[Indigsol] IPSMO Newsletter: September 14-21

[Indigenous Peoples' Solidarity Movement -Ottawa]

IPSMO Newsletter
September 14-21

Events and Articles

_______________________________________________________________________________

1) Events
1a) The Epidemic of Continuing Violence Against Indigenous Women/
l’épidémie de violence contre les femmes autochtones
1b) My Summer Vacation Under Occupation: Carleton Students and Faculty
Report Back from Occupied Palestine: Oct 5

2) Articles
*The Denial of My Parole * I Am Barack Obama's Political Prisoner Now by
Leonard Peltier
_______________________________________________________________________________


_______________________________________________________________________________

1) Events
_______________________________________________________________________________

1a) The Epidemic of Continuing Violence Against Indigenous Women/
l’épidémie de violence contre les femmes autochtones

In solidarity with Indigenous Women across Turtle Island
join us in an evening of understanding
The Epidemic of Continuing Violence Against Indigenous Women

6:30 PM Wednesday, September 16th, 2009


Auditorium, National Library and Archives
395 Wellington St. Ottawa, Algonquin Territory
Wheelchair Accessible
Free!  Everyone is Welcome.

visit: www.ipsmo.org for more information



************

Joignez-vous aux femmes autochtones de l’Île de la Tortue
à l’occasion d’une soirée de réflexion sur
l’épidémie de violence contre les femmes autochtones

le mercredi 16 septembre 2009 à 18 h 30


à l’Auditorium, Bibliothèque et Archives nationales
395, rue Wellington, Ottawa, Territoire Algonquin
Accessible aux fauteuils roulants
Gratuit! Ouvert à tous et à toutes.

www.ipsmo.org



~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


1b) My Summer Vacation Under Occupation: Carleton Students and Faculty
Report Back from Occupied Palestine

7:00 PM
Monday October 5, 2009
2017 Dunton Tower, Carleton University
Wheelchair Accessible
Free!
Presented by Students Against Israeli Apartheid (SAIA) Carleton
saia.carleton at gmail.com, http://carleton.saia.ca/

In the summer of 2005, Carleton President Roseann Runte visited Israel
through a program called the “Israel Advocacy Initiative.” During her
trip, President Runte bought into the propaganda that was directed at
the participants, even describing Israel’s Apartheid Wall - deemed
illegal by the International Court of Justice - as being “enormously
popular.”

In the summer of 2009, a number of Carleton students and faculty
visited Palestine/Israel for different types of trips.

Some visited family and frien ds.

Others wanted to bear witness to Israeli apartheid first-hand.

Some were allowed in the country, and experienced the racism,
discrimination, and oppression stemming from the occupation.

Others - in particular, those with Palestinian family connections -
were denied entry; interrogated, humiliated, threatened, dehumanized
and told they are barred from ever visiting their family. Racial
profiling at its worst.

On Oct 5, 2009 Students Against Israeli Apartheid (Carleton) invites
you to listen to the stories of your Carleton peers – faculty and
students – about their summer experiences in Palestine/Israel.
Everyone is welcome to come see pictures and hear personal accounts
about the realities of life under occupation.

Related Links
“A Blog from Israel” Runte, Roseanne (United Jewish Federation of Tidewater)
http://www.jewishva.org/page.as px?id=110191
“Israel Targets Palestinian-Canadian” Koring, Paul (Globe and Mail)
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/israel-targets-palestinian-canadians/article1259311/


_______________________________________________________________________________

2) Articles
_______________________________________________________________________________

1)  *The Denial of My Parole * I Am Barack Obama's Political Prisoner Now
(printed as a
A CounterPunch Exclusive)


By LEONARD PELTIER

The United States Department of Justice has once again made a mockery of its
lofty and pretentious title.

After releasing an original and continuing disciple of death cult leader
Charles Manson who attempted to shoot President Gerald Ford, an admitted


Croatian terrorist, and another attempted assassin of President Ford under
the mandatory 30-year parole law, the U.S. Parole Commission deemed that my
release would “promote disrespect for the law.”

If only the federal government would have respected its own laws, not to


mention the treaties that are, under the U.S. Constitution, the supreme law
of the land, I would never have been convicted nor forced to spend more than
half my life in captivity. Not to mention the fact that every law in this


country was created without the consent of Native peoples and is applied
unequally at our expense. If nothing else, my experience should raise
serious questions about the FBI's supposed jurisdiction in Indian Country.



The parole commission's phrase was lifted from soon-to-be former U.S.
Attorney Drew Wrigley, who apparently hopes to ride with the FBI cavalry
into the office of North Dakota governor. In this Wrigley is following in


the footsteps of William Janklow, who built his political career on his
reputation as an Indian fighter, moving on up from tribal attorney (and
alleged rapist of a Native minor) to state attorney general, South Dakota


governor, and U.S. Congressman. Some might recall that Janklow claimed
responsibility for dissuading President Clinton from pardoning me before he
was convicted of manslaughter. Janklow's historical predecessor, George


Armstrong Custer, similarly hoped that a glorious massacre of the Sioux
would propel him to the White House, and we all know what happened to him.

Unlike the barbarians that bay for my blood in the corridors of power,


however, Native people are true humanitarians who pray for our enemies. Yet
we must be realistic enough to organize for our own freedom and equality as
nations. We constitute 5% of the population of North Dakota and 10% of South


Dakota and we could utilize that influence to promote our own power on the
reservations, where our focus should be. If we organized as a voting bloc,
we could defeat the entire premise of the competition between the Dakotas as


to which is the most racist. In the 1970s we were forced to take up arms to
affirm our right to survival and self-defense, but today the war is one of
ideas. We must now stand up to armed oppression and colonization with our


bodies and our minds. International law is on our side.

Given the complexion of the three recent federal parolees, it might seem
that my greatest crime was being Indian. But the truth is that my gravest
offense is my innocence. In Iran, political prisoners are occasionally


released if they confess to the ridiculous charges on which they are dragged
into court, in order to discredit and intimidate them and other like-minded
citizens. The FBI and its mouthpieces have suggested the same, as did the


parole commission in 1993, when it ruled that my refusal to confess was
grounds for denial of parole.

To claim innocence is to suggest that the government is wrong, if not guilty
itself. The American judicial system is set up so that the defendant is not


punished for the crime itself, but for refusing to accept whatever plea
arrangement is offered and for daring to compel the judicial system to grant
the accused the right to right to rebut the charges leveled by the state in


an actual trial. Such insolence is punished invariably with prosecution
requests for the steepest possible sentence, if not an upward departure from
sentencing guidelines that are being gradually discarded, along with the


possibility of parole.

As much as non-Natives might hate Indians, we are all in the same boat. To
attempt to emulate this system in tribal government is pitiful, to say the
least.

It was only this year, in the Troy Davis, case, that the U.S. Supreme Court


recognized innocence as a legitimate legal defense. Like the witnesses that
were coerced into testifying against me, those that testified against Davis
renounced their statements, yet Davis was very nearly put to death. I might


have been executed myself by now, had not the government of Canada required
a waiver of the death penalty as a condition of extradition.

The old order is aptly represented by Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia,


who stated in his dissenting opinion in the Davis case, “This Court has
never held that the Constitution forbids the execution of a convicted
defendant who has had a full and fair trial but is later able to convince a


habeas court that he is 'actually' innocent. Quite to the contrary, we have
repeatedly left that question unresolved, while expressing considerable
doubt that any claim based on alleged 'actual innocence' is constitutionally


cognizable.”

The esteemed Senator from North Dakota, Byron Dorgan, who is now the
chairman of the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs, used much the same
reasoning in writing that “our legal system has found Leonard Peltier guilty


of the crime for which he was charged. I have reviewed the material from the
trial, and I believe the verdict was fair and just.”

It is a bizarre and incomprehensible statement to Natives, as well it should

be, that innocence and guilt is a mere legal status, not necessarily rooted

in material fact. It is a truism that all political prisoners were convicted
of the crimes for which they were charged.

The truth is the government wants me to falsely confess in order to validate
a rather sloppy frame-up operation, one whose exposure would open the door


to an investigation of the United States' role in training and equipping
goon squads to suppress a grassroots movement on Pine Ridge against a puppet
dictatorship.

In America, there can by definition be no political prisoners, only those


duly judged guilty in a court of law. It is deemed too controversial to even
publicly contemplate that the federal government might fabricate and
suppress evidence to defeat those deemed political enemies. But it is a


demonstrable fact at every stage of my case.

I am Barack Obama's political prisoner now, and I hope and pray that he will
adhere to the ideals that impelled him to run for president. But as Obama
himself would acknowledge, if we are expecting him to solve our problems, we


missed the point of his campaign. Only by organizing in our own communities
and pressuring our supposed leaders can we bring about the changes that we
all so desperately need. Please support the Leonard Peltier Defense Offense


Committee <http://www.whoisleonardpeltier.info/> in our effort to hold the
United States government to its own words.

I thank you all who have stood by me all these years, but to name anyone


would be to exclude many more. We must never lose hope in our struggle for
freedom.

In the Spirit of Crazy Horse,

Leonard Peltier
Leonard Peltier #89637-132
USP-Lewisburg
US Penitentiary
PO Box 1000


Lewisburg, PA 17837
For more information on Leonard Peltier visit the Leonard Peltier
Defense-Offense Committee website <http://www.whoisleonardpeltier.info/>.


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