Street Roots » February 6-12, 2015
News
NATIVE, from page 8
people’s trade routes over the Atlantic and
Pacific oceans. The time frame originally
posed for the Bering Straits entry was 5,000
years ago, but archaeological evidence has
steadily increased the time of habitation in
the hemisphere, to a present estimate of
20,000 years. But, it’s likely more ancient,
considering the highly developed
civilizations and advanced agriculture
developed in South America, Mexico and
North America.
S.Q.: Do you think the standard narrative
of US. history reflects an enforced silence on
indigenous genocide? What happens when we
break that silence?
R. D-O.: Yes, the standard narrative has
avoided dealing with genocide; one recent
book by a notable U.S. historian elaborates
on the many atrocities committed against
native people, but argues that there was no
genocide, and calls the process “ethnic
cleansing.” However, more radical
historians, following Howard Zinn’s lead in
his “People’s History of the United States,”
do acknowledge genocide. However, as with
Zinn, it seems more of a way of doing away
with the “Indian question” than tackling the
nature of settler-colonialism and its effects
on the current United States. It’s posed as
more a moral question, loaded with guilt,
rather than a historical question with
consequences.
S. Q.: You mention Truth and
Reconciliation hearings in your book -
something I ’m familiar with in the context of
South Africa and Rwanda. What do you think
this process could look like in the North
American context? Are there any positive signs
that it could happen?
R. D-O.: There are many moves toward
apologies and pleas for reconciliation, but
not so much truth-telling. The Boarding
School research projects in the U.S. and
Canada are the most important initiatives.
For the past 35 years, indigenous peoples of
the Western Hemisphere and the Pacific
and Arctic have been documenting historical
and contemporary genocidal practices of
governments at the United Nations. There’s
certainly enough material and expertise
available to hold formal hearings, and in
Guatemala they did take place, with actual
charges and trials of genocide resulting.
S. Q.: There have been many campaigns
recently to support indigenous resistance to
environmental destruction: the Seminóles in
Florida are fighting a new fossil-fuel power
plant, tribes in Washington are fighting coal
and oil trains, and last year we saw an
eruption of tribes physically closing shipping
routes to the Alberta (Canada) Tar Sands
fields. What opportunity do you see in these
alliances? Does it reflect a broader movement
for indigenous sovereignty, or could it turn
into one?
R.D-O.: These campaigns are vitally
important, and the alliances that are
evolving are extraordinary — nothing like it
since the early 1970s. For indigenous
peoples, it’s a matter of survival, and
sovereignty is essential to survival, but the
settler population, or at least the youth, is
realizing that it is a matter of their survival
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as well. No people in the world have fought
as hard and long for survival as peoples as
North American indigenous peoples; they
have a lot to teach others, and their
leadership, finally, in the climate movement
is a turning point.
S.Q.: Public lands in the United States
were often created out of land recently stolen
from indigenous peoples, and environmental
protection since then has often retained an
amnesia about this history. What would you
say to people who assert that environmental
needs are our top priority, and that these are
too pressing for us to worry about indigenous
issues?
R. D-O.: Public lands, especially national
and state parks and wilderness areas are all
stolen from native peoples, and these are
sacred lands. There can be no separation
between restitution of lands and self-
determination for indigenous peoples and
protection of the environment. Such
protection comes from relationships, not
stewardship.
S. Q.: Is there a connection between the
disruption of indigenous cultural patterns and
the disruption of the Earth’s biological
patterns?
R.D-O.: The system of capitalism that
developed in Western Europe through the
accumulation of wealth in plundering the
Americas and Africa (colonialism) is the
same force that has destroyed the ecologies
of the planet and now threatens all species,
including humans. Indigenous peoples
warned of this from the beginning of the
onslaught up to the present. The
environmental movement (and other social
movements) in North America needs to pay
attention to and learn from the indigenous
people’s insistence on land restitution and
indigenous self-determination.
Page 9
S.Q.: As your book documents, U.S. policy
that this was alien to indigenous peoples, and
toward Native Americans has often moved
that warfare for them was highly ritualized
from direct assaults on their existence to the
and involved quests for personal glory, but
strange idea that the US. government is now
resulted in few deaths. Why is this important
“protecting” them. You talk about the modern
to recognize? Do you think examining the war
period of “termination” that began in Oregon
against Native Americans can affect our
with the Klamath tribe, where the government
willingness to mobilize for war today?
essentially declared that they’d cared for
Indians long enough and were no longer going
R. D-O.: The first way of war, which
to extend their “generosity, ” Could you explain . became the U.S. way of war, was formed in
this policy of termination and the effects it had the 13 British colonies with settlers forming
on indigenous peoples? How did people fight
militias to terrorize the indigenous peoples,
back?
destroying their villages, food stores and
fields, killing everything that moved. That
R. D-O.: The U.S. Congress Termination
phrase, “kill everything that moves,” was
Act of 1953 is an instance of official
openly used by commanding officers in
genocidal policy, which actually falls under
Vietnam and is taken for granted in other
the 1948 U.N. Convention on the Prevention
U.S; irregular wars, that is, \
and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.
counterinsurgent wars and wars of
The official appointed to implement
occupation since the founding of the U.S. to
termination was Dillon S. Myer who had
the present. I think that embedded in the
been in charge of the wartime relocation
texture of U.S. patriotism, which centers on
and incarceration of U.S. citizens of
Japanese descent. It was a two-pronged plan, reverence for the military, is the settler-
colonial mindset of extermination. And, I do
using the carrot and the stick. First, the
think that if people become conscious of
most economically self-reliant Native
this,
including those who serve in the
nations, including the Klamath and the
military, many would recognize the truth
Menominee (Wisconsin) were instantly
and be repulsed.
terminated, their reservations and
governments dissolved. Those terminated
S. Q.: What are your thoughts on the'Idle
quickly fell from prosperity to
No More movement?
impoverishment, set upon by predatory
corporations.
R. D-O.: Idle No More is an amazing
The other part of the plan was one of
movement,
surging from the grass roots of
enticement, called Relocation, which was
First
Nations
in Canada and spreading over
voluntary and targeted young singles and
the continent, emulated around the world. It
couples, the expectation being that with
only old people left to-die off, and the young was theater at the onset, but has continued
:as a strong and constantly growing base
■
people assimilated by the exciting urban
spawning many projects.
world of consumer abundance and
entertainment, the reservations would
S. Q.: Do you see energy from Idle No More
simply disappear. It didn’t workout that
coming in to the United States?
way. Instead, the burgeoning Civil Rights
movement offered new methods of
R. D-O.: Yes, Idle No More infused energy
resistance to the “urban Indians,” who at
into the Native movements in the United
any rate never divorced themselves from
States. Many locales now have INM
their families and communities back home.
representatives who network with their
The result was the National Indian Youth
counterparts in Canada and each, other.
Council and a little later the American
INM fused Indigenous sovereignty and
Indian Movement, the Survival for American environmental issues like nothing had
Indians and many other organizations. In
before. I thought this was visible in the
1974, following Wounded Knee, the
glorious Climate Convergence in New York
Termination Act was rescinded, and the
in September 2014. And it gave more
reservations that had been terminated were
visibility to the “Cowboys and Indians”
reconstituted, although irreparable damage
alliance in the Northern Plains in opposition
had been done.
to the Keystone pipeline.
S. Q.: The Activist Group “Yes Men” recently
made national headlines by impersonating
State Department officials and telling weapons
contractors that the government was going to
start purchasing renewable energy from
reservations - which would be fully owned and
controlled by First Nations. What was your
reaction when you saw that stunt? Do you
think it’s viable?
R. D-O.: Yes, it was interesting that the
weapons contractors found the idea
attractive. My reaction to the stunt was
“why not?” It’s a perfectly viable idea. I
don’t know of any concrete plans in the
works, but I know it’s implied in indigenous
aspirations, not only in North America, but
the rest of the Americas. The real utopists
are those who believe that capitalism can be
reformed.
S. Q.: You write about “the American way of
war” - one based on unlimited violence and
the total destruction of the enemy. You write
S. Q.: You emphasize in your book that the
survival of indigenous peoples in the United
States testifies to successful cultures of
resistance - that without it, they would not
have survived so many repeated attempts at
assimilation and genocide. What does it mean
to participate in a culture of resistance, and
what responsibility do we have to support such
resistance?
R.D-O.: From the beginning of
colonialism some five, six^enturies ago,
those first hit by the brunt of it and survived
— the indigenous peoples of the Americas —
have always known that it wasn’t only about
their own survival, but also the survival of
humanity, of all life and sustenance. They
have continued to resist and to survive, but
they cannot overcome and transform
without the mass of humanity being
involved. Everything now is about survival,
so if s not so much a question of supporting
indigenous resistance, as joining it.