[IPSM] 3 ideas why Alugyiget (Indigenous People) should not vote!

[Macdonald Stainsby]

From: 	dustin johnson


*per·pet·u·ate - *1. To cause to continue indefinitely; make perpetual,
as in "perpetuate a myth."

It is not uncommon for non-Indigenous politicians to covet the
Aboriginal vote. It is no longer uncommon for happy Aboriginals to
encourage other Aboriginals to vote. Heck, they even have their own
party (http://www.fpnpoc.ca/) now. I still maintain that voting in
settler elections is not only a waste of a good Indigenous person's
time, it serves only to perpetuate the corrupt myth of Canadian
legitimacy on Indigenous lands. I still encounter my share blank faces
when I make such statements. Let me take another crack at it and see if
I can't win you over.

Many of you may have seen One Dead
Indian 
(http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/show/CTVShows/20051223/OneDeadIndian/20051227/) 

on TV last week. Although I did not catch it (I even own the book which
I have yet to read), a review did catch my eye. The review, titled,
"Movie takes sides in deadly standoff" was written by Steve Tilley of
the Ottawa Sun. For me, one line stood out amongst all others: "Based on
Peter Edwards' book of the same name, One Dead Indian is firmly on the
side of the Stoney Point Band members and it doesn't try to look at the
larger ongoing issue of illegal land occupation by Native protesters."

*Journalism 101: Writing about the locals*
"First Nations" are happy, singing folk.
"Natives" are angry and often break the law.
"Aboriginals" get lots of money.
"Indians" only seem to appear in the National Post and Fraser
Institute (http://www.fraserinstitute.org/) publications (Interestingly,
the term now seems to offend Aboriginals and their friends but does not
seem to perturb Indigenous people too much anymore)

As you may have guessed I take exception to Tilley's assertion that
"illegal land occupation by Native protesters" is a larger ongoing issue
that is somehow being ignored here. My contention is of course, that the
larger ongoing issue is the illegal ongoing occupation of Indigenous
lands by illegitimate settler governments, their citizens, police and
military. Tilley of course is merely acting upon the myth that Canada is
some bastion of freedom and justice void of any colonial past or present.
This view is so pervasive that most people don't even question it any
more. Indigenous culture and language and institutions belong in the
museum. Even our own people have come to accept this myth. In fact we
perpetuate it by acknowledging, willing now it seems, through our
actions of going to court, voting, running for colonial office and every
other action that recognizes the Canadian government. We ignore our own
institutions, our own Indigenous governance structures. I mean "we" in
the collective sense. There are pockets of resistance and hope but they
are sparse.

Many of us are taught that to not vote is an act of inaction, apathy,
unproductive and negative. Many of us are taught that to criticize is
wrong, to think critically is wrong, to question the general direction
and wisdom of our current crop of Aboriginal leaders is wrong. To be
clear, I have never advocated for or promoted senseless or malicious
criticism. We seem to be taught that the only logical voice of change is
the one currently being encouraged by the AFN and other similar
institutions. I disagree.
I will take the time to encourage anyone to not participate in the
settler elections that seem to drive our people crazy for 6 weeks and
then leave us standing at the alter of good intentions, alone again. Not
voting is an important first step. What you do with that energy is an
even more important second step. Sit with your elders. Learn your
language. Revive and adapt your own traditions, teachings and stories.
Breathe life into your Indigenous ways and ignore the myths that serve
only to keep our people down.

If you must vote, vote for Pedro (http://www.wackyplanet.com/voforpet.html).

W.
*
*

*Mohawk Anti-Voting Zone*

Mike Delisle Jr. had some advice last month for the man who coaches his
son's junior football team. It had nothing to do with sports. It had to
do with the federal election.

Delisle is grand chief of Kahnawake, the Mohawk reserve just south of
Montreal. The coach, Charlie Ghorayeb, is running as the Liberal
candidate in Chateauguay-St. Constant.

Officially, the riding includes Kahnawake. But the Mohawks see things
differently, as Delisle pointed out to his friend.

"He asked me whether it was worth his while to place advertisements for
his campaign in our local newspaper and also in our post boxes, and he
even invited me to one of his fundraisers," Delisle recalled.

The aspiring candidate needn't have bothered asking. The vast majority
of Mohawks - who make up Canada's most populous native bands - don't
vote in Canadian elections, on principle.

"I told him the ads would be a waste of his time and resources, and I
politely declined the invitation," said Delisle, whose story was
confirmed by Ghorayeb.

"He understood."

Welcome to Mohawk country, an election-free zone. Unlike most other
Canadian native communities, the 9,300 Mohawks of Kahnawake, along with
their 10,000 brethren of Akwesasne, which straddles the Canada-U.S.
border near Cornwall, Ont., boycott federal and provincial elections.

The Mohawks believe in governing themselves first, not helping
non-natives govern, whether that means Canada, Quebec or anyplace else.

Voting in "alien nation" elections "places us in submission to foreign
governments and as a result alienates us from our own," according to the
lead editorial this week in The Eastern Door, Kahnawake's community
paper. "You can't stand with one foot in two canoes."

It's an old position, dating back at least to 1960, when Ottawa first
gave natives the right to vote. But these days, the Mohawk way runs
contrary to a trend in Canadian aboriginal politics, whereby Assembly of
First Nations and Metis National Council leaders, as well as the Grand
Council of the Crees in Quebec, are working with mainstream political
parties to push aboriginal issues.

Fresh from negotiating a $5-billion aid deal in Kelowna, B.C. in
November with Prime Minister Paul Martin and the premiers, national
aboriginal leaders want natives to vote the Liberals back in on Jan. 23,
or at least support New Democrats. The Metis believe their ballots could
affect as many as 33 close ridings in the western provinces and up
north, where natives are as much as one-quarter of some ridings' population.

The Conservatives? Forget it - they don't have any real official support.

The Bloc Quebecois? In Quebec, they may be backed by the Crees, but the
Mohawks? Never.

The Tories aren't getting the native vote for two reasons. First, the
aboriginals fear they're not committed to the Kelowna deal. Last week
Tory finance critic Monte Solberg said it had been "crafted at the last
moment on the back of a napkin on the eve of an election (and) we're not
going to honour that," a position the party quickly denied.

Second, a trusted advisor of Conservative leader Stephen Harper is Tom
Flanagan, a Calgary political science professor whose publications (one
of which is titled First Nations? Second Thoughts) the aboriginals view
as anti-native.

The only hint of aboriginal support for the Tories came in a news report
Friday that the Congress of Aboriginal Peoples, which speaks for
Canada's off-reserve natives, will endorse the party before election
day. So far it hasn't happened.

In Quebec, Mohawks shun the the Bloc for the simple reason that it's a
separatist party. Not that the Bloc hasn't tried to win them over.

On the highways leading to and from Kahnawake, for example, there are
only two signs on native land advertising the election, and both are
Bloc. The reserve has banned campaign ads, but the Bloc found a way
around that by buying space on big commercial billboards already
standing on real estate owned by the Mohawks.

Six weeks ago, at the start of the campaign, zealous Bloc volunteers
started strapping campaign posters to utility poles, but after residents
complained, Kahnawake Peacekeepers ordered Bloc campaigners off the
territory, along with their signs.

Getting out the native vote isn't just something the Bloc and other
parties would like. It's also a priority of Elections Canada.

Since the early 1990s, the federal agency has aimed campaigns at the
country's 735,000 registered natives, trying to convince them - in
publications in English, French and 11 aboriginal languages - that
voting is key to ensuring their self-determination.

In this and the last four elections, the agency has hired aboriginal
community relations officers, elders and youth guides to get voters to
polling stations in an increasing number of ridings - 48 in the 2004
election, 132 in this one. The goal is to increase aboriginal turnout
substantially. It's usually minimal, about one-sixth the number of
non-native votes, the agency estimates.

But Kahnawake is tough to crack. Turnout there is, simply, nil.

Any local resident who wants to vote - and of the 9,300 population there
are perhaps half a dozen who do so each election, all of them
non-natives married to natives, according to band council spokesperson
Joe Delaronde - have to go into Chateauguay to do it. There are no
polling stations in Kahnawake.

The Mohawks do follow the election on TV and in the newspapers. After
all, they say, they're part of the story, however indirectly.

"It's not a matter of not being interested in the issues - we are
interested, because we ourselves are one of the issues in Canadian
politics," said Delisle, the grand chief. "We just don't consider
ourselves part of the Canadian electorate, because we don't consider
ourselves Canadian citizens."

JEFF HEINRICH, The Gazette

Published: Sunday, January 15, 2006



*Why U.S. should pay attention to Mexico's Zapatistas*
(Should be the same for Occupied Canada as well...)

Hopes for new democracy a challenge to political class

By ALEJANDRO REUSS

The Zapatistas of Mexico have not gone away. And they have much to teach
us in the United States.

Visiting the city of San Cristobal de las Casas, Chiapas, on New Year's
Day, I was lucky to witness an extraordinary event.

Thousands of indigenous people, men and women, adults and children, some
wearing the traditional clothing of the Maya people of the region, most
wearing the black ski masks emblematic of Mexico's Zapatista National
Liberation Army (whose Spanish initials are EZLN), marched en masse into
the city square.

The rally there, featuring speeches by EZLN leaders, marked the
12th anniversary of the uprising that first brought the group
to international attention. It also touched off the beginning of
a national tour the organization hopes will help build a new kind
of democracy "from below."

The Zapatista caravan intends to visit all 31 states of Mexico and the
federal district on a six-month tour ending in Tijuana, 2,500 miles from
Chiapas. The group calls the tour, which coincides with the country's
national presidential campaign, the "other campaign."

For the Zapatistas, however, the campaign is not a sideshow to
the presidential elections. It is a challenge to the entire
Mexican political class, which they view as promoting the interests of
large corporations at the expense of Mexico's workers and peasant
farmers, and especially at the expense of the country's indigenous people.

The Zapatistas are fiercely critical of the turn toward
free-market, free-trade policies on the part of Mexico's main political
parties, the Revolutionary Institutional Party (PRI), which ruled
Mexico continually for more than 70 years, and the pro-business
National Action Party (PAN), the current ruling party.

These policies, the Zapatistas say in a new manifesto, have left "many
Mexicans destitute, like peasants and small producers, because they are
'gobbled up' by the big agro-industrial companies" while urban workers
face factory closures, with the only alternative being low-paid work in
the maquiladoras opened by multinational
corporations. To the Zapatistas, this is the fullest expression of
an economic system that generates wealth for the few while
sowing poverty, inequality and exploitation for the many.

The Zapatistas practice a different kind of politics. In the areas
of Chiapas where the EZLN is strong, they have not simply governed
on their own authority, but have largely stepped back and
allowed indigenous "autonomous communities" to decide how to
govern themselves. Nor has the EZLN sought power through the ballot, in
order to govern on behalf of the people. They have repeatedly submitted
their decisions to popular ballot, an approach they call "leading by
obeying," but they have not sought office.

The message of the Zapatistas is that there is more to politics
than just electioneering, and that the people should not be satisfied
with leaders who care about them only when they are looking for
votes. People can take power and change the conditions of their own
lives, collectively, the Zapatistas argue, without relying on politicians to
do it for them.

That is a message with more than a passing relevance to the
United States, where we often reduce politics to nothing more
than elections, and where election campaigns rarely deal seriously
with the blights, such as poverty and racism, which vex our society
as they do Mexico's.

We would do well to take to heart the Zapatistas' message:

"We believe that a people which does not watch over its leaders
is condemned to be enslaved, and we fought to be free, not to
change masters every six years."


http://mostlywater.org/node


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