Help prevent further attempts to hurt our people

Dear Editor:

The following letter has been sent to the Secretary General of the United Nations.

Dear Secretary General,

As the grand chief of the Wulustuk Grand Council, I am writing to you and your organization to request your organization's help, assistance and support.

The Wulustuk Grand Council is the traditional form of government of the Wulustukyeg people or, as we have come to be known, the Maliseet people.

The Wulustuk Grand Council has been the governing body of the Wulustukyeg for thousands of generations prior to European contact. At contact, the transplanted Europeans began their calculated efforts to either annihilate or to assimilate all of the Indian people of Canada.

As examples of the annihilation of our people by Canadian forces is what happened to the Beothuk people who once called Newfoundland their homeland. They are no more. An example of the ongoing and continuing assimilation efforts is the Indian reservation and residential school systems. Both are deliberate and calculated efforts to assimilate Indians, destroy our birthright to our Indian identity and to eliminate Indian people as a distinct entity.

Any Indian peoples who refuse to give in to the political will of the Canadian nation states will be severely and forcefully dealt with by any means necessary. In the present context one only has to read the newspapers to read what the Canadian force of oppression did to Indians at Oka, Que., at Gustufsen Lake, B.C., at Ipperwash, Ont. and many other similar incidents. The Canadian nation state's forces of oppression have shown over the years through their actions that it is very willing and capable of bringing force to bear on Indian people to achieve its political and economic ends.

The example that everyone must keep in mind is what was done to the Beothuk and all of the other tribes that were annihilated by the ancestors of the present-day Euro-Canadians. This genocide was done all in the name of progress and development. Also bear in mind what one of the most "civilized" people, the Germans, did to the Jews. Don't let the veneer of being highly developed and civilized cloud the reality. Make no mistake about any so-called civilized nation's willingness to do whatever it feels it must do in order to continue on its destructive path toward progress and development.

In the Burnt Church context of last year, instead of sending forces to protect the Mi'kmag people from white lawless mobs after the Supreme Court of Canada announced its decision affirming Mi'kmag treaty rights, the Canadian nation state sent its forces in to "observe" the mob rule situation at Burnt Church and other Indian communities. However, they did nothing to protect our people who were under attack by white thugs and terrorists, unlike a similar situation in the U.S.A. in the 1960s when the U.S. Supreme Court made its historic black civil rights ruling. The U.S. government used military troops to help enforce the Supreme Court ruling to desegregate public schools in the Deep South. U.S. troops were used to open up previously segregated schools and to help protect black people from mob violence.

When we finally see government troops being deployed to enforce Supreme Court decisions recognizing, affirming and protecting our treaty right, it is at that time we as a people can feel safe again in Canada and not live in fear for our lives and safety from either state-sanctioned terrorist actions or white mob rule actions.

Please don't hide behind rules and things like going through all domestic avenues of redress before bringing this matter to the attention of the United Nations. The Mi'kmag and or Maliseet may not survive such a long and torturous journey given the level of hatred and violence being directed at our people.

We ask that you send international observers to Burnt Church and Indian Brook in order to prevent any further attempts by the Canadian forces of oppression to kill, injure, maim or intmidate our people uder the guise of protecting lobster stocks.

The real intent behind the Canadian nation state's action against our people is the same as it has always been since contact. . . Indian land and the elimination of our people through any means necessary in order to continue stealing and holding on to our land.

Dan Ennis