[IPSM] The Quantum Mechanics of Magic on the Global Stage

[Macdonald Stainsby]

ESSAYS & REVIEWS
The Quantum Mechanics of Magic on the Global Stage: Nation States and
First Nations
September 13, 2005

Stewart Steinhauer
http://www.sevenoaksmag.com/commentary/78_comm2.html

I have nothing to say about either quantum mechanics or mystical
phenomena. Ask any professional magician and they will tell you that their
line of work doesn't either; it's about distraction and sleight of hand.
The difference between a good magician and a great magician is the level
of totality with which they can spin their web of illusion.

I do have something to say about the concept of nation, but before I can
go into that discussion, I must switch on the lights in the big hall, so
that we, the audience, can catch a glimpse of the quantum mechanics of
magic operating on the global stage. You, my dear reader, will need a
reference point to begin bouncing your own internal dialogue off of, as
you follow the bouncing ball of my karaoke-style rhetoric, so here it is.

I'm a band member of Saddle Lake First Nation, located in oil and gas rich
northeastern Alberta, Canada. Well, so much for fair and balanced. You now
know that you will not be getting the objective kind of observation,
analysis and comment that you are used to, because you are reading the
words of a property-less, hence irrational, person. Apparently the queen
of some tiny island off of the coast of Europe owns the house I built for
myself with my own hands, on my ancestral lands. Not only am I
property-less, but apparently I lack the capacity to improve property,
going back to the French meaning of the term improve. Improve means to
make profitable, literally "to put profit in".

In the seventeenth century, John Locke, writing about my ancestors and
their homelands, explains that an acre of my homelands may be as naturally
fertile as an acre in England, but it is not worth 1/1000 of the English
acre, if we calculate 'all the Profit an Indian received from it were it
valued and sold here'.

We are obviously entering the realm of great magic. Every once in a while
an indigenous voice rises above the din of day trading to make a comment,
and I'll recount a couple before going on. In 1980, at a radical left
progressive gathering in the US (yes yes, it does sound like an oxymoron)
Lakota spokesperson Russell Means said that, for the world to live, Europe
must die. Russell wasn't talking about European people dying, because,
like most Peoples indigenous to my dear Turtle Island, he doesn't believe
in murder. In 2004, Ward Churchill toured the public speaking engagement
circuit saying "US off the planet!" but Ward wasn't suggesting that US
citizens should all book flights on the next space shuttle.

What are Russell and Ward talking about? Unexpectedly, as I stumble around
here in the dark looking for the promised light switch, we've lurched up
against the crux of our dilemma, known in Canada as "the Indian Problem".
What do people, and Peoples, who do not believe in murder, do, when their
lands are invaded and occupied by people, and Peoples, who really, really
do believe in murder? In Canada, the invaders propose assimilation as the
cure to the "Indian Problem". Does this mean that they wish us to become
murders, too? Down on the Rez, our stats show that we've got an incredible
accidental death rate, featuring such accidents as suicide and homicide.
Is the assimilation project working?

As a property-less, nation-less human being surviving a five century long
genocidal onslaught, I have to ask myself if assimilation into a culture
of torture, murder, death and destruction is the key to my descendents'
survival? Should I do as the Zionists have done, and echo the battle cry
"Never again "? If I ran to the Chinese government with my tale of woe
about invasion, occupation and genocide, would they provide me with
sophisticated arms, and billions of dollars worth of material support to
throw off the yoke of my oppressor, as the US does with Israel? The
Chinese Central Bank certainly has enough USD to be able to afford such an
investment, and they've become very oil hungry. The tar sands in
northeastern Alberta probably look mighty tempting. They could rationalize
the whole thing under a CIA-style destabilization campaign, using
indigenous Peoples as front men and fall guys. Bring about regime change,
get rid of King Ralph, and promote a real, Chinese business interests
style democracy.

Great magic, what what?

Oh yes, the lights. Flicking on the hall lights for a moment, I see that
the modern nation state is a creation of western Europe, one of the tools
in the Master Magician's tool box. This chariot of state is drawn by four
white stallions: racism, patriarchy, imperialism, and capitalism. In the
driver's seat sits individualistic liberalist ideology. Toss the notion of
private property into the back of the chariot, improve that notion with
the notion that "improvement" can confer title to such property, nuclear
bomb a couple of Japanese cities so that the "honorary whites" in the G8
understand exactly where the bottom line is, and you have the great
project of modernity.

The intellectual discourse about post-modernism ranks alongside the
discussions about post-colonialism: quick, hand me a high powered
telescope so that I, too, might catch a glimpse of that far off corner of
the universe. Or perhaps not. As someone once said, a little knowledge can
be dangerous.

In my first language, nehiyawewin, which I do not have a functional use of
thanks to that aforementioned queen of a tiny island off of the coast of
Europe, old people, here at Saddle Lake, talk about natural laws. They
talk about humble kindness, sharing, honesty, and determination, and they
liken these four "laws" to strands in a sweetgrass braid, woven together
to make a foundation for human society. As a modern indigenous person
subjected by the nation state of Canada to an intense social engineering
project which would have me see myself as a band member of a First Nation,
I have to weigh this choice: which paradigm holds a future for my seventh
generation descendents?

One of my relatives asked me: Do you know why indigenous men wear their
hair in two braids? My first thought was "not all indigenous men do", but
I wanted to hear his explanation. "These two braids" he said, grasping his
own, "represent the braided whip, and the braided sweetgrass. These are
our choices. We can follow the path of humble kindness, the sweetgrass, or
we can follow the path of unlimited violence, the leather whip."

Which path am I going to follow? It might come down to a simple matter of
power failure: will the lights in the big hall be on, or off?


--
Macdonald Stainsby
http://independentmedia.ca/survivingcanada/
http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/rad-green
In the contradiction lies the hope.
--Brecht.