Retyped for your information is a very concise and well written account of the relationship between the Six Nations and Canada. ************************************************************************ The Globe and Mail, Thursday, August 30, 1990 C O M M E N T A R Y SHOWDOWN - It is no longer acceptable for European colonists to dominate the indigenous peoples of Africa and Asia - how much longer will Canada do the same with its native population? Ottawa treats the Iroquois the way the CIA treats banana republics. DOES CANADA WANT A WOUNDED KNEE? by Ronald Wright When the Quebec Premier Robert Bourassa asked for the Canadian army to move against the Mohawks of Kanesatake and Kahnawake, he tried to justify his action by saying he has to defend democracy against people who do not believe in it. Perhaps he has forgotten that Indians were not allowed to vote in his province until 1968. Perhaps he has forgotten that many Mohawks' first experience with Canadian democracy was when the RCMP overthrew their traditional chiefs at gunpoint. Not just once, not in the remote past, but several times in this century. The Iroquois Confederacy, also called the League of Six Nations, is in fact the oldest democracy on this continent. Its political system, which includes power for both sexes and a voice for all, existed when Europe still believed in the divine right of kings. Many know, even if Mr. Bourassa does not, that this ancient democracy inspired Benjamin Franklin and other fathers of the United States. The eagle on the American shield is an Iroquois eagle, and the arrows in its grasp represented the Six Nations - the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, Seneca, and Tuscarora - that lived from the St. Lawrence to the Ohio. Mr. Bourassa likes to ask members of the European press what they would do if a part of Paris, for example, armed itself and blockaded roads. His analogy is false. Unlike the French of New France, the Mohawk Nation has never been conquered - not by Britain, nor Canada; least of all by Quebec. On the contrary, for more than two centuries the confederacy held the balance of power in North America. Without Iroquois help, the British might never have defeated the French, or kept Canada from the Americans. Perhaps this bothers Mr. Bourassa. Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, who seems these days to take his cue from Mr. Bourassa, dismisses Mohawk claims of sovereignty as "bizarre." When he managed to tear himself away from the aura of weightier matters surrounding U.S. President George Bush, he said that the Mohawks were seeking to "give" themselves the status of an independent nation; he held this up as an example of how absurd their demands had become. Evidently he, too, has forgotten that the Iroquois are not only unconquered but have never surrendered their sovereignty to anyone. They possess treaties which state that they and Britain are equal partners in a military and political alliance. They ask only that these treaties be respected by Britain's successor, Canada. This is not, as Mr. Mulroney and Mr. Bourassa would have us believe, a quaint historical curiosity kept alive by cranks and radicals. It is an issue the confederacy has raised consistently in modern times. The Iroquois have taken it to Ottawa, to London and, when they were blocked in both those places, to Geneva and the Hague, travelling on their own passports. Their sovereignty claim was sufficiently strong that the League of Nations was prepared to hear it in 1923. Britain, having told the Iroquois it could do nothing because the matter lay in Canada's jurisdiction, was nevertheless willing to threaten the Six Nations' friends - notably Holland and Persia - with serious diplomatic consequences to get the matter dropped. A few months later, the Canadian government moved to crush the confederacy chiefs. In September, 1923, armed Mounties occupied the Six Nations Council House at Ohsweken (near Brantford), read out a proclamation dissolving the ancient assembly, broke open the safe and seized legal documents. More police burst into homes and took away the wampum belts, the symbol of government for the Iroquois - their equivalents of flag, mace and Magna Carta. Puppet "elected" band councils were then set up under police protection. From that day until this, only a tiny proportion of Iroquois see these councils as legitimate, yet they are the only ones recognized by Canadian law. When the confederacy chiefs (sometimes misleadingly called "hereditary" chiefs) tried to take back their council house in 1959, they were again ousted by club-wielding Mounties. But they have not gone away. They are gaining in strength both here and in the United States, and the more progressive of the "elected" chiefs have wisely begun to defer to their authority. Until the Canadian government acknowledges that it has treated the Iroquois the way the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency treats banana republics, and until it allows them to restore their own political system, there will always be young men with guns ready to step into the breach. Mr. Mulroney and Mr. Bourassa talk as if the loss of Iroquois land is also something that belongs to the distant past. In truth, the Mohawks have lost more land since 1950 then in the previous 100 years. They have lost it to compulsory purchase by white governments eager to build bridges (including the Mercier), hydro dams and the St. Lawrence Seaway cheaply, at Indian expense. As a result, fishing - a major food source for the Mohawks - has been destroyed at Kahnewake, and at Akwesasne, land and water have been polluted so severely by heavy industries attracted to cheap power that neither farming nor fishing is safe. Small wonder that some Mohawks have turned to gambling, "smuggling" and other unsavory ways to survive. (It is only "smuggling" if one denies Mohawk sovereignty. Whites, not Indians, drew the Canada-U.S. border through the middle of Akwesasne.) Mr. Mulroney has claimed that Iroquois sovereignty threatens to balkanize Canada, a strange comment from the genius of Meech Lake. It need not be so. The Iroquois trace their relationship with whites to the Two Row Wampum, a seventeenth-century belt that shows Indians and Europeans travelling together down the same river, but each in their own boats. They seek an agreement in this spirit - a way to live as different nations within one state. They do not want to threaten Canada's sovereignty; they want Canada to stop threatening theirs. We are lucky this is all they ask. What would we do if they demanded full independence for the little territories they have left - the sort of independence enjoyed by small nations such as Monaco and San Merino? These are smaller than many Iroquois reserves. The sequence of events from which the Mohawk crisis has emerged is sickeningly familiar. The so-called rule of law, used relentlessly as a tool to dispossess and divide the Indians, is finally met by men with guns in a corner; this then justifies the use of overwhelming force in the name of "civilization." It is the same pattern as the Cherokee Trail of Tears (1838) and the Wounded Knee massacre (1890). It is also familiar from such Latin American countries as Guatemala, where the army's main job is to keep down the conquered natives. In the late twentieth century it is no longer acceptable for European colonists to dominate the indigenous peoples of Africa and Asia. How much longer will the world find it acceptable for the whites of the Americas to do the same? ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ Ronald Wright, author of Time Among The Maya, is currently researching Iroquois history for his next book. ************************************************************************ In Calgary, a 72 hour vigil in support of the Mohawks was brought to an end. The women and children of Calgary were urged to place flowers and candles around the teepee that served as the vigil's headquarter. The vigil started on Wednesday morning with a 15 minute blockade of a downtown commuter bridge during rush hour, a rally was then held Wednesday night to call for a peaceful and negotiated settlement to the crisis. Todays event was marred by the news of the Canadian army moving into the Kanesatake reserve and the dismantling of most of the barricades. No gun fire has been exchanged so far but the media report some incidents that came dangerously close. Some rumors speek of the warriors having retreated into the pine forest to make their last stand there, while other reports claim that the warriors have, for the most part, already left the area. Reports are so far sketchy, it seems however that the Mohawk Clan mothers are the ones that prevent bloodshed by ordering the warriors not to shoot but retreat calmly. I'll try and keep you up to date. ************************************************************************ For more information contact web:car by e-mail or in writing Aboriginal Rights Support Group Committee Against Racism P.O. Box 3085, Station B Calgary, Alberta T2M 4L6