from the Ahnishinahbæótjibway (We, the People)
After five hundred of Western European occupation, genocide, and grand theft of the Aboriginal Indigenous Peoples’ land and resources, the Europeans and their Indians, who have been on welfare for five hundred years, celebrated Columbus Day. At Red Lake, the Chippewa Indians marked Columbus Day by celebrating the White Sovereignty that was given to them by the United States Government. 1934 I.R.A. Tribal Administrator Judy Roy was quoted in the Bemidji Pioneer as saying that the Red Lake Indian Pow-Wow “began last year as part of the quin-centennial celebration of Christopher Columbus, ... and ‘our celebration of our sovereignty that we are still here’.” From an Anishinabe Ojibway perspective, what Ms. Roy said can be interpreted as that colonial governments and their subject Indians are still here, celebrating five hundred years of colonial occupation and complicity in genocide.
Also quoted was Frances Brun, who said that Red Lake was a closed Reservation, meaning, according to the Bemidji Pioneer, that “all the land is held in common, with no individual allotments.” Francis Brun was speaking on the basis of Western European Indian policy, and what the U.S. Government calls “Indian law.” These Indians that Brun was talking about, have European patrilines, and are thus subject to imported Roman Statute law, British Common Law, and the colonial occupations called United States Law. Brun did not mention the Anishinabe Ojibway, because he was speaking on behalf of the U.S.A. as one of their subject Indians, and Brun does not have any Anishinabe Ojibway ancestors at all. Brun did not say, and probably does not understand, that according to the ancient laws of the Anishinabe Ojibway Midewiwin, this land is not held “in common,” particularly with the Chippewa Indians. This land is held jointly by the patrilineal Dodems of the Anishinabe Ojibway—and the Indians promoted in the media have been packed onto land which does not belong to them by the United States Government.
The Indians celebrated their Sovereignty, which is Protestant Sovereignty, operating under the French feudal philosophy of the subject Chippewa Indians at Red Lake. I am not an Indian, and I do not belong to the Chippewa Tribal structure created by the United States Government. The B.I.A. listed me on their “Chippewa Indian Rolls” without my knowledge or consent, and I sent my resignation as a Chippewa Indian to then-Chief Justice Thurgood Marshall of the U.S. Supreme Court, in respect of the procedure described in the U.S. Constitution for one Sovereign dealing with another. Justice Marshall accepted my resignation, and these papers are now in the Library of Congress. I explained to Thurgood Marshall about the dishonest identity of “Indian,” and that I have my own Aboriginal Indigenous identity. I am a Sovereign Anishinabe Ojibway on my own land, and British Indian common law, United States law, and the Chippewa Indian Tribal Code do not have jurisdiction over the Sovereigns of the Anishinabe Ojibway Nation. We are on our own land, and have been here for millennia, long before the White man, the Pillager Indians, the French Métis, and the Chippewa Indians got here. We, the Anishinabe Ojibway have a right to continue existing on our own land, without the wanna-be Chippewa Indians trying to steal our identity and our traditions, abetting the Whites in trying to steal our land and resources, and covering up the genocide.
To you, Brun, I challenge you, as you try to use and abuse my Aboriginal Indigenous Sovereignty to get out of paying taxes on money you made plundering my resources and destroying my forests. Try to kick me off of my land, which has belonged to the Anishinabe Ojibway, including my family and my Dodem, for more than the last hundred thousand years—we’ll see who leaves. Why don’t you Chippewa Indians practice the Protestant Ethic, and go to work, instead of spinning your wheels trying to live out all of the projections, labels, and stereotypes that the White man created for his subject Indians? One moment, the United States Government tells you that you have Sovereignty, and then out of the other side of their mouths, they tell you that with “one stroke of the pen, we can terminate you.”
TRUMPING THE INDIANS: According to Saturday’s Minneapolis Star Tribune, “Casino mogul Donald Trump” testified on Indian gaming regulations to the Natural Resources Committee of the House of Representatives. Trump is quoted as saying that many Indians who want to operate casinos “don’t look like Indians to me, and they don’t look like Indians to Indians.” You’re right, Don—the Aboriginal Indigenous people of this Continent did not have curly hair, blue eyes, nor the other Moorish and European features that characterize most Federally Recognized Indians. The U.S. Government is using some inconsistent logic that has nothing to do with the Anishinabe Ojibway and other Aboriginal Indigenous People. “Indian Blood Quantum” is irrelevant—both to whether or not a person is an Aboriginal Indigenous person, and the way that the United States has calculated it, it has nothing to do with whether or not a person who claims to be an “Indian” has any Aboriginal Indigenous ancestry. The U.S. is hurting because of past genocide, desperately trying to re-create the Aboriginal Indigenous People that they destroyed. Re-defining 1/32 as 1/4, and then saying “this person is an Indian because their great-great-great grandmother was an ‘Indian princess’” [she was probably one of the so-called King’s Daughters involuntarily exported from France to Montreal] makes as much sense as would re-defining an African-American as “Lily-White” because they have 1/32 White blood. Maybe because Math is an abstraction, this can be done.
GRAND LAND THEFT:: The following is an excerpt from the chapter on “Language” in my upcoming book, We Have a Right to Exist. The publisher revised the printing schedule, and it will now be coming out in January of 1994:
Chief Joseph did not understand Western European abstract thinking in detail; Aboriginal Indigenous People usually described the language generated by it as “forked-tongue speaking.” Because he could not speak English, he did not know how to defend himself against the abstract Indians and the abstract laws which were used to steal his land. The United States Government gave Chief Joseph four abstract, artificial identities: Chief, Nez Perce, Joseph, and Indian, in order to steal his land. (The U.S. wanted to make absolutely certain they clinched the deal they had stacked in their own favor, so they overdid it with the fake identities. I haven’t figured out yet, why they changed the names of a lot of Aboriginal Indigenous people, as well as many of their White Indian Chiefs, into Joseph.) Neither the Europeans nor the Euro-Americans have clear title nor eminent domain to any of the land on this Continent. Western Europeans can write all the Title Abstracts that they want, but they can’t change reality. This is the way Chief Joseph was interpreted as describing what happened—I don’t know what was lost in translation:
Suppose a white man should come to me and say, ‘Joseph, I like your horses, and I want to buy them.’ I say to him, ‘No, my horses suit me, and I will not sell them.’ Then, he goes to my neighbor, and says to him, ‘Joseph has some horses. I want to buy them, but he refuses to sell.’ My neighbor answers, ‘Pay me the money, and I will sell you Joseph’s horses.’ The white man returns to me and says, ‘Joseph, I have bought your horses, and you must let me have them.’ If our lands were sold to the government, this is the way they were bought.
The “neighbor” that Chief Joseph describes as selling things which do not belong to him, was not an Aboriginal Indigenous person. Neither Joseph, nor any other Aboriginal Indigenous person, can sell land, because of the Autochthonous religious and philosophies of this Continent.
My telephone number is (218) 679-2382 and my mailing address is P.O. Box 484, Bemidji, MN 56601.