ALL rights, including the right to survival and the right to practice
their religious beliefs.
How can laws that take away human, Constitutional, and civil rights be
legally binding? Perhaps they are not. Maybe that is exactly why the U.S.
government has blocked all attempts by the Dine'h to have the case heard
by the federal courts.

TO SET THE RECORD STRAIGHT:
I am NOT anti-American or anti-government. I AM, however, opposed to
corrupt, money hungry government officials who value the dollar above
human rights and human life. I stand opposed to the concept that a
government "of..., by..., and for the people" can guarantee certain rights
to ALL the people on one hand and on the other hand pass bills that deny
ALL of those same rights to certain ethnic or religious groups. That is
what the Dine'h struggle is really all about: adamant opposition to unjust,
discriminatory, unconstitutional laws that have no legitimate place in
American society.
THE DINE'H PEOPLE AND I ASK FOR YOUR HELP. HELP US FIGHT THE INHUMAN
TREATMENT OF THESE PEOPLE. HELP RECOVER FOR THEM THE DIGNITY AND RIGHTS
TO "LIFE, LIBERTY, AND THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS" THAT WERE STRIPPED AWAY
FROM THEM BY THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT.
REPEATEDLY CONTACT THE MEDIA. REPEATEDLY CONTACT EVERY CONGRESSMAN.
REPEATEDLY CONTACT THE PRESIDENT AND VICE PRESIDENT. REPEATEDLY CONTACT
THE UNITED NATIONS.
DEMAND that the American public be made aware of these crimes perpetrated
against the Dine'h people by the U.S. government.
DEMAND that Public Laws 93-531 and 104-301 and S1973 The Navajo Hopi Land
Dispute Settlement Act of 1996, signed into law by Bill Clinton, be
REPEALED.
DEMAND that ALL civil, Constitutional and human rights be fully and
immediately restored to the Dine'h people.
DEMAND that the Dine'h people be compensated by the U.S. government for
the extreme hardship that it has inflicted upon the Dine'h people.
DEMAND that the Dine'h people have all livestock returned to their
possession in healthy condition.
DEMAND that rebuilding, repair, and renovations of the Dine'h homes begin
immediately so these people can live decent, healthy lives.
DEMAND that Peabody Coal Company be made to comply with federal mining
regulations and replenish the water supply taken from the aquifer that
lies beneath the Hopi and Dine'h dwellings so that the Hopi and Dine'h
will once again have sufficient water for themselves and their livestock.
DEMAND that Peabody Coal Company (PCC) and the Mojave Generating Station
(MGS) be ordered by the EPA to clean up the air, water and soil that they
have contaminated since their openings in Arizona and keep their pollution
to an absolute minimum.
DEMAND that PCC and MGS abide by the Dine'h people's rights to free
expression of religion, including the preservation of their holy sites
such as Big Mountain and others.
DEMAND that a thorough clean-up be conducted of the area contaminated by
uranium mining and that it be done in such a manner that contamination
levels in the streams will return to levels at or below the recommended
"safe" level of radiation.
THE RIGHTS OF EVERY INDIGENOUS AMERICAN HANGS IN THE BALANCE!
WE MUST UNITE AND ACT AS ONE TO HELP THE DINE'H PEOPLE!
IF WE ALLOW THESE ATROCITIES AGAINST THE DINE'H TO CONTINUE, IT WILL TIP
THE SCALES TO SUCH A DEGREE THAT WE MAY NEVER BE ABLE TO RECOVER.
GO TO: http://members.xoom.com/senaa/index2.html NOW.
READ ABOUT IT AND GET INVOLVED.
WE HAVE A PAGE WITH ALL THE SENATORS' E-MAIL ADDRESSES. JUST CLICK THE
LINK, KEY IN YOUR MESSAGE, AND CLICK SEND. (Copying your message to the
clipboard and pasting it into your e-mail message saves a lot of time.)
THE E-MAIL ADDRESSES FOR THE MAJOR NATIONAL NEWS NETWORKS ARE:
CNN: on-air@turner.com
48HOURS: 48hours@cbsnews.com
FOX NEWS: comments@foxnews.com
NBC NEWS: nightly@nbc.com
ABCNEWS(ONLINE FORM): http://abcnews.go.com/service/abc_contactus.html
20/20 (ONLINE FORM): http://abcnews.go.com/onair/email.html

Thank you for your support of this vital issue.
DON'T FORGET:
TO UNDERSCORE THE IMPORTANCE OF THIS ISSUE, I REAFFIRM THE FOLLOWING
PLEDGE:
IF, by 1 June 1999, the national media have not aired and/or published
anything about Big Mountain and the ongoing struggle of the Dine'h people,
SENAA asks of all indigenous Americans of all tribal affiliations and ALL
Native American organizations who read this notice that you join us at
Tinsley Park in Cleveland, Tennessee, on Tuesday, 1 June 1999, for prayer
for the Dine'h people, a unification rally designed to bring us closer
together, and a press release.
THE PURPOSE OF THE PRESS RELEASE will be to announce the beginning of
the more than 1,800 mile walk from Cleveland, Tennessee, to Big Mountain,
Arizona.
I, Al Swilling, Will begin the journey alone to symbolize that all Native
Americans are united as one in our efforts, will, and prayers for the
healing and restoration of the Dine'h people.
After the first mile, anyone who so desires is welcome to join me on this
trek. I will see the journey through to its end, providing I don't break
a leg. Any who wish to travel part or all of the way with me is welcome.
I will travel approximately 25 miles per day and should arrive in Arizona
on or around 14 August 1999, taking approximately 75 days for the entire
trip.
The only thing I ask of anyone who chooses to join me on this walk is
that you prepare for your own food and water. I will be traveling on a very
tight budget and will be carrying only the gear absolutely necessary for
the trip. If I could, I would provide for as many as want to join me; but
the simple fact is, funds are very limited. I simply can't afford to
finance anyone other than myself. This is strictly a voluntary undertaking.
I hope that I can count on your support and your help between now and 1
June 1999. If the march becomes necessary, I ask that you take the time
to come to the gathering for prayer on this and other important issues
before the journey begins. I will give each person who comes to the
gathering the opportunity to offer a prayer concerning any issue or
individual that he or she feels that the group's prayers will benefit. If
it takes all day and night to get to everyone, then that is how long it
will take.
In the meantime, please remember me in your prayers and pray that the
Creator will give me the strength to complete the journey and that the
Creator will also give me the correct words to say and the opportunity
while on the road to unite indigenous people at each stop.
Looking forward to praying with each of you, I remain
Yours sincerely
Al Swilling
SENAA President/Founder
senaa@excite.com
The Scry's the Limit!
Everything you need for your spiritual path at:
http://members.xoom.com/altave/index.html

--------- "RE: Drought Warning Goes out to Navajo Ranchers" ---------

Date: Mon, 24 May 1999 16:17:08 GMT
From: Randy Ww <lotanna@my-dejanews.com>
Subj: Drought warning goes out to Navajo ranchers

Newsgroup: alt.native

from the Arizona Republic @ http://www.azcentral.com/news/0524dry.shtml

Tribal officials issue alert on need to reduce herds
By Bill Donovan
Special for The Republic
May 24, 1999
WINDOW ROCK -- When tribal officials began warning Navajo ranchers in
1996 that a major drought was coming, they found few willing to listen.
The reasons for the resistance were both cultural and historical, as
well as economic. But over the next year, as the reservation was hit by
the century's worst drought, ranchers had to sell off a large part of
their herds or sit around and watch them die.
Today, history is threatening to repeat itself.
"We're now facing the same situation," said Eugene Guerito, director of
the tribe's emergency management department. "Hopefully, this time, more
will listen."
But that is no sure thing. For traditional Navajos, raising livestock is
linked to their religion, as reflected in the saying, "If you care for
your sheep, your sheep will care for you."
And in 1996, many Navajo ranchers feared that the warnings of drought
were merely a ploy by federal officials to reduce tribal herds to improve
the grazing capacity of tribal lands.
In the end, tribal grazing officials estimated that the ranchers lost
hundreds of thousands of dollars by waiting until many of their sheep and
cattle were near starvation.
Precipitation this past winter has been way below normal, and tribal
range officials said that forecasts for this summer say the situation
isn't going to improve.
Already, a number of communities in the western portion of the
reservation, north of Flagstaff, have been complaining of dry conditions,
said Elizabeth Washburne, director of the tribe's department of
agriculture.
"We're now in the process of telling Navajo ranchers to take whatever
steps they need now to reduce their herd size," he said.
To do this, Guerito and other tribal officials have been using a bit of
Anglo psychology.
"We've been urging Navajo ranchers to reduce their herds so they won't
have to work as hard day in and day out," he said. He added that this is a
concept that takes traditional Navajos - used to working from dawn to dusk
- a while to get used to.
Tribal officials must also contend with traditional Navajo values that
base a person's wealth on the number of livestock his family has.
Navajos' suspicion over officials' cries of "drought" stem from a long-
standing battle with the Bureau of Indian Affairs over stock reduction
that dates back to the 1930s. At that time, federal officials ordered
hundreds of thousands of sheep and cattle to be slaughtered and dumped in
mass graves to alleviate overgrazing.
But tribal officials are telling Navajo ranchers that the current
drought conditions aren't coming just from the BIA.
The May report for the Palmer Drought Severity Index, used by
meteorologists to predict weather trends, has shown steadily worsening
drought conditions in the Southwest in the last few months; it now
indicates moderate to severe drought in slightly more than half of Arizona.
Since May and June are normally dry and hot in most parts of the state,
the forecast indicates that drought conditions "will certainly worsen"
over the next few weeks.
Dr. Randall Cerveny, a professor of climatology at Arizona State
University, said only two areas of Arizona are now listed as "severe"
drought areas: the northwest near Kingman and the southeast near Douglas.
All other areas are listed as "moderate," he said, except for Yuma,
which is listed as "near normal."
Guerito's office is asking the Navajo Nation Council for $200,000 in
emergency relief funds, and also is asking that the money be given
directly to his office instead of dividing it up equally among the 110
communities on the reservation, regardless of whether they have an
emergency.
"Dividing it up only results in a lot being wasted," he said.
It's also preventing the tribe from getting reimbursed by the Federal
Emergency Management Agency, he said, which requires detailed record-
keeping and proof that the tribal funds were actually used to alleviate
emergency conditions.

--------- "RE: Cherokee Elections to be Monitored" ---------

Date: Wed, 19 May 1999 09:10:06 -0500
From: berryj@okstate.edu
Subj: (FWD)Indian News 05-19-99
Roger Iron Cloud
FirstNations Listserv
202.358.3252
rironcloud@acf.dhhs.gov

Cherokee elections to be monitored By ROB MARTINDALE c. Tulsa World
5/18/99
TAHLEQUAH -- The Carter Center, which has monitored elections in several
Third World nations, will oversee Cherokee Nation tribal voting on
Saturday.
A spokeswoman for the Carter Center in Atlanta said Monday that it will
mark the first time the center has observed voting by an American Indian
tribe.
Center spokeswoman Ann Carney said a team of about 10 election observers
would come to northeastern Oklahoma to work at tribal polling precincts.
The center is sending a team at the requests of the tribe's election
commission, several candidates and members of the Cherokee Nation council,
she said.
Former President Jimmy Carter, chairman of the center's board of
trustees, will not come to Oklahoma.
He and teams from the center have observed elections in 15 countries.
Cherokee Chief Joe Byrd, whose administration has been scarred by two
years of controversy, said he welcomed the visit from the center.
``I am looking forward to a fair and impartial election process,'' said
Byrd, who is seeking a second four-year term.
The tribe has been in chaos since February 1997, when the tribe's
Marshal Service raided Byrd's headquarters in search of evidence of
alleged misuse of funds.
The raid was followed by an FBI probe into the tribe, the chief's
subsequent firing of the marshals, the closing of the tribal courthouse by
the Byrd administration and several federal audits.
An FBI investigation is officially still under way, and Bureau of Indian
Affairs police officers have been assigned to the 14-county jurisdiction
of the tribe, which has about 200,000 members and is second in size only
to the Navajo Nation.
The tribe's high court had supported the raid on Byrd's offices, and the
chief was named in charges of obstruction of justice in connection with
the marshals' firing.
Chief candidates who were not involved in the crisis are Meredeth
Frailey of Locust Grove, Haskell Murphy of Tahlequah and Maxie Thompson of
Rose.
A complete list of candidates for deputy chief includes Bill John Baker
of Tahlequah, Paula Holder of Warner, Bob Leach of Albuquerque, Hastings
Shade of Hulbert and Gary Stopp of Tahlequah.
Baker and Holder are members of the 15-member tribal council, where the
Byrd administration has the support of eight loyalists.
However, the council frequently has not been able to meet because six
dissenting council members have boycotted meetings and forced the lack of
a quorum of 10.
Among the six is Holder, who is running for deputy chief on a slate with
Ragsdale. Baker is running for deputy chief on Byrd's ticket.
The tribe also will hold elections for council seats. The candidates
are:
District 1, Cherokee
Jessup Bryant, Kyle Downing Bussey, Don Crittenden and John Ketcher, all
of Tahlequah; and Sherman Nofire of Welling; Boyd Smith and Harley Terrell
of Park Hill; and Raymond Vann of Tahlequah.

District 2, Trail of Tears
Sam Jack Chaphan, Betty Hale- Frogg, Jackie Bob Martin, Paul Pinkerton
and Dora Mae Watie, all of Stilwell; and Harold ``Jiggs'' Phillips of
Westville.

District 3, Sequoyah
Debbie Cato, James Locust, Donald Quinton and David Thornton, all of
Vian; and Mary Flute-Cooksey of Marble City.

District 4, Three Rivers
Patsy Brickey of Fort Gibson; Teasie McCrary of Warner; and Don Garvin
and Calvin Rock, both of Muskogee.

District 5, Delaware
Barbara Conness and Jesse Glass, both of Kansas, Okla.; Kale Parman of
Ketchum; Patti Holland, Barbara Starr-Scott and Melvina Shotpouch, all of
Jay; and George Wickliffe of Salina.

District 7, Will Rogers
Carol Ann Barkley, Harold DeMoss and Keith Hunter, all of Inola; and
James Hammett and Bob Glass, both of Claremore.

District 8, Oologah
Buel Anglen of Sperry; Nick Lay and Dorothy Jean McIntosh, both of
Ochelata; and Roger Peacock of Tulsa.

District 9, Craig
Charles Hoskin of Vinita; and Rodney Lay of Lenapah.
For more information on elections, call 1 (800) 353-2895.

--------- "RE: An Ungrateful Nation" ---------

Date: Fri, 21 May 1999 20:00:53 -0700
From: John Wm Sloniker <johnwms@SERV.NET>
Subj: An Ungrateful Nation

Navajo Hopi Observer
http://www.navajohopiobserver.com/
Navajos.com - Shi Dine', Home of the Navajo People
http://www.navajos.com/
AN UNGRATEFUL NATION - Cover Page: February '97 American History Feature
American History
http://www.thehistorynet.com

AN UNGRATEFUL NATION BY GEORGE MCCOLM
While working as an agricultural expert for the Bureau of Indian
Affairs after WW II, the author co-wrote a report that revealed the
desperate plight of the Navajo people who lived on the brink of
starvation in the American Southwest.
"Inanition," a word unfamiliar to most people, was listed as the
cause of death on many of the death certificates completed in 1947
by Navajo Service doctors who tended the residents of the Navajo
Indian reservation in the Southwest United States. The word sounded
better than its more descriptive meaning-"slow death by starvation" -
to the federal agencies that since the Treaty of 1868 had been
responsible for the care of the Navajo Nation. The euphemism's use
helped to mask the sorry state of affairs that existed on the
reservation at the end of World War II, a conflict in which many
Navajos gallantly served the Allied cause [See "Code Talkers" in
the January/February 1997 issue of American History].
As a United States naval officer in World War II, I had been in
charge of the Joint Chiefs of Staff's agricultural planning for the
post-war occupation of Japan. In the fall of 1946, I was hired by
the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) and sent to Window Rock, Arizona-
-capital of the Navajo Nation--to direct the soil conservation
program on the Navajo reservation, where living conditions were
well below the national poverty level. I reported to Reservation
Superintendent James Stewart and soon became his confidential
advisor on a number of problems that he encountered. It shocked me
to learn that no members of the Navajo Nation were being asked to
participate in any of the decisions being made "for their good" by
the BIA officials at Window Rock or in Washington, D.C.
In the late spring of 1947, when the BIA sent Elizabeth Chief to
Window Rock to conduct a study and prepare a report on the welfare
needs of the Navajo people, Stewart saw an opportunity "to convince
Washington that we really have a lot of starving Indians out here."
He told me to work closely with Elizabeth, a wonderful person who
put her heart and soul into gathering detailed information for the
report. Unfortunately, it soon became apparent to her that all of
her training had failed to prepare her emotionally for what she
experienced on the reservation. Although it was an undertaking far
beyond the requirements of official duty, Elizabeth and I dedicated
ourselves to the task of writing the "Navajo Welfare Report of 1947";
we wanted the government to know what was really happening to these
people.
Certainly, other means of getting the message back to the nation's
capital had so far proved fruitless. When Secretary of the Interior
Julius Krug toured the reservation in the fall of 1946--the first
high ranking government official to do so since the land was
allocated to the Navajos in 1868--Superintendent Stewart and tribal
leaders impressed upon him the necessity of immediate funds to stave
off widespread starvation on the reservation. They also pleaded for
job-creation projects, such as the building of schools, hospitals,
and housing, to provide much needed income to the Indians. By May
1947, however, the $50,000 in relief money allotted annually to the
Navajo Welfare Agency had been spent, and no additional funds were
forthcoming. It seemed that Secretary Krug had not reported to
President Harry Truman on what he had seen the previous fall.
Elizabeth and I hoped that our report would serve as a reminder.
Between the signing of the 1868 treaty and the turn of the century,
members of the tribe had been very happy to be left alone by the
BIA, choosing to overlook repeated treaty violations. To subsist
during those years, they cultivated small plots of land and made
good use of native plants and herds of wild game; in addition, they
earned income through sheep raising and the sale of wool, rugs, and
jewelry. But by 1920, the population of both the Navajo people and
their sheep herds had increased dramatically, making it apparent
that the reservation's resources could not support the growing
numbers.
In response to the situation, the BIA increased government welfare,
health, and medical services for Navajos during the 1920s, and in
the '30s, the agency participated in New Deal projects on the
reservation that generated a significant amount of income for its
residents. Access to this income temporarily prevented a crisis on
the reservation in 1933, when a BIA initiative threatened the food
supply of many Navajos by cutting them off from a traditional source
of meat. For at least fifty years, Navajos with large flocks of
sheep had been sharing with the poorest members of the tribe. But
now, in order to halt soil erosion on the watershed of Lake Meade--a
result of overgrazing of the reservation land--the number of Navajo-
owned sheep was sharply cut from 1.5 million to 350,000. No longer
would there be a surplus with which to feed the less fortunate
residents of the reservation. This Stock Reduction Program destroyed
the Navajos' way of life, making them more dependent on the federal
government.
During World War II, more than 3,600 Navajos served in the U.S.
military; approximately 10,000 Navajos left the reservation to work
in war plants, and another 2,000 were employed by the railroads. The
most obvious source of money flowing into the reservation during the
war years was the allotments for families of military personnel.
As I recall, our studies indicated that each Navajo serviceman was
sending home nearly $2,000 per year, far more than the average World
War II soldier. The final discharge of servicemen in 1947, however,
brought an end to this source of income. At the same time, the
various New Deal economic and social programs that had been
established years before were being discontinued, with no new work
opportunities taking their places. And, a prolonged drought, coupled
with a ruling in both New Mexico and Arizona that Navajos were not
eligible for social security benefits, made reservation life almost
unendurable for Navajo families.
Elizabeth Chief had been trained to examine medical records in order
to assess welfare needs, and she soon noticed a disturbing trend.
We had been told that many children had died on the reservation in
the spring of 1947. Subsequent examination of death certificates
confirmed that there had been an increasing number of deaths due to
inanition, or starvation. The majority of the victims were among the
elderly or very young; most of the children had died at the Indian
Bureau hospitals.
When our report was finished, Jim Stewart read it carefully and
agreed to my suggestion that we make copies for the entire staff.
We were certain that every Division Chief in Window Rock would send
a copy to his boss in the Washington office. Their doing so, we felt,
would make a greater impression than a single report. Elizabeth then
returned to Washington, very much concerned, I am sure, about how
the report would be received and what would be done to help the
Navajos.
When the Gallup, New Mexico, Independent somehow obtained a copy of
our report in August 1947, it published a wire service story about
the starving Navajos that almost immediately attracted more than
two hundred reporters to the reservation. I took the noted radio
personality Will Rogers, Jr., himself part Native-American, on a
two-day, picture-taking tour of the area, while two Chicago Tribune
reporters made a trip across the reservation with George Bowra,
editor of the Aztec, New Mexico, Independent Review. The scribes
told George that they had toured South America, Mexico, India, and
China, and nowhere had they witnessed people trying to live in such
squalor. The Denver Post subsequently published 89 articles and 4
editorials about the starving Navajos, while other prominent papers,
including The Los Angeles Examiner and the Arizona Republic,
featured the Navajos' story in juxtaposition to President Truman's
plan to aid post-war Europe.
Politicians began to condemn the Indian Bureau for neglecting the
Navajos, and the Bureau of the Budget for reducing the amount of
money Congress had appropriated for Native Americans. Wisconsin
Representative William H. Stevenson pointed out that "50 percent of
Navajo children die before they reach the age of five years . . . ,"
adding that "After 80 years of BIA management, ninety percent of the
Navajo Nation cannot speak or understand English; and schools are
available for only 25% of the Navajo children."
North Dakota Senator William Langer assailed the president and his
colleagues in The Congressional Record. "The Indian veteran returns
home," he stated, "to find deplorable conditions among his people.
Because of the lack of resources, there is no opportunity to
establish his home. He cannot get a GI loan for his home, because
the United States holds title to his land, and therefore the bank
will not give him a loan. He cannot go into the sheep or cattle
business, because he cannot get a permit from the government to run
more livestock on an already depleted range. There is no farm land
or capital available to him . . . ."
"So, Mr. President," Langer asked scornfully, "can we say that a
group of American citizens in which the tuberculosis rate is five
times that of the entire United States, is getting a square deal?
Are Indian mothers, who went down into the shadow of death to bear
the very sons who have gone out and made this marvelous record I
have cited, getting a square deal when infant mortality among the
Indians is five times greater than the rest of the country? Are the
people who have been dispossessed of nearly 90,000,000 acres of land
within the last 50 years getting a square deal? Do senators know
that Indian tribes in many states are now expressly prohibited by an
act of Congress from purchasing additional land? Even with their own
money, they cannot buy it; it is prohibited."
In October 1947, large quantities of relief supplies started to
arrive on the reservation, initially from many private donors
and later from various government agencies. The War Assets
Administration furnished the Navajos with 40,000 pounds of rice,
several hundred dozen cases of canned food, and 17.5 tons of flour,
sugar, spices, and other commodities. Two carloads of fresh fruit
were brought in by the "Friendship Train," a charity drive organized
by the Mormons, while twenty tons of clothing was shipped to Gallup
and distributed to Navajos by volunteers and the Navajo Service.
On December 17, as Congress debated the authorization of more relief
funding for the Navajos, Arizona Representative Richard Harless
castigated the U.S. government: "It is my purpose to tell why these
people are starving to death. We put them on the most worthless land
that could be found in the United States. At that time there were
some 8,000 of them. We captured them and gave them a treaty at the
point of a gun, to educate their children and furnish one teacher
for every thirty students. We agreed to furnish housing for them. We
agreed to provide for their welfare. We have never fulfilled that
treaty. We stand here today and talk about relief for foreign
nations when we have a national disgrace in our own country."
The 1947 debate in Congress over Navajo welfare left many congressmen
with a guilt complex, as indicated by Republican John Jennings, Jr.,
of Tennessee, who said: "[A]s to whether we should extend belated
relief to these people, the spirit of Christmas and the dictates
of our common humanity demand that we right the wrongs that this
country inflicted upon these Indians. We should do it while they
are alive and while the opportunity is ours." He added, "I want to
say that I feel like my Christmas turkey would choke me if I voted
against this proposition."
It was gratifying and indeed surprising to find such compassionate
congressional support for Navajo relief, and that this compassion
was, within a few years, extended to the establishment of the Navajo
Long Range Program and the Navajo Irrigation Project. Many of the
congressmen who came forward and participated in the debates had
never taken part in congressional discussions of Indian affairs. In
an article published in Nation magazine, author Carey McWilliams
tried to explain the politicians' sudden interest in Indian welfare
and noted that the Navajos' plight had become a topic of world
discussion. The government of the Soviet Union, America's Cold War
nemesis, expressed great sympathy for the Navajos as "an oppressed
minority in the United States." When an article from the Soviet
newspaper Pravda was placed in The Congressional Record, starvation
deaths on the reservation could no longer be ignored by the Truman
administration, or by any member of Congress, despite efforts to
dismiss the piece as "Russian propaganda."
An article with the worrisome headline "NAVAJOS WILL USE VIOLENCE TO
GET FOOD" appeared in the November 29, 1947 issue of the Albuquerque
Tribune. This warning, spoken by a Bishop James Moss Stoney of
Southwest Texas, was widely publicized, but the rebellion he
predicted did not occur. Navajos were loyal Americans, and they
could see that concerned citizens, private charities, and the
federal government were responding to their needs.
The Bureau of Indian Affairs maintained a very low profile in 1947,
making no effort to ward off or deny massive media and congressional
criticism it received after the release of the Navajo Welfare
Report. However, rumors did circulate that Navajo Reservation
Superintendent Stewart would be fired immediately for allowing the
"starving Navajo propaganda to get out of hand." In 1948, Congress
sent ample relief supplies to the reservation and greatly increased
the Navajo Service budget. And when Allan Harper replaced Stewart,
Bureau officials explained to the Navajos that they had sent their
"best administrator" to the reservation in order to make sure that
the allocated funds resulted in the greatest possible benefit for
their people. Furthermore, the BIA told the Navajos that Harper was
the man for the job because he would discuss his administrative
decisions with tribal leaders.
The Navajos did not protest the removal of Jim Stewart even though
he had earned their respect by not flaunting his authority. He had
shown great patience in working with individual tribal leaders,
securing their Council's approval of policies and decisions that,
in reality, had already been made by the BIA offices in Washington.
When Harper arrived in Window Rock, he was truly "a man with a
mission." Stating that it was necessary to get agency files cleared
and ready for expanded programs, he ordered that all records and
correspondence that did not apply to an ongoing program should be
removed from the files and destroyed. Special attention was given
to the Stock Reduction Program and to interagency correspondence
that had taken up so much filing space in the 1930s and early '40s.
Medical records, Navajo death records, and doctors' reports that
were "cluttering" the files also were removed. By the time this
"search and destroy" operation was completed, it was apparent that
the BIA in Washington did not want to retain any archival material
at the agency level. In 1968, I had an opportunity to study the
1947 reports retained in the Bureau's archives. The welfare report
written by Elizabeth Chief and myself had been carefully edited; it
was not the same report that we had submitted.

>From 1848, when the Indian Bureau was transferred from the War
Department to the Department of the Interior, until 1947, the Bureau
of Indian Affairs managed the personal, political, and financial
affairs of Indians in almost total secrecy. Congressional respect
for Navajos, generated by the outstandingly loyal service of both
military and civilian members of the tribe during World War II,
resulted in appropriations that improved the life of every Navajo.
The year 1947 thus became the low point and a turning point in
Navajo history. Today, Navajos who lived through the post-World War
II era are reluctant to describe their suffering. All they say is
"Things got better."

--------- "RE: What is a Treaty" ---------

Date: Thu, 20 May 1999 12:24:00 GMT
From: frosty@frostys.qc.ca
Subj: Indian Treaties. Did you Know

Newsgroup: alt.native

What is a Treaty?
A treaty is a contract between sovereign nations. The Constitution
authorizes the President with consent of two-thirds of the Senate, to
enter into a treaty on behalf of the United States. The Constitution
declares that treaties are the Supreme law of the land. As such, they
are superior to state laws and state constitutions and are equal to
laws passed by Congress. A treaty can be made on any subject but it
may not deprive a citizen of any right guaranteed by the U S
Constitution.

Does a Treaty grant rights?
No !
The Supreme Court has expressly held that an Indian Treaty is not a
grant of rights to the Indians, but a grant of rights from them? The
purpose of an Indian Treaty was not to give rights to Indians but to
remove the rights they had. Thus Indians have a great many rights in
addition to those described in treaties. In fact any right not
expressly extinguished by a treaty or federal statute is reserved to
the tribe. The fundamental principe of Indian las is known as the
"reserved rights doctrine."

--------- "RE: Hunting Rights" ---------

Date: Thu, 20 May 1999 12:50:23 GMT
From: frosty@frostys.qc.ca
Subj: Hunting Rights. Did you know.

Newsgroup: alt.native

Do tribes still have hunting and fishing rights ?
Every Indian Tribe had the inherent right to self-governing. The
means among other things, that every tribe has the right to regulate
its land and resources, including the taking of wildlife. A tribe
governing powers can be limited by Congress but until that occurs, an
indian tribe essentially retains all of its ORIGINAL rights. Obviously
one of its ORIGINAL RIGHTS is to HUNT and FISH within the territory it
once controlled. Whereas the right to hunt and fish on the reservation
land has long been established.
The right to hunt and fish was expressly guaranteed to many tribes in
their treaties with the United States. However, this right is
presumed to exist even if the treaty doesn't mention it. As the
Supreme Court in 1905, a treaty is not a grant of rights but a taking
of rights from them. Consequently if a silent on the subject of
Indian hunting and fishing rights, then these rights are not limited
by the treaty and still exist in full force.

--------- "RE: Hunting Method" ---------

Date: Thu, 20 May 1999 21:14:46 GMT
From: frosty@frostys.qc.ca
Subj: Hunting Method. Did you know ?

Newsgroup: alt.native

The Rights of Indians and Tribes.
One question that has been raised, has been does a tribe use hunting
and fishing methods that did not exist when the treaties were signed ?
Yes. The right to hunt and fish carries the right to use modern
techniques for obtaining wildlife. A tribe that fished from shore
when its treaty was written can today use motorized boats for that
purpose.
In addition the right to hunt and fish also includes the right to take
wildlife for traditional uses. Tribes also can continue to take fish
for religious needs and ceremonies

--------- "RE: Bit of History" ---------

Date: Sun, 23 May 1999 02:20:44 GMT
From: frosty@frostys.qc.ca
Subj: Bit of history. Did you know.

Newsgroup: alt.native

Question.
Has the United States honored its treaty commitment ?

Answer.
Generally one has to say NO ! The United States has broken nearly
every one of its Indian treaties. The main reason for breaking them
was the taking of LAND.......
Lets just look at one nation, the Sioux. We could look at others and
I bet others here could tell you all some history about how their
nation was torn from there lands. But.
Back In 1851 the Sioux signed a treaty that guaranteed a sizable
reservation as a permanent home. My guess they trusted the United
States government. However the federal government allowed hundreds of
non-natives to settle on this land in violation of the treaty. So
after several battles, in 1868 the Sioux were forced to sign a new
treaty that this time drastically diminished the size of their
reservation. Although this treaty took most of the land, it at least
left the Sioux the Black Hills for the time being. Plus they were
promised that no more land would be taken from them. But then as we
all know, GOLD was found in them hills in 1874 and in 1877 Congress
removed the Black Hills from the reservation. Now nice of them.
However this was not the end of this taking of land. In 1889
Congress removed half of the remaining land and made six reservations.
Then they divided the Sioux on to them, Their was resistance to
this and many Sioux were killed at Battle of Wounded Knee in 1890.
Now between 1904 and 1910 Congress removed even more lands from the
Sioux. Example, Rose Bub was reduce to one quarter of its size.

Note...
Notice the dates. These are not 500 or 200 year ago but mostly less
than one hundred years. What is important to point out that over and
over we are told "I am not responsible for what happened in the past."
But those of you living today are living off those resources taken from
from the Black Hills. The United States got RICH and the Sioux got
little or nothing. Today when they or any First Nation nation
requests so repayment, we are told we are always begging for more
handouts. Its not begging, its asking that the United States and its
people live up to the rape done to our lands, lands that gave you what
have today. Freedom, wealth taken from the First Nation People and
deprived the necessities of life that so many of you have enjoyed for
so long. Just look at the last hundred years alone. First Nations
have been deprived of a meaningful life because they don't get a equal
share like non-natives do from resources found on there lands.
One has to think what if ? What if rather than forcing our people to
live on reservation and stealing what belong to us, that it was
shared ?
I guess things would have been better for all of us, and not just a
select few.

--------- "RE: Wolverine Again Threatened with Imprisonment" ---------

Date: Fri, 21 May 1999 03:30:34 -0500
From: sisis@envirolink.org (S.I.S.I.S.)
Subj: Wolverine: "house arrest," intimidation and gagging

:-:-:S.I.S.I.S. Settlers In Support of Indigenous Sovereignty:-:-:
May 20, 1999 No Copyright; please reproduce

SHUSWAP ELDER AGAIN THREATENED WITH IMPRISONMENT BY BC AUTHORITIES
The 67 year old Shuswap traditionalist Wolverine is again experiencing
harassment and intimidation from parole office officials in BC. Wolverine
was recently paroled from an 8 1/2 year prison sentence for his role in the
1995 defence of unceded, sacred Sundance grounds at Ts'Peten (Gustafsen
Lake) against one of the largest RCMP operations in Canadian history.
Wolverine, aka Jones William Ignace, has been advised by the Kamloops
Parole Office that he may not speak about state crimes committed during the
Gustafsen Lake standoff, nor may he communicate with any other members of
the indigenous traditionalist movement in BC. He has also been forbidden to
attend a recent gathering of the Arrow Lakes people and cultural gatherings
in the Lil'Wat nation. Moreover, Wolverine has been told that all
communications with Splitting the Sky, spokesperson of the FREE WOLVERINE
Campaign, must cease on pain of re-imprisonment. No such gag-order is
included in Wolverine's terms of parole from the National Parole Board; the
initiative appears to emanate from the BC authorities, specifically the
Kamloops Parole Office.
The Kamloops Parole Office previously threatened Wolverine with
re-imprisonment in February of this year, when he accepted a speaking
engagement at a community college in Kamloops. They withdrew that threat
after being flooded with protest letters from around the world which
condemned the blatant attack on his freedom of speech.
Wolverine's friend and associate Splitting the Sky expressed outrage at
the latest development. "It shows how far the governments will go to stop
discussion or debate of anything connected to Indigenous sovereignty and
[Canada's] attempts to suppress it. The intimidation, gagging and virtual
house arrest of the elder Wolverine, and the disbarment of our counsel of
choice Dr. Bruce Clark demonstrate clearly the governments' clear intent to
muzzle the truth."
An international campaign to obtain a public inquiry into 1995 Gustafsen
standoff and the state crimes and human rights abuses that occurred there,
has thus far met with outright refusals from both the BC and federal
governments, despite a recent UN Human Rights Commission ruling
recommending an inquiry into the killing of Aazhoodena sovereignty activist
Dudley George during the 1995 stand-off at Stoney Point (aka Ipperwash).
Both standoffs occurred virtually simultaneously, both concerned sacred
lands and sovereignty, and both involved the active participation of
collaborationist Indian elites who publicly denounced the standoffs at the
time. These same elements have now inserted themselves into the inquiry
campaigns and are attempting to exploit and steer the resulting political
capital to their own agendas.
Grand Chief Phil Fontaine of the Assembly of First Nations, when
confronted recently by Gustafsen supporters at the Vancouver airport,
brushed off complaints about his lack of action on an AFN resolution
committing to pressure a public inquiry into "all aspects" of both the
Gustafsen Lake and Stoney Point crises. "That's only one of hundreds of
things we have to do," said Fontaine. "We've got lots of other things to
do and I'm not the only one handling that anyway", said the Grand Chief
as he hurried away.
:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:
PLEASE PROTEST IN THE STRONGEST WAY POSSIBLE THE THREATENED
RE-INCARCERATION OF WOLVERINE! DEMAND THAT HIS FREEDOM OF SPEECH, FREEDOM
OF ASSOCIATION AND FREEDOM OF MOVEMENT BE RESPECTED:
Kamloops Parole Area Office
590-175 Second Avenue
Kamloops "BC" (Canada)
Phone (250) 851-4800
Solicitor-General of Canadafor Corrections and Parole matters)
MacAuL@parl.gc.ca or
remote-printer.Lawrence_MacAuley@16139913283.iddd.tpc.int
Prime Minister Jean Chretien: pm@pm.gc.ca
BC Premier Glen Clark: premier@gov.bc.ca
Grand Chief Phil Fontaine: pfontaine@afn.ca
Please cc: sisis@envirolink.org (letters will be forwarded to Wolverine)
JOIN THE CALL FOR A PUBLIC INQUIRY INTO GUSTAFSEN LAKE NOW!
http://kafka.uvic.ca/~vipirg/SISIS/GustLake/support.html
http://kafka.uvic.ca/~vipirg/SISIS/gustmain.html
Some of those calling for a public inquiry include:
Lil'Wat Estken, Moloqhil Tinamat, Defensoria Maya (Guatemala), Te Ropa
Maori, Canadian Alliance in Solidarity with Native Peoples (CASNP), Green
Group of the European Parliament, The Black Community Collective, Black
Autonomy International, The Afrikan Frontline Network, Anti-Racist Action
(ARA), Settlers in Support of Indigenous Sovereignty (SISIS), NW Leonard
Peltier Support Network, Aboriginal Rights Coalition (ARC), Council of
Canadians (Victoria), Building Bridges to Chiapas, National Green Party of
Canada, Ramsey Clark - former US Attorney General and counsel to Leonard
Peltier, Ts'peten Defence Committee, Free Wolverine Campaign, Incomindios,
For Mother Earth/Kola (Belgium), Assembly of First Nations, League of
Indigenous Sovereign Nations, American Indian Movement (Florida), National
Campus/Community Radio Association (NCRA), Canadian Union of Public
Employees (CUPE), Teaching Support Staff Union (TSSU-SFU), IWW, Canadian
Federation of Students, and many more...
:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:
S.I.S.I.S. Settlers In Support of Indigenous Sovereignty
P.O. Box 8673, Victoria, "B.C." "Canada" V8X 3S2
EMAIL : <sisis@envirolink.org>
WWW: http://kafka.uvic.ca/~vipirg/SISIS/SISmain.html

--------- "RE: Full Disclosure of Truth in Canadian Peltier Case" ---------

Date: Mon, 24 May 1999 13:47:35 -0700
From: "S.I.S.I.S." <SISIS@envirolink.org>
Subj: Full disclosure of truth in Canadian Peltier case

NOTE: Please send all inquiries/comments about this post to the original
sender, <lpdccfd@web.net>, *not* S.I.S.I.S.
----------Forwarded message---------
Date: Thu, 20 May 1999 09:42:41 -0400
From: "LPDC Canada" <lpdccfd@web.net>

PLEASE POST ON YOUR NETWORKS --
scanned photos are available upon request for print publication
Thanks, LPDC Canada
++++++
For Immediate release. May 14, 1999
LEONARD PELTIER DEFENSE COMMITTEE CANADA

McLellan's remarks hint at human rights setback
Full and complete disclosure of the truth of the
past 23 years In the Canadian Peltier case is called for

"Nothing less than the truth with full and complete disclosure of all
evidence withheld for the past twenty three years pertaining to the Leonard
Peltier case in Canada will be accepted," stated Frank Dreaver of the LPDC.
"Are we to believe that after all these years of world attention with many
independent examinations of the hard won evidence by human rights,
government and legal experts, that the Canadian minister of justice would
now dismiss this as completely irrelevant?"
Recent remarks made by justice minister Anne McLellan suggesting there is
no evidence of fraud in Leonard Peltier's extradition in 1976 were met with
reactions of outrage and disbelief. Her remarks to the press on May 5th
concluded there is no evidence any one lied in the extradition hearings and
that the extradition was justified on the basis of other evidence aside
from key affidavits which the minister did not point out have long since
been discredited.
Not surprisingly, McLellan also stated she has just received permission
from the United States government to release the findings of her
department's own review authorized by her predecessor Allan Rock following
years of public appeals including the intervention by 55 MPs in Peltier's
U.S. court proceedings and the urgent recommendation of the Royal
Commission on Aboriginal Peoples. The minister further stated she would
release the results of the internal review within upcoming weeks.
Her announcement was made on the same day a historic vote took place at
Canada's largest labour convention amongst two thousand delegates of the
Canadian Labour Congress, representing 2.5 million unionized workers. They
unanimously ratified an emergency resolution committing themselves to
exerting political pressure for the Canadian government to seek ways to
rectify the injustice including filing its official recommendation for
Peltier's unconditional release.
"The fact that Canada has been given permission by the United States to
close the review is in itself an outrage," said Frank Dreaver, LPDC
Canada's founder and international spokesperson. "This suggests what we
have always known, that the American government is controlling the
procedure, timing and outcome of this issue within the jurisdiction of
another country," he continued. "It is exactly the kind of international
intrusion of Canada's affairs and sovereignty that continues to outrage
Canadian peoples. From the beginning we have always demanded that any
review should be conducted independently of the justice department to
ensure a fair evaluation," said Dreaver.
The minister's comments causes grave concern that the Canadian government
will not allow a proper assessment of all evidence that proves the
deliberate fraud of the extradition treaty and that all evidence not just
the coerced Myrtle Poor Bear affidavits but the other evidence the minister
is referring to could never have amounted to legitimate grounds for
extradition.
The day after her announcement, MP Jack Ramsey, the Reform Party's justice
critic questioned McLellan in Parliament as to what other evidence the
justice department relied upon in Peltier's extradition. "I cannot tell the
House the nature of that additional evidence," McLellan responded. "The
contents of that entire review will be released by me within coming weeks.
At that time everybody will be able to see the basis on which Mr. Peltier
was extradited from Canada."
If this is the case then disclosure of Warren Allmand's report is
extremely critical as a key release of all contents of the review, said
Dreaver, who explained that Allmand studied the files and submitted
recommendations in his report to former justice minister Rock at Mr. Rock's
request. Rock was to have concluded the review with Allmand's
recommendations in hand prior to the federal election in June 1997. Mr.
Allmand, a former Liberal Member of Parliament and Solicitor General of
Canada during Peltier's extradition stated that once the Poor Bear
affidavits were found fraudulent; there were absolutely no grounds for
extradition.

All evidence falsified or insufficient
The minister's remarks are "very troubling," responded Osgoode Hall law
professor Dianne Martin, lead counsel on LPDC Canada's team who compiled
all critical documentation from Canada-U.S. FOIA (Freedom of Information
Act) provisions which the committee donated in January to law libraries
across Canada. The document is today a permanent record with the U.N. human
rights commission forming the basis of an intervention with resolutions
submitted by Dreaver at U.N. hearings in 1995.
"It is as if the review by Warren Allmand and the overwhelming
evidence of significant irregularities in the extradition did not exist,
"said Prof. Martin. "An honest and objective review of this record reveals
those irregularities. Equally ridiculous is the claim that the extradition
was not based on the admittedly false Poor Bear affidavits. They were the
case for extradition and they were false. In view of the serious
irregularities in the subsequent trial," she continued, "Canada cannot say
that our hands are clean in this terrible wrongful conviction. We permitted
an innocent man to be extradited and then wrongly convicted and we are
apparently unwilling to admit this simple but dreadful truth. I am ashamed
and disappointed by this response."
McLellan's remark that the other evidence supports Peltier's return to
the United States is contradicted by the advice of Canada's own justice
department attorney 24 years ago. Paul William Halprin, who represented the
U.S. government during the extradition hearings, quickly considered the
other evidence as totally inadequate. He had advised U.S. justice officials
and the F.B.I. shortly after Peltier's arrest that there was not enough
evidence to allow extradition for the reservation murders and asked for
more. Weeks later according to F.B.I. teletypes, Halprin visited the
bureau's offices in South Dakota and assisted the F.B.I. in their making of
the Poor Bear affidavits.
The other evidence McLellan could only be referring to; and considered to
have been not good enough by Halprin, simply places Peltier along with
dozens of peoples at the scene of the shootout. He was seen hours after the
shooting began with a gun along with many others who had been firing in
self-defense and that his fingerprint was found on the outside of a paper
bag allegedly containing one of the agents' handguns five months after the
shooting. This IS hardly ground for proving he committed the deliberate and
intentional murder of the F.B.I. agents.
The two affidavits that were eventually produced stating that Peltier
murdered the two agents had been coerced from Myrtle Poor Bear, an alleged
eyewitness. She recanted the affidavits shortly after they were produced to
the extradition court. Prosecutors also admitted that poor bear had not
even been on the pine ridge reservation and did not know Peltier.
On June 18, 1976 Justice Schultz, the Canadian extradition judge
ordered the extradition on the basis of the Poor Bear affidavits. But he
was not aware of a third conflicting affidavit which surfaced in the trial
of Peltier's two co-defendants in July 1976 and who were acquitted of the
murder charges on grounds of self-defense. This affidavit stated Poor Bear
was not present on Pine Ridge reservation on the day of the shootout and
therefore could not have witnessed any of the events. With evidence of
falsified and corrupted testimony, Peltier's attorneys appealed the
extradition TO Canada's Federal Court of Appeal in October 1976, which
then, without written reasons, refused to consider the third affidavit and
ordered Peltier extradited.

Political Asylum in Canada
A request for political asylum for Peltier in Canada was made to Ron
Basford, Justice Minister under the Liberal government of the time since
under sec. 22 of the Extradition Act the minister could stop Peltier's
extradition if he believed the offences were politically motivated.
However, Basford chose not to consider the new evidence suggesting bad
faith on the part of the U.S. and was therefore able to bypass having to
assess the political persecution behind the fraudulent charges. (Canada's
Prime Minister Jean Chretien was finance minister at the time.)
On Dec. 17, 1976 Basford officially responded that the Poor Bear
affidavits was a "legal matter for the courts which have dealt with it in
Canada and will undoubtedly do so in the U.S." However, in making his
official response, he must have known several weeks earlier the appeals
court had refused to deal with the new evidence. Since then no court, both
in Canada and the U.S. has ever ruled on the matter of the falsified
affidavits, although two unprecedented legal actions were still made from
Canada many years later.
In 1989, Canadian attorneys filed a leave to appeal the extradition on
the ground of deliberate fraud with the Supreme Court of Canada. Lawyers
for Canada's department of justice, once again representing the U.S.
government, could not and did not deny the existence of fraud and even
admitted to it during oral argument. But the courts once again without
releasing any written judgement recommended any remedy would have to be
taken up with the Canadian government.
Then in 1992 with political pressure building, 55 parliamentarians
intervened in Peltier's U.S. Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals hearing
arguing the extradition fraud was part of a pattern of government
misconduct and recommended that his "tainted conviction be set aside." The
court ruled the argument should have been raised before (even though no
court would hear it and under international ruling Peltier was prevented
from raising it in trial); that it was for the Canadian government and not
individual members to argue it.
Even so, U.S. judges over the years have commented on the "improper
tactics" of the F.B.I. and "clear abuse of the investigative process" to
secure Peltier's extradition. And yet successive Ministers of Justice in
Canada up until the Supreme Court presentation ruled that this was a matter
for the courts to decide. This ultimately came to