War waged to discredit Native American causes

Page 28

United State

Incidents at Gustafsen Lake, B.C., and Ipperwash, Ont., have had many long-time Indigenous-rights activists reminiscing about the 1973 standoff at Wounded Knee, S.D.

During the 71-day confrontation, American Indian Movement (AIM) members faced tribal police, local and state law-enforcement officers, and federal agents and troops in a protest against the mistreatment of Indians.

After Wounded Knee, AIM activists claimed that the U.S. government began a media assault against the movement.

It was just one of the tactics used by the U.S. as part of the counter-intelligence operation, which targeted organizations like the Black Panthers, Nation of Islam and AIM.

Chief Billy Tayac, of the Piscataway Indian Nation and the League of Indigenous Sovereign nations in Maryland, recalled memories of AIM activism.

Tayac said activist organizations like AIM are easy targets for government campaigns aimed at discrediting their leaders and purpose. The plan is to neutralize information coming out of the struggles, he said.

Kahntineta Horn, president of the Canadian Alliance in Support of Native People and a community activist from Kahnawake, Que., agreed.

"Aboriginal bashing in the media is carefully schemed out by the government's think tanks," Horn said.

Despite government information and media reports, the Indians didn't kill anybody at Gustafsen Lake, Tayac said.

"The equivalent of this is Wounded Knee," he said. "The only people killed at Wounded Knee were Indians."

In 1973, Joe Beeler, a young attorney working in the federal defenders program in Chicago, part of the Wounded Knee legal defence committee, quickly discovered the role the law played in controlling discontented Indians.

Beeler remembers hearing about a number of people arrested during Wounded Knee who were not being granted bail. Beeler said he was told that the magistrate would not schedule bond hearings because the defendants did not have lawyers.

"They didn't have lawyers," Beeler said, "because the lawyers in South Dakota wouldn't take the court appointment in order to represent the 'uppity Indians' demonstrating at Wounded Knee." Beeler suspects other motives as well.

"I suspect the government wanted people locked up as long as possible," he said, "both to deter others from coming to the aid of those inside and to keep the individuals who had been arrested incarcerated so they couldn't do anything else to help the struggle."

During the trials, Beeler said the government changed strategy to ensure convictions.

"In the first leadership trial, a pattern and practice of government misconduct and overreaching was proven," causing the charges to be dismissed, Beeler said. When Beeler's client, Carter Camp, came to trial, the government had a different plan.

"By then, the government decided to simplify its case," Beeler said. "They eliminated the big overreaching conspiracy charges and focused on one incident."

But trials are not the only way that the U.S. maintains control, Indigenous activists say.

The Indian Reorganization Act of 1934 also played a role in controlling Indian nations. The act abolished any role traditional governments would play in dealing with the United States. The tribal council system was established with this act; it imposed a foreign system of government upon Indigenous communities.

Dacajawea (John Hill), a Mohawk activist for 25 years, believes that the U.S. finds tribal councils easy to work with.

"The collaborators are quick to sell out the land and sell out the future of their children," Dacajawea said. "What you have with the collaborators is nothing but a puppet regime reinforcing the status quo."

Beulah Powless, community organizer for Voices for the Future on the Onondaga Reservation in New York, has witnessed how corrupt governments, even ones that claim to be traditional, can abuse power.

"They are turning into a dictatorship government," she said. "There's violence; people have been banished. Thy should be following the great law of peace."

Berniece Lalo, a Western Shoshone, said the Bureau of Indian Affairs refuses to acknowledge elected representatives for her people. She blames the Indian Reorganization Act for threats on Western Shoshone sovereignty.

"Our people are not supposed to be interdependent on the bureau," Lalo said. "Interdependence is on the land, the sky and the water."

Lalo said the U.S. continues to sell off traditional land to mining interest who purchase the land at 1879 prices.

The Department of the Interior is currently attempting to seize cattle from the Western Shoshone and claims that the nation does not pay for the right to graze cattle on government land.

The issue of Western Shoshone land claims has been in and out of courtrooms for over 20 years. Lalo worries that the children do no understand what the fight is about.

"They think it is about money," she said. "But the Elders are fighting for more than that."

Russell Means, director for the Autonomous Confederated Chapters of AIM, used the continued efforts at relocation of Dineh, or Navajo, people in Arizona as an example of another tactic of U.S. control.

"It's illegal for Navajo people to improve their homes," Means said. "It's against the law to change a light bulb. . . or to increase economic endeavors. This means the Navajos can never enter into the 'American way.'"