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The clock is ticking.
The hand are almost at midnight.
But it's not too late, Canada, to pull back from the brink to which your prime Minster and premier of Quebec have taken you.
Open your ears and listen. Open your eyes and see. Get out of the way.
Your home's on Native land.
For a brief time, it looked as if the country had pulled back from the edge of the abyss into which it threatened to be pushed.
Now thanks to the unyielding attitude of the nation's top leaders, the outlook is ominous.
That damn stubborn attitude, which is based largely on the illusion that Warriors are criminals, that Natives have no legal right to govern themselves and that Native people have to it pretty good in Canada, is dangerous.
It's far more dangerous than the weapons in the hands of the Warriors, weapons which they have yet to use - July 11 notwithstanding. That attitude drives the arrogant federal government, which refuses to negotiate with Indian people. And that arrogance is making Natives and their non-Native supporters more and more angry as each day goes by without a resolution in sight to the crisis in Quebec.
That crisis was started after Surete du Quebec police stormed a private road on Kanesatake settlement in an attempt to preserve the legal right of the municipality of Oka to build its golf course on a Mohawk burial ground.
A law like that is absurd as many Canadians have acknowledged.
The realization was hammered home at the point of a gun - the great Indian sin of the summer of 1990.
Believers in non-violent political action are uncomfortable with the bearing of arms to accomplish political aims, but many of them are realists.
They rightly see there is little difference between Canadian soldiers and police officers carrying weapons and Indian soldiers.
What's good for the goose is good for the gander.
If it is wrong for Indian soldiers to carry weapons on their land, then it is also wrong for Canadian police officers and soldiers to carry weapons on non-Native land.
The politicians so quick to condemn the Warriors for carrying weapons were just as quick to arm their own forces and to send them after the Warriors.
No one on the international stage has quibbled with the right of Iraq to have a standing army. What's been so offensive to many states is that army was used for the invasion of an independent country.
Why then would Canada object to the right of Mohawk and Peigan Indians to arm and defend themselves against aggressors?
The armed Indians are in a Catch-22 situation. They are committing illegal acts, only because their aggressor, the Canadian state, has for its own self-interests declared those acts to be illegal.
And if Mohawks are tried on the charges laid against them by the state of Canada, they will face them in Canadian courtrooms and be heard by Canadian judges.
Little wonder then Mohawks have so little faith in the Canadian justice system, which has loaded the deck.
One of the most absurd phrases now being tossed around is armed insurrection. The users of that phrase speak of Warriors as criminals, as bandits, as Militants.
They should review their history books on the settling of Canada and take a close look at the treaties. Then they should think about the fact non-Natives were allowed to settle peaceably in Canada by Native on condition that the terms of treaties were met.
If those terms have been defaulted on, clearly then Native people would certainly have to moral and legal right to foreclose on the property and to repossess the land.
The Canadian state reserves the right to use armed force to defend itself. It cannot logically deny that right to sovereign First Nations with which it has treaty agreements.
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