Raise My Heart at Standing Rock
“Only one thing
is sadder that remembering that you were once free, and that’s forgetting you
were once free. That would be the
saddest thing of all.
That’s one thing
we Indians will never do.”
Noble Red Man (Mathew King) Oglala Lakota Elder
There is no way to comprehensively understand the historical correlations being made today between the actions of the mob at the US Capitol on January 6 and the burning of the White House by the British during the War of 1812, without taking into account the issues of territorial conflict, collusion, and competition between the young US republic, the British Crown and the diverse Original Nations of Indigenous Peoples of the Great Turtle Island Abya Yala [Americas]. While the battle among the British brethren was embedded in the larger colonial project of global empire building among their cousins of the French, Spanish, Portuguese, and Dutch branches of the family tree of Christendom, the Indigenous Peoples were also united in an international cultural kinship system as Original Nations of Mother Earth.
Similar to the mythological foundations of the Christendom as a whole, which originated in the Levant, the Origin Stories of the cultures of Indigenous Peoples of the Great Turtle Island Abya Yala emerged from the ancestral teachings of custom and tradition that spanned millennia and were rooted in a deep spiritual relationship with the Earth, as mother to all life. In distinction from the Western Christendom dogma of dominion over the earth and the creatures of the earth, the native nations in general regarded the relationship with the material world as a sacred cosmetric quadrant of creation, not a proprietary interest to be commodified.
“The land does not belong to us we belong to the land.”
In 1812, the British brethren were divided between those loyal in allegiance to the crown (Tories) and the patriots of the newly independent 13 American colonies, while the Indigenous Nations were fractured not in allegiance but in geopolitical alignment among themselves and with the British, French, Spanish and American colonial forces.
When the British brethren negotiated an end to the war amongst each other with the Treaty of Ghent in 1815, the Indigenous Peoples were not party to the treaty, even though it was the issue of jurisdiction over their ancestral territories that was the root of the conflict. The American settler state system was expanding beyond the limits of the original thirteen colonies, which had extracted gruesome benefit from the decimation of the original indigenous peoples of the eastern coast by the smallpox epidemics introduced by the Europeans colonists.
When the Royal Proclamation of 1763 acknowledged the presence and territorial rights of the Indigenous Peoples still standing on the western border of the colonies, the land lust of the colonists was not to be denied, and the rebellion of the colonists was directed more against this prescription of territorial limits than it was a battle for democracy. The USA version of the American experiment in democracy did not really begin until the 1965 voting rights act, which opened the way after 200 years for the shift in US electoral power away from the “white” American constituencies of control and command in the national election of 2020. The American historical experience is an experiment in colonization.
Along with the territorial prescriptions of the Royal Proclamation of 1763, the colonists were rebelling against the pronouncements of the high courts in England, exemplified in the Somersett case of 1772, that decided in the favor of the growing abolitionist movement against human slavery in any territory governed by the English common law.
This denial of recognition of the territorial rights of the Indigenous Nations in an international compact was a continuation of the colonial policy already established in the Treaty of Paris of 1783, when the British Crown first acknowledged the independence of the 13 colonies and opened the door for the geopolitical realpolitik of the sovereign corporate state in world affairs. This pattern continues today as evidenced by the very same policy in the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) on trade which replaced the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 2020.
Stop The Line 3 Pipeline
With the break from allegiance to the Crown of England, the power of sovereignty of the newly recognized nation within the global realm of Christendom was designed with the philosophy of republican ideals, but the public dimension of the republic was conceived and constructed as being restricted to the property of concept of US citizenship as a function of “White” identity, and allegiance. These would be the “Americans”. Everyone else would end up being the African-Americans, Italian-Americans, Latin-Americans, French-Americans, Asian-Americans, Mexican-Americans, Native-Americans, etc.
The exceptions to the social schema were the “Savages” i.e. Indigenous Peoples whose existence as nations, cultures, and human beings lay beyond the dominion concepts of Christendom, beyond the US constitutional framework, and whose lands and territories the new nation required for expropriation and colonial expansion.
Still, while the American colonists broke from submission to the crown as sovereign in 1776, they sustained the continuity of the English Common Law system as the source and authority of the fundamental tenets of the legal system and processes of governance of the newly formed American republic. Such was the case in 1812, such is the case today in 2021.
The War of 1812 was a world war, a global conflict of world views and the struggle against European colonialism and corporate imperialism. It was a continuation of the original World War I, which began with the initial invasion of this continent of the Great Turtle Island Abya Yala [Americas] on October 12, 1492.
This world war continues today.
The history of transition from a chartered colony of
Christendom, to a territory ruled by force of violent invasion by the European
American “white” colonizers, to the formation of a polity of statehood and
subsequent admission into the union of states called the USA, also required a
systemic mechanism to control the allegiances, nationality and citizenship of
the constituencies of the new republic as a whole. In the absence of the
absolute command of allegiance of the Sovereign, in this case King George of
England, the colonies broke from the modus operandi of the cartel of the Divine
Right of Kings (Christendom). It became necessary to format the public
consciousness in a systematic manner, manufacturing consent for the
rationalization and expansion of territorial dominion via political acts of
allegiance to the Divine Right of States. It became necessary to manufacture
the mythology of America.
Tecumseh, the Creek War, and the War of 1812
By 1800, the Indian population was approximately 600,000 in the continental United States. By 1890, their population had declined to about 250,000. In 1800, William Henry Harrison became governor of the Indiana Territory, under the direction of President Thomas Jefferson, and he pursued an aggressive policy of obtaining titles to Indian lands. Shawnee brothers Tecumseh and Tenskwatawa organized Tecumseh's War, another pan-tribal resistance to westward settlement.
THE CONSTRUCTION OF RACE AND THE EMERGENCE OF WHITENESS AS PROPERTY
Cheryl I. Harris
The racialization of identity and the racial subordination of Blacks and Native Americans provided the ideological basis for slavery and conquest.
Although the systems of oppression of Blacks and Native Americans differed in form - the former involving the seizure and appropriation of labor, the latter entailing the seizure and appropriation of land - undergirding both was a racialized conception of property implemented by force and ratified by law.
The origins of property rights in the United States are rooted in racial domination. Even in the early years of the country, it was not the concept of race alone that operated to oppress Blacks and Indians; rather, it was the interaction between conceptions of race and property that played a critical role in establishing and maintaining racial and economic subordination. The hyper-exploitation of Black labor was accomplished by treating Black people themselves as objects of property. Race and property were thus conflated by establishing a form of property contingent on race - only Blacks were subjugated as slaves and treated as property. Similarly, the conquest, removal, and extermination of Native American life and culture were ratified by conferring and acknowledging the property rights of whites in Native American land. Only white possession and occupation of land was validated and therefore privileged as a basis for property rights. These distinct forms of exploitation each contributed in varying ways to the construction of white-ness as property.
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Martin Luther King Day: Emancipation and Immigration
We, the Peoples : Nosotros, los Pueblos
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Observations of early Europeans on the impact of smallpox on Indigenous Peoples
17th century New England colonists believed God was punishing Indigenous people for being non-Christians with disease while at the same time clearing them from the land so Europeans (who perceived themselves to be morally superior) could take over. In New England in 1633, William Bradford wrote that “It pleased God to visit these Indians with a great sickness” and that because of this, “God hath hereby cleared our title to this place.”
Over a hundred years later at Fort
Pitt (Pittsburgh) in 1763, the British would attempt to break Native American
resistance during Pontiac’s War by infecting them with smallpox; unwashed
blankets acquired by trader William Trent from the local smallpox hospital were
given to LenniLenape (Delaware) leaders; Trent wrote that he hoped the blankets
would “have the desired effect”; this incident and evidence of subsequent plans
recorded in British imperial archives to deliberately infect Indigenous peoples
with smallpox demonstrate that the British were engaging in biological warfare.
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The Murder of George Floyd and The Death of
"White" Supremacy:
Dismantling the Master's Narrative
Whatever may come of the murder of George Floyd, the death
of institutionalized American "White" Supremacy must follow: NOW!
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Apartheid and Manifest Destiny:
From Africa to Arizona
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The Master's Narrative:
Memes of Caste and the Anomaly of Histories
The acceptance of the Doctrine of Discovery into
United States law held profound implications for future relations
between the federal government and the Indians. The Doctrine of
Discovery’s discourse of conquest was now available to legitimate,
energize, and constrain as needed white society’s will to empire over
the North American continent.
Western Shoshone Self Determination and the Doctrine of Discovery
The legal position of the US government in the Western
Shoshone case before the IACHR is a narrative of racial supremacy and animus
towards the Indigenous Peoples that pretends to argue that the “gradual
encroachment” of US settler state constituents over Western Shoshone
traditional territories is a legal justification for dispossession and
environmental destruction.
“Encroachment” is not a valid legal theory, it is only an excuse, in
this case a bad excuse.
Besides the fact that encroachment presumes a recognized right of possession
over what is being encroached upon, in this case Western Shoshone Territories
affirmed in the 1863 Treaty of Ruby Valley, the action of encroachment never
eliminates this preceding underlying interest.
Encroachment of the settler state domestic system of fee simple patent
of private individual property interests only subverts the underlying and
persisting Indigenous title and rights or imposes upon it in the form of a
subsequent (in time) set of interests.
The “gradual encroachment” theory in the Western Shoshone case by the US
government is the evil twin of the theory of “laches” that the state of New
York used against the Onondaga Nation when it attempted to correct a similar
territorial issue of international import before the US Supreme Court in
2016. Both theories contemplate an
extended a period of time, one forwards and the other backwards, and
officialize this version of settler state history, ignoring and subverting the
historical evidence of the territorial responsibilities and rights of the
Original Nations of Indigenous Peoples of the territories in question. These cases are classic narratives of
description of the jurisprudence of the Forked Tongue Folk when it comes to
Indigenous Peoples, where law is practiced but justice is never delivered.
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McGirt, Oklahoma, and the EPA – Federal anti-Indian Law in Action
Peter D'Errico
When TYT News reported the EPA had granted Oklahoma the same authority the state had before McGirt, they explained that the EPA “can do this because federal legislation can nullify Supreme Court rulings.” In this case, the legislation was passed 15 years before the ruling, so it’s not quite right to say it “nullified” it. Nonetheless, this is precisely the Achilles heel of McGirt. It was visible to anyone who really read the McGirt decision: “Congress remains free…. It has no shortage of tools….”
The “freedom” of Congress is the unfreedom of Native nations and peoples. The original free existence of Native nations and peoples in their own lands was and is the target of federal Indian law. Federal Indian law, understood to its core — “plenary power” — is federal anti-Indian law, built to seize Native lands. The EPA – Oklahoma deal is only the latest effort.
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YOU'RE LOOKING AT THE
FIRST DRAFT
OF THE CONSTITUTION.
The Haudenosaunee Peace Confederacy
Before the ideas of inalienable rights, liberty, and democracy were strung together in words, they were strung together in beads made of shells in the Wampum Belt of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, also known as the Confederacy of the Iroquois.
This Wampum Belt represents 1,00 years of democratic principles that we Indigenous Peoples shared with our immigrant brothers and sisters from Europe (including Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin who openly acknowledged in speeches and in writings that our
contribution formed the basis of the US Constitution).
We shared our belief that leaders should represent and serve the people, which was a startling belief in a world ruled by Kings and Queens .
We shared what we call The Great Law, which is the natural law of human dignity that precedes and underlies all other laws. Even the words "We, the Peoples" were taken from an ancient traditional phrase of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy.
In this way, we can all pursue happiness together as kindred nations of Mother Earth.
BE A GOOD RELATIVE
