RESIST THE ATLEO/HARPER WHITE PAPER!!
FOUR DAYS OF ACTION IN FALL 2011
by Indigenous Anticapitalist
JULY 14TH 2011
Assembly of First Nations Chief Shawn Atleo tries to convince First Nations chiefs to”support his blueprint for radically altering, structurally and politically, the relationship between First Nations and the federal government” by meeting with Stephen Harper. As Indigenous people whose lives are directly threatened by the Atleo/Harper agenda, we resist this subversive attack on our land and our communities, and this attempt to sell out our resistance.
We face extreme poverty, the extermination of our way of life and the continuing loss of our land to occupation by illegal governments and corporations. These are the real and present threats to our children and the generations coming after us. All of us who hear with our hearts know that the only way to reclaim ourselves and our land is to resist these monsters and their consuming greed.
Shawn Atleo loudly supported what we risked violence, arrest and even death to oppose: Olympics mega-development on stolen sacred Native land, which destroyed traditional hunting, fishing and gathering grounds, destroyed sacred sites and caused irreparable damage to the land and water.
The Intercontinental Indigenous Gathering on Yaqui territory in Sonora, Mexico called the Olympics “a great threat to Indigenous people and to these goals” and unanimously called for “defense and protection of the land” stating that unity in these efforts of resistance were “central to self determination and freedom.” Leading up to the Olympics, native youth movements and entire communities confronted and disrupted the Spirit Train and the 2010 torch relay.
Atleo has always given the false impression that we are willing to cooperate with our own exploitation and destruction. He sold us out by supporting the Olympics, flaunting his own political agenda by stating to Bay Street that our communities are “open for business”, publicly supports the erosion of our Treaties by pushing for private ownership of reserve land.
The Atleo/Harper White Paper furthers this agenda to further exploit us and undermine our resistance to projects like Enbridge’s Northern Gateway Pipeline, a $5.5 billion dollar mega-pipeline project opposed by 61 First Nations in BC alone. Atleo’s cozy ties with Enbridge guarantee him a piece of the pipeline pie, as he coaxed native groups in December 2010 to “explore ideas on how they can benefit from resource development projects they support.”
With over 500 years of colonization under our skin, we refuse to be sold out by Indian Agent Shawn Atleo: Our survival depends on resistance, unity on the ground in order to protect, defend and advance our sovereignty and our Treaty rights by every means by which our ancestors resisted and the coming generations deserve.
We call on Native communities, youth movements, organizations, groups and people in every territory and city to fast, raise our prayers, listen and speak among ourselves, and to take four days of coordinated direct action in Fall 2011 against this White Paper, not just to shut down the meeting itself but to shut down the economy these colonial powers seek to impose on our people.
We call on chiefs, councillors and all representative “provincial” native organizations to support and engage in these actions of necessary resistance and to withdraw all support from the AFN.
We also call on non-native allies in the wider movement to support our day-to-day struggles and coordinated direct action, based on our common humanity and the obligation of all settlers of occupied Indigenous territory to resist our shared enemies by strengthening respectful relationships with the land and our peoples.
FALL 2011, 4 DAYS OF ACTION TO RESIST THE ATLEO/HARPER WHITE PAPER!
For more information, see links below:
Pursuing First Nation Self Determination, AFN Annual General Assembly 2011
http://www.afn.ca/uploads/files/aga/pursuing_self-determination_aga_2011_eng%5B1%5D.pdf
First Nations Under Surveillance, Harper Government Prepares for “Native Unrest”
http://www.dominionpaper.ca/articles/4066
Posted on July 28, 2011, in Decolonization and tagged AFN, anti-colonial resistance, Assembly of First Nations, Indigenous resistance, native resistance. Bookmark the permalink. 10 Comments.
Warrior Publications 
“We do not want the Indian Act retained because it is a good piece of legislation. It isn’t. It is discriminatory from start to finish…but we would rather live in bondage under the inequitable Indian Act then surrender our scared rights. Any time the government wants to honor it’s obligation to us we are ready to devise new Indian legislation.” Harold Cardinal 1969 This in response to the infamous * White Paper* attempt by the Trudeau liberals…I think the feelings remain much the same today as back then…
I personly don,t agree with Atleo,s Idea of getting rid of the INDIANACT Because of the fact that first nation people won,t have any protection from the Federal Government even as we speak the Police our getting away with all kinds ofViolations Again,st Natives If any Chief Signs an agreement to side wit Atleo,s Idea you may as well but a gun to your Heads What,s going to happen in tne FUTUREwhen grandKids don,t have RIGHTOUR PROTECTION iF YOU AGREE WITH aTLEO THE hARPER gOVERNMENTS POLICE WILL HAVE ALL THE RIGTS TO EXTERMINE TREATY PEOPLE TREATY RIGHTS HUMAN RIGHTS…
TLLWO
WAKEU CHIEFS
There are so many of the issues here which are wrong it is difficult to know where to start.
First this is a program of devolution. The issue of devolution in terms of permitting the use of Non-First nations Constitutions and ways of life on the reserves is seriously flawed. The use of the patterns of policing alone are bad for the First nations. The use of the decision making processes and the entry of the provincial governments bad law making on behalf on the Non_First Nations people ( especially their women and children) In Alberta the private property rights are very badly controlled and there has been several years of bill 50 under which the use of lands could mean absolute loss for the private property owner of control of his land and resources and the ability to profit from them if the land is needed for infrastructure and this can be done without consultation or hearing if the infrastructure is necessary as they deem it. They’ve been voted in by a landslide for many years in the Conservative Party and we are outnumbered.
The abuse of the Non-First nations children with the deeply intrusive from of services pattern in Children’s services which allows them to make interventions against children in the least favorable circumstances. For example in the case of domestic disharmony a specified delay ( These nurses assessments are only good for the day they are written and are supposed to be interpreted by a doctor in light of the child’s general health in that time frame. For example a child with an ear infection may have been off balance. A child without glasses can not see the blackboard or down a steep set of stairs. the reports are clearly marked but the law says they can snatch a child without consulting anyone.) If any emotional issue between spouses can be intuited it is as if they were involved in a serious issue. The abuse of the women among them is a common thing. In the years leading up to this exposed as the worst province for reports of domestic violence in Canada ( Alberta). That has been reduced by endangerment of children if one would make a report although men often do as it is them doing the abuse they can admit it and receive services as their victims will not. They are more willing to take a chance with the child’s health and to allow them to be apprehended for obvious reasons.
This program has been aimed at their use but in the case of First nations the additional invitation to abuse the civil rights of our children is more than we are willing to risk.
An example of the problems among them was that until 2008 in November they had child care and daycare deregulated until it became a source of embarrassment world wide due to comments by the World Health Organization condemning Canadian practices. The sudden reintroduction of the regulation was done after 17 years of permissive privatization with only site inspection permitted. The law brought a landslide of complaints. The first of their kind and not having to do with site inspection for many years. In Stoney Palin day care a child had been made to eat their own vomit and two children had been left unattended inside the room another had been punitively potty trained and several of the workers had to leave their positions. There arose only a single cry among the over 50 parents who gathered at the closing of the daycare in protection of her child. She said I just want to know what happened to my child. She already knew that her child has witnessed the abuse of others and that they had been unable to tell. In our culture the child is listened to in many ways and when a child is crying even a toddler is sympathetic and caring they come to tell Mommy the baby is crying. They have empathy and they love other children when they can barely walk or talk themselves. Of course they are affected and they have feelings even when they are not the target. This is a sensitivity they would have our children lose in their school of hard knocks. They don’t even understand what is wrong with this response, they wanted the daycare reopened. This is a distinct cultural difference.
If there is nowhere for the children to turn and the authorities abuse the workers who report then we are exposed to the bad laws in alinement. If they bring in temporary foreign workers as slaves and outsiders ( Using the Mennonite center for Newcomers to oppose civil participation). Not schooled in Canadian human rights ( Lawyer Ezra Levant opposes the use of funds for the entry of disputes and is well heard and received at the Prime Misters private home).They enter them into the unions for the sake of corruption and to vote down the labor relations laws protecting workers then what chance do we have to prevent even the laws of the province from being totally disrespected while the contractors work on the land. These issues are not a well thought out plan as Sean Atleo does not understand the level at which treaties are held for those who have a land base and interests in the surrounding land. He is of the west bank style of self -government which is at best the third order of municipal governance and even that is under threat in Canada when the reserves are small but well placed. Near a city or who are surrounded.
In Ontario there is a movement against amalgamation which would allow the governments to make a show of strength in the smaller communities and to be masters of their own fate in the First nations way as we have several of these in the Prairie Treaty Nations Alliance o r in the Salve lake regional Council or the Yellowhead Tribal Council. It is with the use of the strength of the amalgamations and with the security of numbers in these areas that the people have been bale to uphold what few rights they reserve for themselves in this pattern of care. ( Tripartite agreements). The issues have been overwhelmingly sidelined and those persons who are in the cities are abused by the municipal Police when they are involved in the Alberta Response Model which prior to any involvement from the Aboriginal services has made decisions which will effect the lives of the children they apprehend and which they abuse prior even to the knowledge of their counterparts. It is easier to turn the matter around when no damage is done not after all the damage is a part of the child’s consciousness forever and delays are assured.
The children who are put first through a meat grinder and then permitted to be dealt with after the fact are often already difficult to extricate and the suffering which is a part of the undoing of all that has been done is very much a part of the delay and the abuse of their health. It is early in the attack that children are often harmed and already the child may be dead. The many hours of screaming and begging of the child for their parents creates horrible reactions in the foster parents. The abusive and damaging apprehensions which tear at the very souls of the victim are practiced with regularity and mental health screening is used especially when the child has no fault nor the parent as this allows the worker to create one and match her intuition. These “assessments” are by no means culture fair nor are they necessary or indicated.
False emergencies or allegations and apprehensions are a favorite method at this time which allow the Police or RCMP and Children’s services teams to get their licks in against the child before they are referred. In many cases the child will have no advocacy at all during this process and about 70% of the people live in towns and cities for the access to work and school. The delayed advocacy allows a constant delay and the child suffers interminably with this abuse. The manufacture of evidence and abuse of the child’s health, is accomplished this way as well. ( In 2006 NCSA accepted with regret a policy which was turned out by Minister of Justice Alison Redford and MLA for the intergovernmental affairs Ray Danlyluk which no longer allows independent advocacy unsupervised by a lawyer, so in the case where delay may well serve a large litigation bill and not the child no advocacy will be forthcoming. It is often left to a Non-First nations representative to decide whether you deserve services based on your feathers and beads or another stereotype which they believe to be true.)
They simply said no.
The use of the Indian Affairs as an overseer here is not going to be effective since they do not use elders councils and they introduce Non_first nations unacepatable patterns of culture and have them funded using a general pot ( mismanagement) theft or funding fraud strategy forcing First nations into the programs which are damaging and which do not support our ways. ( Teaching Hip hop or Rap music and other types although everything evolves.) These programs for youth especially are harmful and they do not support what the elders would prefer but they eat up scarce funds. In Edmonton the use of the children’s funds serve anybody but them. The services are contingent upon such absolute control and scrutiny that they are as damaging as is possible. We have people from Britain teaching horse back riding and people form Jamaica or from a religious cult teaching youth programs. These programs are based of ideas and ideologies which are not only foreign and not deserving of funding which belongs to us but are in many ways harmful. We must not abide the internailisation of racism or a promotion of an ideal that excludes ourselves. Many actually come here to serve our children their ways as a part of their business plans.
I don’t see why we should share on this point anything which is not our own. The rap group is mistaken for a gang the children speak using slang they accept it only as a fashion but they are SUSPECT in a way that Non-First nations are not. We know it as a fashion for fun and they as another excuse for intervention. These pages contain many quotes about unfair scrutiny and they are intending more of it. In this they would have us give over our right to rule ourselves and demand that their ways become ours. In many cases an unheard of thing has come. The use of the description two spirited people to permit easy acceptance of one of the tabbooed ways for us. This was the idea that each of us is both masculine and feminine and we express this according to the situation and the need.
The use of this term, two spirited people, to express acceptance and inclusion of a large group pf gay men who have a separate range of very expressive culture of their own as if this was an outcropping of our own society is absurd. If someone can trace for me a program of this acceptance in the wide range of First nations I’d like to hear it. Then and only then can we find a place after knowledge and transferabilty of those understandings in our own societies at large not as a method of making us accept whatever they have accepted.
The blending of this style of acceptance with out the accompanying taboos on the actions and manners of the individuals to be brought into our midst is abhorent to the full expression of our own ways. This is an acceptance by the backdoor not of civil or human rights but of an expression of those rights which is a will full exaggerated abuse we all consider ill mannered and un-expressive of the right to privacy not just of the individual but of the child or person who witnesses their behavior. This is sexual harassment which is now a right in the Non-First nations culture but in the wider society which focuses on the negative rights of freedom from intervention but not freedom from licentiousness. It is against our ways to make public sexual displays it is considered the creation of a hostile environment and would not be tolerated. We choose to live together and that entails respect. The sensibilities which are so deeply lacking in the cruelty of the self- agrandised right to foist one-self in all the wearisome empty moment on others. We do not compete for their adherence to our ways in spiritual practice nor in the mode of our humanity in the sense of our woman or manhood.
Further to this the issue of the new ideal of legalized prostitution as a health issue as if the dangers of prostitution which has been forced on our women is the same for the wider society with their centuries of acceptance of women as chattel or primogeniture and of slavery or serfdom. These acceptances do not fit with our people. Law enforcement against prohibition and others forwarding the thrust of these laws can not include us as there will never be a consensus that accepts this role for our women. We do not accept prostitution as way of life and as a method of earning money. This is a sale of flesh which we are to be forced into with the acceptance of the ideal of legitimacy here for the use of sex mixed with commerce. Several of our very young without consulting the elders and traditionals have been involved in promoting this as a health issue for safety, when that is the furthest thing from the truth. We want to be safe from this influx not safe to prostitute. Let the workers of this latest flood go to Fort Whoop Up or a modern variety of their clip joints, not to us.
This is only an issue of the use of force and attack so common against our women. The attacks which scar, maim, and disable women and cause their deaths at a young age. All the while forcing unwanted attentions and unwanted life-ways on those alienated and separated from us and lost in the Non-First Nations world by design of the isolating abuses which are so common to those who attack our famiies, clans and communities.
Our own identity must be preserved and if there are not bastions of strength and areas of practice and islands of strength or peace what then have we left. The earth touches us and we in turn touch it to be grounded in strength it is a part of us. it can be likened to the sale of flesh. This can not happen in a place where the municipal and provincial ways and issues are applied. Already the RCMP are abusing by refusing the culling of dogs when in many cases it is a necessary thing. In some cases the animals become over run and in order to protect children we place dogs which are beneath them in our hierarchy at the bottom. Never will we accept the idea that a dog if turned wild must not be put down.
We when we can say our children are served then accept the services of vets to support animal population control and who is to dictate our priorities. Animals are hierarchical and they are to be treated as servants to the master and not as if they were to be considered first. We cherish and respect the wild life in ways they do not understand but we are not foolish and we believe that an animal in it’s place is at it’s best and happiest. It is a threat to our relationship with animals who we respect and mange as well.
People here have been ranching and we accept the purchase of animals but we must track them and control the entry here. If we accept the cattle handling ways of these ones what then Mad cow disease and feed with anti-biotics which is yet unknown as to what can be caused in the handling of our animals and in the eating.
The next thing is the handling of food which is a right we can not deny it is the way we prepare wisened by time our own food and we have yet in the memory of our blood the days when we boiled everything. The need for that came with disease. How shall we control the development of our markets and the acceptance of the eating patterns. Shall we accept it when they wine that our children must be weaned or that they are fat from too much breast feeding. Is every “study” suitable to their lifestyle to be forced on us. We have not yet been fully recovered from those days and from the need for specialized sanitation. Each of us can remember the times when the taking of the blanket was a mistake. We heard of the families decimated as well as our own.
We have water which has been made unaccepatable and air to be considered we can’t say just because the province has decided to refuse to accept the international Kyotto accord we too will be remiss. We have aright to choose this. We alone are the people of the seventh generation which has special meaning for us in the terms of responsibilities. But it has a past meaning too and that is planning and the acceptance of delays in the making of the laws and of the need for the consideration of the ways these things affect the future of our land and of our people. How dare Sean Atleo select for us this short sighted course with such haste and such disregard! we must not take a chance and we need not. In this time of world wide globalization and disruption even in the pattern of the seasons let us wait a while and consider for the future. Let the wisdom of the elders take hold.
We are in the middle of a revolution world wide in accountability and transparency. First let’s rest and then we can muster another fight we are at this time involved in the making of relationships with our neighbors and indigenous people everywhere which has not yet been fully fruit-full. This rests on our view and recognition of ourselves as an internationally legal entity not on an undermined municipality devolution. We govern ourselves and we own ourselves. We have selected a time in which the rights of the indigenous people have most recently been declared let’s not be the last to fall of the old regime of corruption.
The acceptance of the ways which allow the plant life to be overcome with pollutants and with genetic mutation can not suite us. In the places in Saskatchewan the farmers are tortured by the owning of the patents to life. They speak with shame and with loathing of the owning of the building blocks of life. They are forced off their own land and are made to pay whole crops to those who attack their seed by the use of that patent. In the case where this is done the plants are not healthy and some reject their use and they become as a noxious weed. If we have not imported enough trouble here then let us accept the use of the majority rules over our land as they have done and the rejection of our singular voice and be supplanted one by one and even enforce these vile laws upon one another.
Hi Betty
the Americas…North, Central, and South…..since colonial imperialism and trade chattel slavery for economic reasons…has resurface under the banner of the “New World Order Global Capitalism State”…as will the whole planet. The people of the world are a threat to those who wield an influence that is satanic in origin, and complicated with host of satanic followers, for the reason of world domination, whose focus is that of still racial supremacy, backed by tribal disputes, and one upsmanship by favors and services rendered….This is the same in ancient days, as was in 1492 Inquisition,in 1740’s thru the American so called revolution, which became a Masonic call to arms, to the war rituals of 1174,1812,1861,1898,1917,1937,1950,1954,1964, 1968,1975,1980, 1991 thru to 2001…until today worldwide…..HATING YOURSELF AND EACH OTHER JUST DO NOT STOP>>>IT PAYS OFF..BY BLOOD SWEAT,and LIES!!!!!
Why do you think our youth are like this, our youth aint dumb as you think. I come from 3rd generation Chief from Thunderchild First Nation.. And myself as a person and foremost as a caregiver to my late sisters kids.. Ok, to the Great White Mother, And all your servants must we all as humans have to sit here and watch you guys continue takin and takin and takin for a fact I know you guys will be cleaned out and the new world order shall be Darby Shaw
Who is Darby Shaw?
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