White House, White Lies: The War of 1812-2021

 

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.

 

Kings and Kingdoms:

Doctrine and Domination

 

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.

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From Wikipedia

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.

Tecumseh was in the South attempting to recruit allies among the Creeks, Cherokees, and Choctaws when Harrison marched against the Indian confederacy, defeating Tenskwatawa and his followers at the Battle of Tippecanoe in 1811. The Americans hoped that the victory would end the militant resistance, but Tecumseh instead chose to ally openly with the British, who were soon at war with the Americans in the War of 1812. The Creek War (1813–14) began as a tribal conflict within the Creek tribe, but it became part of the larger struggle against American expansion. Tecumseh was killed by Harrison's army at the Battle of the Thames, ending the resistance in the Old Northwest. The First Seminole War in 1818 resulted in the transfer of Florida from Spain to the United States in 1819. 

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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

Tehuan Titlacah 

We, the Peoples : Nosotros, los Pueblos

And so when Dr. Cornel West took the time to address the scenario of white supremacy and the Imperial Project of the Americas in Arizona on October 2, 2010 at North High School, it was also fitting and relevant that the testimony which follows, delivered to the US Commission on Immigration Reform on March 22, 1995 in Phoenix, Arizona chaired by Ms. Barbara Jordan, be read into the record of the community archive of the conversation and discussions now reactivated.

Excerpt:

"In closing, we issue this call to conscience especially to our brothers and sisters whose history and blood is joined with ours as victims of the forced removal through slavery from Africa.  The time has come to re-evaluate the gains and limitations of the civil rights movement for which we both have sacrificed much over the generations.  Do not abandon us.  The African continent is reaching for the completion of the long decolonization process.  We as Indigenous Peoples of this part of Mother Earth aspire to the same liberation.  Our solidarity with your struggle is written in deeds and sacrifices we have made in common, sacrifices which are ongoing today.

We must achieve what those who have had power over us have always had:  an intercontinental strategy.  Let us continue to give our first allegiance to our common humanity as our ancestors taught us and fight to preserve this sacred Mother Earth from those who would callously exploit and destroy what was never theirs to own."

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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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#TecumsehAndSelfDeterminationToo

#DismantlingTheDoctrineOfDiscovery

#SelfDeterminationMatters 

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.

The doctrine confirmed the superior rights of a European-derived nation to the lands occupied by “infidels, heathens, and savages,” encouraged further efforts by white society to acquire the Indians’ “waste” lands, and vested authority in a centralized sovereign to regulate the Indian’ dispossession according to national interest, security, and sometimes even honor.

Perhaps most important, Johnson’s acceptance of the Doctrine of Discovery into United States law preserved the legacy of 1,000 years of European racism and colonialism directed against non-Western peoples.

White society’s exercise of power over Indian tribes received the sanction of the Rule of Law in Johnson v. McIntosh. The Doctrine of Discovery’s underlying medievally derived ideology – that normatively divergent “savage” peoples could be denied rights and status equal to those accorded to the civilized nations of Europe – had become an integral part of the fabric of United States federal Indian law.  The architects of an idealized European vision of life in the Indians’ New World had successfully transplanted an Old World form of legal discourse denying all respect to the Indians’ fundamental human rights.

While the tasks of conquest and colonization had not yet been fully actualized on the entire American continent, the originary legal rules and principles of federal Indian law set down by Marshall in Johnson v. McIntosh and its discourse of conquest ensured that future acts of genocide would proceed on a rationalized, legal basis.

The American Indian in Western Legal Thought, Robert Williams (p. 316-317)

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