Endurance

In this video from Mohawk TV, Cree lawyer Sharon Venne explains indigenous termination in Canada. Discussing the process by which Canada is alienating inherent indigenous governance from indigenous peoples, Venne notes the role some chiefs play in helping Canada manufacture indigenous consent to the termination of their peoples. As Venne reveals, because Canada has no legal title to indigenous lands and resources under international law, the state of Canada is using the subterfuge of racial discrimination to abandon its obligations to respect indigenous human rights as self-governing nations. To stop this legalized ethnic cleansing, says Venne, First Nations must assert their jurisdiction over lands coveted by the corporate state, and impeach indigenous leaders who are selling out their people.

In Salish Bounty -- a traveling food history exhibit of the Tulalip Tribes and the Burke Museum -- Coast Salish food traditions that create good health are juxtaposed with the commodity foods and fast foods that supplanted the native diet of the Northwest tribes that inhabit the territory between Seattle and Vancouver and the Pacific Ocean. As noted in the article at Indian Country Today, the new exhibit looks at food to explain the history of Northwest tribes and to imagine a future that revives the Coast Salish food traditions that support the good health of families and communities. More information on Coast Salish traditional plants and foods is available through Northwest Indian College.

As a disciple of Reaganomics, casting Obama as socialist is laughable. Likewise the convicted felon hedge fund trader Soros. As neoliberals, they and Hillary are Free Market evangelists uber alles. Their support for social programs to maintain control of those dispossessed by US Treasury looting and offshore tax evasion should not be confused with socialism. As the anti-union Obama and the anti-democracy Soros join Hillary in neoliberal coups d' etat worldwide, the Free Trade neocolonialism initiated by President Clinton threatens to crush outbreaks of democratic socialism wherever they occur. As Obama pursues privatization of Social Security, the fact he isn't also a religious fanatic provides little comfort.

In the four decades since the mainstreaming of environmental awareness was promulgated by the hippies and the American Indian Movement and communities of color who'd always lived with the toxic residue of industrial recklessness and rapacious consumption, the psychological warfare deployed by Wall Street to undermine environmentalism has changed a lot in style, but little in substance. While public relations firms are now more careful to conceal their client's contempt for democracy and callous disregard for public health and safety, they continue to dodge discussing real consequences and costs, preferring to deride the values of their opponents and play on the economic insecurity of our privatized society.

As long as the contaminated air and water and lethal diseases were happening to someone else, this distortion of reality by Wall Street was eagerly embraced by privileged consumers and people who feared change that wasn't approved by the financial elite. But now that their compliance has been betrayed by those who held their rights as citizens and human beings hostage for the hope of false promises, the public relations firms have returned to the tried and true practice of cultural attacks on environmentalists, hippies and indigenous peoples, while Wall Street foundations corrupt and co-opt brand name environmental organizations.

Even as fossil fuel depletion moves into dangerous forms of extraction, and export of North American energy reserves goes into overdrive, a fearful public remains vulnerable to economic extortion, despite the fact this provides them little benefit and no hope. With Wall Street press releases now substituting for journalism in mainstream media, the relentless theme now pushed in all corporate news is that if we don't give Wall Street everything it wants we will suffer miserably. Coming from the people who put millions of us out of homes and work and health care, that may be the height of hubris, but then again, economic terrorism is used because it works. As long as Americans remain politically infantile, Wall Street will continue to rob them blind.

In my June 26 editorial Extinguishing Sovereignty, I discussed how the extortion practiced by the Government of Canada toward its indigenous First Nations -- as a means to terminate their continued existence as culturally distinct peoples -- was in violation of all international law related to racial discrimination and human rights. While not a surprise, given Canada's notorious track record in the international arena, the persistence of Canada's government in this modern era ethnic cleansing project is nonetheless disturbing.

As Russell Diabo observes in his essay from First Nations Strategic Bulletin, Canada's termination plan for First Nations has hit a snag, and due to its perpetual habit of reneging on both modern and older treaties, First Nations leaders may eventually determine there is no longer anything to gain and everything to lose from negotiating with Canada over its aboriginal and inherent treaty rights. If anything is to be learned from the bad faith process of negotiating with someone who only wants to destroy your people, it is that there is really only one legitimate response, and that is to resist.

As Diabo notes, to contemplate Canada's take it or leave it approach, by compromising their constitutional and international rights, means indigenous lands and resources will be auctioned off in fire sales to China and other bidders looking for bargain basement deals, that over time will leave their peoples impoverished in body, mind and spirit. Given what's at stake, he says, it's time for First Nations to stand up and say no.

As Rocio Alorda writes at Upside Down World, the neoliberal model of development is incompatible with Mapuche society. While the neoliberal application of anti-terrorism laws initially developed by the Pinochet dictatorship are now targeted at Mapuche political activists, the institutional suppression of resistance to neoliberalism is not aimed solely at indigenous communities.

It is, however, crucial to the neoliberal narrative that any challenge to the neoliberal model be characterized as terrorism, thereby demonizing indigenous activists who use direct action in opposing institutional action designed to suppress indigenous autonomy. With no institutional alternative to capitulation and assimilation, indigenous activists find themselves inevitably positioned as subversives of the neoliberal system, and thereby guilty of defending community property from a model that deems collectivism as the equivalent of terrorism.