Bush Vs. Natives: Briefs, Not Bullets, Target Native Americans

Briefs, Not Bullets, Target Native Americans

by Cassandra "Sandy" Frost

November 6

I’m still in shock and awe over the election.

The man who was elected is not my president.

Today’s headlines are announcing that W has declared that November is National American Indian Heritage month, praising Indians like Sacajawea and the WW2 Navajo Code-talkers.

It sounds more like he’s announcing that hunting season is open...

W stated “By working together on important economic initiatives, we will strengthen America by building a future of hope and promise for all Native Americans."
He should have just been honest and said “We will strengthen America by building a future of hopelessness and compromise for all Native Americans.”

Today, the question is:
What does the re-election of W mean to people of color, specifically American Indians?
In one remote viewing email group I subscribe to, we had a recent discussion about genocide of American Indians.
The term “Genocide” derives from the Latin (genos=race, tribe; cide=killing) and means literally the killing or murder of an entire tribe or people.
I sat and shook my head in disbelief as I read about how some in the group denied that American Indians were the targets of U.S. government exploitation, eradication, and containment.

One writer wrote “Trying to pass judgment on the people or governments of today based on what was done in the past is ridiculous” and another wrote “There are some folks that need killing.”
These comments, though lifted out of context, illustrate the Anglo-American superiority mentality that seems to justify modern day genocide against my people and other people of color.
The facts are that by 1891 the U.S. native population had been reduced to 2.5% of its original numbers and 97.5% of the aboriginal land base had been expropriated.

Extermination of all of the surviving natives was urged by the Governor of California officially in 1851. More than 100 million Natives fell under European rule and their extermination followed.
As the Natives died, they were replaced by African slaves.
The genocide against American Natives was one of the most massive and longest lasting genocidal campaigns in human history.

And it’s still taking place today.
But now, instead of using bullets and offering bounties for Indian scalps, the military industrial complex is using briefs.
Legal briefs.
No longer are the battles fought at places like the Little Big Horn or Wounded Knee.
Today’s battles are being fought in courthouses against those who are, like my Athabascan Grandmother, Maude Goodelataw, hunter-gatherers and fishing peoples.
The natives are expected to lock horns with not only moose and caribou but also with well-heeled lawyers who are backed by billions from oil and mining companies that are trying to figure out how to either legislate or usurp the rest of the American Indians’ lands.


What triggered the writing of this editorial is today’s headline about how the Vietnamese are suing Dow Chemical and Montsano for our military spraying their countryside with Agent Orange:
http://corpwatch.radicaldesigns.org/article.php?id=11638
The article describes how Dr. Arnold Schecter, a leading expert in dioxin contamination in the U.S., sampled the soil there in 2003,and found it to contained dioxin levels that were 180 million times above the safe level set by the U.S. environmental protection agency.
From http://www.cqs.com/edioxin.htm :

“Dioxin is the name generally given to a class of super-toxic chemicals, the chlorinated dioxins and furans, formed as a by-product of the manufacture, molding, or burning of organic chemicals and plastics that contain chlorine. It is the nastiest, most toxic man-made organic chemical; its toxicity is second only to radioactive waste.”
Third generation Vietnamese babies are being born with two heads and stumps instead of arms and legs.
I knew about this story a few months ago because the nail salon I frequent is owned and operated by a group of hard working Vietnamese.
One day, the pedicurist and I started talking about her homeland and she mentioned the lawsuit.
She appeared to have Anglo blood and I delicately asked her about her family.

“I don’t know who my dad was,” she said. “He was an American soldier.”
I was getting my nails done in L.A. last August and noticed the same features in my manicurist. I began asking her about her family and she also said “I don’t know who my dad was.” And yes, he was also a U.S. soldier.
I took off my rose quartz bracelet and gave it to her.
I apologized for what our country did to hers.
I told her that I am part Alaskan Native (Athabascan) and Cherokee and that the pattern of our military killing those with brown, red, yellow or black skin for their land, servitude or resources started with the genocide of my brothers and sisters.
I explained that rose quartz is a crystal that represents love and healing.

A case in point about the legal battles involving American Indians is the Cobell v Norton lawsuit over the Department of the Interior’s mismanagement of $40 billion in Indian trust revenues and resources. June 10, 1996, Eloise Cobell, a Blackfoot with a background in accounting and banking, filed a class action lawsuit against the federal government to account for the billions of dollars belonging to approximately 500,000 American Indians and their heirs, and held in trust since the late 19th century.
The case is ongoing and so far, the Department of Interior has been found to be in contempt of court for destroying emails and billing information and in the first portion of the eight-year-old lawsuit, the government was found guilty of mismanaging trust accounts. The second part is an attempt to determine how much is owed to the remaining account holders.


Other modern day attempts to circumvent American Indian sovereignty are the Yucca Mountain nuclear depository case and the Hopi’s attempts to fight Peabody Coal in order to preserve and protect their water.
With no regard for existing treaties, the U.S. government is moving forward so that 70,000 metric tons of radioactive waste can be buried on Western Shoshone homeland. On Feb. 15, 2002, President Bush designated Yucca Mountain as the site for building the nation’s first high-level nuclear waste dump.
Sacajawea was Shoshone.


The Hopi's waterless springs and dry wells might be blamed on Peabody Energy, which pumps 1.3 billion gallons of water a year, enough to supply a community of 4,000, out of an aquifer that lies beneath the Hopi and Navajo lands. Peabody mines coal out of land leased from the tribes at a site known as Black Mesa. The coal is powderized and then mixed with water that is pumped through a pipeline 273 miles west to the Mohave Generating Station, which then produces electricity for 1.5 million homes in nearby Las Vegas and Southern California.
I learned of a similar disregard for native rights in the pursuit of petro-energy after I read the 2002 Homeland Security Act.
I nearly fell out of my chair as I read that local government definitions specifically include “Alaska Native organizations and villages.”


This means that if there is some sort of emergency, like our government declares an energy crisis say, because foreign oil becomes too expensive or there is some sort of terrorist attack or our oil reserves run low, the federal government has the authority to take over all assets of Alaska Native villages and corporations, including mine, Ahtna, Inc.
BTW, the HAARP is built on Ahtna land, but that is another story.
This also means that Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, or ANWR, can be drilled, against the will of the Gwich’in Athabascans and other Alaska Natives, because our sovereignty was somehow dissolved through provisions of the Homeland Security Act.


Evon Peter, Chief of the Neetsaii Gwich'in from Arctic Village in northeastern Alaska, is on point for the fight against oil drilling in ANWR.
He has a site at: http://www.nativemovement.org


He recently addressed the Alaska Federation of Natives and said “The United States government worked to assimilate our peoples through the eradication of our Native knowledge, philosophy, languages, spiritual practices and beliefs. The Indigenous Peoples were not allowed or were highly discouraged from participating in any of the colonial "freedoms". These prohibitions included land ownership, business development, and even shopping in stores. There were signs that read "No dogs, No natives" allowed on some buildings. The United States was after control of our land and resources. They had to deal with whatthey termed the "Indian problem".

Today our traditional Indigenous governments have national and international recognition. Yet, the Indigenous Peoples of Alaska, like many other Indigenous Peoples throughout the world, continue struggling for the recognized rights to our traditional lands and way of life. We are striving to make things better for our people while attempting to address the historical injustices that are at the foundation of many of these struggles.”
Sadly, this pattern of military industrial complex eco-terrorism and genocide isn’t limited to the Vietnamese or American Indians.


An October 13, 2004 news story details how the nuclear test compensation fund set up by the American government to compensate Marshall Islanders exposed to radiation during 67 nuclear weapons tests conducted in the 1940’s and 1950’s in the South Pacific is running out of money. As of Oct. 21, the Marshall Islands Nuclear Claims Tribunal said it will be able to make only partial payments to more than 1,700 residents suffering from radiation-related illnesses.
Islanders were exposed to fallout from at least two Hiroshima-size atomic tests as well as the detonation of the world's first hydrogen bomb, estimated at 1,000 times the strength of the Hiroshima bomb.


A prominent west coast law firm, Davis, Wright and Tremaine, has stepped forward to offer pro-bono help to the people of Likiep Atoll, one of the Marshall Islands. These people were subjected to radiation from 23 bomb blasts over Bikini Atoll because they were never relocated or notified that they or their water and food supplies were about to be contaminated by nuclear fallout.
Finally, let’s look at the Iraq war depleted uranium (DU) situation.


Depleted uranium is the waste byproduct of nuclear reactors. In the 1980s, U.S. researchers recognized that the material's density gave it tremendous armor-piercing potential. Not only can shells coated with depleted uranium punch through layers of hardened steel, they ignite on impact, creating a fiery burst of radioactive particles inside an enemy armored vehicle. It is this "aerosol" that most experts believe causes the variety of long-term health problems associated with gulf war syndrome. More than 230,000 of the 697,000 U.S. soldiers who served in the gulf wars have filed disability claims for various maladies, the majority of which fall under the broad category of gulf war syndrome.
Instead of cleaning up the nuke plants, the waste, or DU, is now passed on to weapon manufacturers.
This is the same stuff the government wants to bury deep inside Yucca mountain.

General Ramsey Clark has called for the international ban on DU weapons stating “Depleted-uranium weapons are an unacceptable threat to life, a violation of international law and an assault on human dignity.”
Once someone breathes in the radiation, it stays in their lymph nodes. They are polluted for more than forever as DU has a half-life of 4.4 billion years.


The U.S. and British military have powdered the Iraqi country side with between 300 and 800 tons of DU dust, not to mention dusting the countries of Kosovo and Kuwait. According to a November 1, 2004 news article “Depleted Uranium Dust Worries Iraqis,” if the United States military assures the U.N. and the Iraqi people that the radioactive, metal dust is safe, then why is the United States spending billions of dollars cleaning up depleted uranium at former munitions factories, military firing ranges and nuclear fuel production sites?
A General Accounting Office report in 2000 put the cost of cleanup at the uranium enrichment plant in Paducah, Ky., where DU is processed for use in weapons and nuclear reactors, at $1.3 billion. By December 2003, the cost of cleaning up and closing the plant, estimated to take until 2070, was up to $13 billion.

So, what does all this tell us?
It tells us that if one has skin color other than white, your land, your safety, your food and your water don’t matter to the U.S. government.
What does all this have to do with W’s re-election?
It means that the Bush administration’s battles against American Indians, i.e. Cobell v Norton, the Yucca mountain nuclear waste depository and the possible drilling of ANWR, are not fought with guns, but rather through the federal legal defense teams paid with unlimited taxpayer dollars who can write countless legal briefs that can keep a court case going until the other side:

a. gets tired and gives up
b. runs out of money
c. settles for a small portion of what is due them
d. dies
e. is forced to do what the government says through martial law imposed by FEMA and the Homeland Security Act
The bottom line is that the U.S. government, and the Bush Administration in particular, needs to stop terrorizing and targeting indigenous people and our lands and, rather, learn some lessons from our cultures before it’s too late.


In 1877, Chief Joseph announced his people's, the Nez Perce, surrender and said the famous words:
“I will fight no more forever.”

I think he meant fighting with bullets, not legal briefs.
The lessons are that we need to live lives based on spirituality, not hypocritical Armageddic religions where our sins are forgiven each Sunday. We need to live in harmony with, take care of, nurture and honor Mother Earth instead of sucking her dry and exploiting her resources to feed the self-destructive petroleum addictions that are fueling legal battles designed to wear the other side down and launching unjust wars in the names of money and power, both corporate and political.
Those who do not learn from the past are doomed to repeat it, no matter what color they are.
And remember, we’re one world, one people; not one people’s world.

Cassandra ‘Sandy’ Frost is an award winning e-journalist and newspaper editor who has covered the topics of Intuition, Remote Viewing and Consciousness from an Athabascan or Alaska Native point of view the past three years.

More of her articles can be found at:

http://blogs.salon.com/0003531/
http://blogs.salon.com/0004117/