Sunday, December 31, 2006

December 26th Update from Grand River

The following from Hazel Hill, at the Six Nations Reclamation Site just outside Caledonia:

Greetings!

It has been a few weeks since I last updated everyone and I have had
people e-mailing wondering what is happening.

Before I begin, I need to ask that those of you who forward and post this to your blogs, PLEASE do not change it.  I have had radio stations slandering me, discrediting me, only to find out that they had been duped and someone had sent them a "so-called update",  that had been drastically changed painting me out to be a racist etc.  I write what I SEE,  and while it may not be journalistically or grammatically correct, it is MY thoughts and MY feelings.  The message is being received and understood by everyone else who reads them, so there is no need to change them.  Perhaps this would also account for the Crown representatives who have been complaining about my updates to our Haudenesonne delegates.  They do not like my updates and are concerned that they could be construed as coming from the "negotiations".  So as a matter of clarification, when I update the people, which IS what my job is, I update based on looking at things from the Eagles perspective.   It is not from a politicians perspective, and it is not from the Chiefs or delegates perspective.  It is  from the perspective of one who can bring herself away from the table of discussions and look onto the situation and look beyond the words that are being said, and look at the actions of the Crown and from that, put on paper the words from my heart and from my instincts, of  what is really going on.  So for the federal government to have made issue with my updates, not just once, but several times, tells me that I AM DOING MY JOB!  One thing I made clear at the beginning of my attending the meetings is that I report to the PEOPLE.  There is no such thing as confidentiality when it comes to the  Haudenesonne.  Our people counsel in honesty and openness and that is how we will continue.  For us to state otherwise, will only lend to question what it is that we have to hide.  I report to the Clanmothers and Chiefs on what I am doing, and answer any questions that they have, and I will continue to do so.  My obligation is to the People, and to keep them informed.  These updates are for all of the Haudenesonne who are spread across Turtle Island and cannot attend meetings or council to be updated.  They are for the millions of Onkwehonweh across the world who are reading and watching and counting on the Haudenesonne to uphold their responsiblities to Creation in order to help bring about Justice for all the Onkwehonweh.  More importantly, my updates are for the Creator.  To do what I believe is what is the highest good of ALL concerned.  Not in the interest of any individual or Nation.  This is about the PEACE that was intended for ALL.  I have been put on this earth to answer only to the Creator and to do the job that he set me on this earth to do.  It is not for any one to question, it is between me and the Creator, and while some may not appreciate my perspective or my thoughts, OH WELL, cause I am not here to please anyone either.

Having said that, the first thing I have to take issue with, IS the Federal representatives reason for taking issue with my updates.  Their concern was with my use of the word Genocide and how I refer to their actions as "the continuance of the genocidal practices of the Crown".  Well, HELLLLOOOO!   Spot it you got it I say.  Perhaps they took issue with the fact that it is the TRUTH, and while they might not like it, it is a FACT.  One of their legal representatives is apparently Jewish and felt that my use of the word was inappropriate becuase of the suffering of the Jews at the hands of Hitler.  Well as a matter of clarification, Hitler studied the Onkwehonweh and while I have been told that he liked how our people lived and how our law worked, he also seen how Western Civilization treated the Onkwehonweh, and he modelled the treatment of the Jews after THAT and so YES!, Geneocide is an ugly word, but no one people can take ownership of the word, and those that do, need to study a bit more of where it comes from and how it even became a word in the english dictionary in the first place.  It came from the treatment of the Onkwehonweh by those who invaded our homelands and tried to wipe us out for their own benefit and gain.  So as far as I'm concerned, the Crown IS continuing with its genocidal practices because of its insistance on thinking it has some sort of governance over our people, which they do not; and by their refusal to uphold the Treaties to which their ancestors swore to, which they are obligated to do.  You can't just have it your way.  They want us to acknowledge all of the agreements and treaties that benefit their people, but the moment we remind them that that Silver Covenant Chain can rattle in both directions, they close their eyes and ears.  Well, our people are tired of it, and we are not going to tolerate it any longer.  The Crown needs to ensure that the representatives that they send to the table to talk, are one's that have the ability to make a decision, not one's that are there to bide time while they try to figure out a way to get out of it.  Barbara McDougal herself told Teka reporter Jim Windell that she is not there to negotiate or make decisions.  So again, what is it that the taxpayers are paying these big dollars for???????????  For the last ten months they have been dancing around and talking about everything BUT the issue at hand.  The Land.  We've talked about blockades, fences, buffer zones, governance, 4-wheelers, flashing lights and flags.  When are we going to get to the heart of everything.  You stole our land, we've proven it.  What is there to negotiate?  We took it back and there is nothing to talk about other then when are you giving the rest back.   Or do we have to come and take that too?    When have you ever seen a car thief negotiate with the owner over when and how to give it back.  This whole process is ridculous!  All I know is that the People are getting tired of being led down the garden path once again and in July when the barricades came down, we gave our delegates a few months to deal with it.  It has been well past a few months and it is time that the Crown representatives remembered that the delegates that have been chosen to sit at the table with them are exactly that, delegates.  I have heard our delegates remind the Crown representatives that they can only hold the people back for so long.  I know that the PEOPLE are definitely not happy about the apparent lack of good will on the part of the Crown, and if the people so choose, we may have to send in more convincing delegates to get the message across.

And talk about messages.  Gary McHale has been on a campaign to prove that there is a two-tiered justice system when it comes to the Native people and he has finally proven himself right.  He is a walking talking evidence of the two tiered justice that exists within Canada's so called democracy and its treatment of native people.    He has been weebling in and out of the reclamation situation by holding marches, demonstrations, and setting up his web page campaign to try and undermine our people's position, and to get out his propoganda.  His latest venture was using the Canadian Troops with his flag campaign.  Well, he got what he wanted.  He proved that there IS a two-tiered justice.  Gary was arrested and released WITHOUT condition.  Every single "Native" person that was arrested with respect to the reclamation of OUR lands near Caledonia, had the condition "not to return to Douglas Creek" as part of their release.  If the Crown's agents of the Courts really wanted Gary McHale to go away and stop interfering in what is NONE OF HIS BUSINESS, they could have easily directed him with the same conditions as our people have been given.  Stay away from Douglas Creek.  I guess the Crown doesn't want him to stay away because with the Gary McHales of the world, there is no guarantee of PEACE,  and he has been given a "get out of jail free card" to allow him the freedom to continue to manipulate and undermine the Peace by instigating trouble.  Good job Gary, thanks for proving our point.

Along side of Gary McHale are the homeowners who claim that the "Native's from the Site" broke into their home and vandalized it.  They have Mayor Trainer of Caledonia and MP Toby Barrett going on national television, and in their house of commons blaming our people for the vandalism and continuing with their claims that there is no peace within Caledonia, and that they are constantly being terrorized.  It does'nt take a genious to figure out that perhaps there is some dirty pool going on with this so-called break in.  First of all, if there was truly a break-in and vandalism, WHY would you compromise the evidence by inviting CH TV Channel 11 in to take footage, and have half the neighbourhood in there trapsing through and eliminating  ny chance of the police being able to do a thorough investigation because you've compromised the crime scene.  Also, if it was one of our people from the site,  there should be alot of mud in the crime scene and foot prints leading to and from the house as they claim the 'individuals' ran out the back when they got home and went into the reclamation site.  Our men did our own invesitation and can clearly see there were no footprints leading to or from the house from the site, and for all of those who came to the site when the homeowners had the media and their supporters there claiming the natives had broken in, calling us names and holding signs that read "Peaceful People my Ass", everyone who was on the site had their shoe sizes enhanced by a couple of sizes from the mud that caked on their shoes from walking in the field next to the house,  so don't tell me that anyone from the site did this.  It was a staged set up, and poorly done I might add.  They're either stupid or think we are.  Our people are fully prepared to co-operate with the police to ensure that this is investigated thoroughly because we know it wasn't any of our people from the site, and we know a set up when we see one.  This is the same crap that was pulled in Kanesetake during 1990 trying to use the media as a negotiating tool and to play out their political bs at the expense of the Onkwehonweh.  In this particular case, it has been alleged that the homeowners want to be bought out and the government won't answer to their demands for an outrageous amount of money.  It is also been alleged that the three times they claim that the "natives from the site" stole their Canadian flag off of their lawn,  they were seen by police removing the flag itself, and then calling in a false police report.  I think that the politicians who are supporting these slanderous accusations against our people need to think about who and what they are supporting (unless they are part of the plan) because at this point, perhaps we should go ahead and jump into the boat and into their court system with charges of slander against our people and sue them for everything they got, including their homes that are sitting on land that already belongs to us.  The only terroristic action that is happening near Kanesthaton, is that brought on when the instigators from outside try to come in and insite trouble, or when the politicians who think they are doing something for their people, continue with their lied filled campaigns based on slanderous gossip and  who are both supported and allowed to report it as facts by irresponsible news media.  So, a message from our people, go ahead and continue with your plots of deception, keep on trying to prove to the world that we are an evil people as your latest blog "faces of evil" tried to imply, because when you live and answer to the Creator, you live without fear.  We have nothing to hide.  We have simply stated the facts.  The land is ours.  The road which you hang your flags on is ours.  The business which you are claiming millions of dollars of losses on, is a result of the racism and hatred shown against our people that has caused our people not to shop in your stores anymore.  It is not a result of barricades and it isn't based on fear from the outside townspeople coming in to shop, because they continue to come to Six Nations.  It is your own doing.  It is your mayors doing.  It is because you did not understand or respect the fact that the Haudenesonne,  whom you want the army brought in to eliminate, are the very people who supported and kept your business running by our spending our money in your community.

I also wanted to touch on the whole "faces of evil" thing.  There was a recent blog which was allegedly started by the same individual from London Ontario who supports Gary McHale and who apparently scanned different pictures of our people and our supporters to create a little video depicting so-called "faces of evil".  I didn't get to watch it because by the time I tried to view it, it had been shut down.  But the whole thing about our people being evil was started a few months ago within our own community by the elected chief and his political advisor after the band council voted to stop paying the salary of this particular legal advisor and took him out of his position. ( Note however, that the individual is still out there speaking on behalf of the Six Nations, and still wanders around the band administration building as any other employee even though he supposedly was taken off payroll........what gives!? )   It was an attempt at a smear campaign to undermine the position of the people at Kanehstaton, it was done out of anger to try and get our people to stop supporting the site, and somehow try to stop the movement of the people at forcing the crown to deal with our only true government, the Haudenesonne.  The people, through our traditional council.  As a matter of fact, it was implied that our traditional council was evil.  It was an ill fated attempt to smear some of the people who supported us financially.  It was and continues to be used as a tool by those who want to discredit the Haudenesonne in order to perpetuate the fraud of the crown in its insistance at dealing with the illegal entity known as the elected band council.  I understand that there was something out there with my own name attached to it, that an individual was calling me evil.  I don't know because I didn't read it, I was only told about it.  It doesn't matter.  What matters is that it is right in line with what has been prophescized.  That we, the Haudenesonne,  would be called evil.  That we would referred to as the "666" which apparently one of the article's was referring to the "6-6-6 Nations".  I have been told by many elders in the past, that this time would come,  and that those who truly work for the Creator would clearly be separated from those that don't.  I guess that time is now, and those individuals are showing themselves.

Finally,  I want to talk about this holiday season in particular and how deeply it has effected me.  For many years, I have struggled with Christmas, and have tried to teach my children the truth about this season, and how I see it.  That for the Christian people, it is a time to celebrate Christs birth, and to enjoy Peace on Earth.  And yet, for the Onkwehonweh, this is something that we are suppose to live our life by.  Every day.  Not just one day of the year.  Just like many of the other Christian/Calendar holidays.  Mothers Day, Fathers Day etc. Why would you only honour your mother and father on one day of the year.  So why do we only acknowledge this person, Christ, who gave his life for your sins, only one day of the year. In our teachings, He was known as the Peacemaker, and the Kaienerekowah, this Great Law,  is the Law or Message of Peace that he brought to help us to live our life by. It is symbolized by the Great White Pine Tree with an Eagle sitting at the top.

I'll share with you this story I was told and then I will explain why.  I was told that when the Peacemaker came and our people accepted the Peace, He then told us that He was going to go across the great big waters and deliver this same message to the people over there.  He left instructions for our people to cut a notch out of the Great White Pine every day, and if one day that Pine was to bleed, we would know that those people did not accept the Peace and that they had killed Him.  So every day, our people cut the notch out of the tree, and finally, there came a day when that Pine did bleed.  Our people were angry and set out to build a big raft and were going to go across those great waters and kill the people that had killed our Peacemaker.  But while they were building this raft, the Peacemaker returned to them in spirit and told them not to go across to kill those people. He reminded them of the Peace that we had accepted.  He showed them the holes in his hands and feet, and the crown of thorns on his head and he warned our people that there would come a time when those people would come across the waters to our homelands and it was up to us if we welcomed them and helped them.  He also warned our people to beware of the man carrying the black book.

This is something that has never left my mind.  It was not the book itself that he warned us of.  It was the man who carried the black book, and just like anything written, it can be changed and manipulated to control people. And like everything else in the battle of good vs. evil, right handed twin vs. left handed twin, everything that was good that the right handed twin did, the left handed twin has to undermine.  So too has this message of Peace been undermined.  This celebration of Peace, that was given to all people,  was never intended to be commercialized, nor was it intended only to be acknowledged only one day out of the year.  The Eagle, representing the Onkwehonweh who have the responsiblity to uphold that peace,  that rests on top of the Great Tree;  was replaced by the Star of David, and the Message of Peace has been replaced by commercialization and the giving of presents.  It has become something that is used to further the stress and hardship of the people by putting pressure on parents to go into debt to buy presents for their children based on what?!  On Peace?  No wonder statistics show that Christmas time has the highest rate of suicide because we are buying into the fraud and continue to teach our children this fraud.  So when I was on my way home from town on Christmas Eve with my daughter, and I had just hung up the phone with my husband who was at the site at Kanehstaton, and I was thinking of the people at the site, who weren't at home with their families enjoying foods and celebrations, but who were there on that site maintaining our position and upholding the Law that Creator gave to us, my tears began to fall.  When she asked if I was ok, I told her how I felt.  How hypocritical I felt because how I know that this whole Christmas Season is just a fisaude, and that those people who were at the site were doing exactly what the Creator intended for us to do and what we are obligated to do and how this Peace that we speak of isn't suppose to be only acknowledged one day of the year, and that it isn't about presents, and that even though my tree at home has an Eagle on it rather than a Star, am I truly upholding what the Creator intended by continuing that fisaude.  I cried alot of tears that night.  But my tears were not for the people at the site,  they were for the rest of us.  Again, just MY thoughts.  And while everyone at Kanehstaton knows my heart and my spirit is with them even when I can't be, I want to acknowledge all of them who are staying on the site full time, and I want the rest of the world to know that those individuals have my deepest respect because of their committment and dedication to the Onkwehonweh, to our Sovereignty, to the Kaierenekowah and to the Creator.

I am truly inspired by you all!
Nya Weh Kowah!

For now, that is it for my update.  I was asked to give some thought about the new year, and perhaps share some of what I envision for the Onkwehowehonweh.  What I envision is a time of change for the Onkwehonweh.  I can see the Unity and Peace growing and the Haudenesonne slowly taking back their responsiblities and rightful place in the Governance of the People, and I see the People, knowing it is OUR responsiblity, making sure that this is what happens.  I see the Crown finally recognizing that it is the People who are the government and that they can continue to try and manipulate individuals and the elective system, but they will never manipulate nor dictate to the Onkwehonweh. I know for myself, and in speaking with some of the women who are part of the "negotiations" both band council as well as traditional, we are committed to having more community meetings and updating the people so they are more directly involved with what is going on.

My biggest message is to all of our supporters.  For it is with all of you that recognition must be given.  When I stood with the Women & Clanmothers in that circle and we sent out the message to re-kindle the Fire of Peace back in April,  and I look at how far our message of Peace has reached, and how truly amazing times that we are in and what an impact that this is having on the World,  It is all of you that we have to thank.  So Nya Weh Kowah to all of you who accepted that Peace and who share that Message with others.  Nya Weh to all of those who have supported Kanehstaton through your financial donations, through your encouraging words, and through your prayers.  All of you are greatly appreciated and thought of in our prayers as well.

In Love, Light and Peace,


Hazel



Monday, December 18, 2006

Nazis at Caledonia

While most of the people who have demonstrated against the Six Nations Reclamation outside Caledonia are your run of the mill settler chauvinists, content to believe the oh-so-convenient racist myth that this land all belongs to them, there have also been some fascists and neo-nazis spotted.

The relationship between settler chauvinism, white supremacism, and fascism is a fluid one, and while it would be a serious mistake to view all racists as being actual fascists, in times of political crisis its a transition which can happen very quickly indeed.

Here are two videos shot at recent racist settler demonstrations, in which the fascists can be spotted. Gotta love the dude explaining that the National Alliance is just a "free speech" organization!












Sunday, December 17, 2006

[Toronto] December 18th Demonstration to Free Trevor Miller!

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FREE TREVOR MILLER:
FAMILY AND SUPPORTERS TO ATTORNEY GENERAL'S OFFICE IN TORONTO:
SIX NATIONS MOHAWK POLITICAL PRISONER REMAINS BEHIND BARS
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Demonstration
Monday, December 18th, 2006
7:30 AM onwards
720 Bay Street
(Just north of Gerrard St.)
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On Monday, December 18, 2006, family members, friends, and supporters of Trevor Miller, a Six Nations Mohawk of the Turtle Clan, will gather at the Attorney General of Ontario's Head Office, to call for the immediate release of the indigenous political prisoner, held in a Hamilton jail for more than four months.

After being arrested near Grassy Narrows for charges related to the Six Nations Land Reclamation adjacent to Caledonia in southern Ontario, Trevor, 31, has been denied bail and no trial date has been set.  This week, he was again ordered to remain in custody by none other than Justice T. David Marshall, an Ontario Superior Court judge who issued the injunction against the Six Nations Reclamation of the "Douglas Creek Estate", leading to an OPP raid, and whose continued efforts to suspend the on-going negotiations between the Six Nations peoples and the Canadian government were sharply overturned by the Ontario Court of Appeal yesterday.

In the recent court appearance, Trevor asserted that he is not a Canadian citizen, but a Mohawk and a member of the Six Nations, clarifying that the Ontario court has no jurisdiction over him. He asked to be allowed to leave with his people and maintained that he was being held against the terms of the two row wampum.  Stuart Myiow, of the Traditional Mohawk Council, requested that Miller be released to the traditional Council
which will guarantee his appearance at all forthcoming court hearings. (There is precedent for this as the Traditional Mohawk Council has intervened in previous court hearings and had prisoners released to them.)

In light of the continued detention of Trevor, preventing him from being with his three children, family members will travel from Six Nations to gather with friends and supporters outside the Attorney General's office on Monday, to demand Trevor's release and his right to be governed by the laws of his people.

Demonstration
Monday, December 18th, 2006
7:30 AM onwards
720 Bay Street
(Just north of Gerrard St.)

Media contact person: Trudi Miller, Trevor's mother, 519.717.3674

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just in case anyone missed this in my last post...



Support Grows for Trevor Miller

A couple of weeks ago i reposted an item from Indymedia about Mohawk political prisoner Trevor Miller. Miller was arrested at a protest at Grassy Narrows on August 9th and was charged with being part of an incident between Six Nations men from the Reclamation Site outside of Caledonia and two CH TV cameramen who happened to be in the Canadian Tire parking lot to film the confrontation. One of the cameramen was injured in the fracas that ensued. (i posted on this incident at the time, if you need your memories refreshed...)
Until recently, Miller received very little support, be it financial or political. During his four months behind bars he has suffered ongoing harassment, and has been told repeatedly that he will be released if only he pleads guilty, but that his continuing defiance could land him a fifteen year prison sentence. Nevertheless, he has remained steadfast in his position that the Canadian government does not have any jurisdiction over him.

Following a letter written by Trevor, in which he questioned the lack of support he has received, and signed “The Forgotten Warrior,” the situation has improved. Supporters, including members of the Traditional Mohawk Council, packed the courthouse on Trevor’s last two court appearances, on November 29th and December 11th, and there was a spirited picket line to support Trevor outside the Hamilton Detention Centre on the 9th. (For videos of these events, see here.)

A leaflet has been designed, that can be downloaded in PDF format, explaining both Trevor’s case and the context of the Six Nations Land Reclamation.

On December 12th Jaggi Singh, of CKUT-Montreal’s NO One Is Illegal Radio programme, interviewed Trevor’s mother Trudi Miller. (You can listen to an mp3 of this where i have mirrored it here, or else on the Radio4all site.)

And tomorrow, family and supporters of Trevor are going to be holding a demonstration from 7:30am on, outside the Ontario Attorney General’s Head Office, at 720 Bay Street in Toronto (just north of Gerrard), demanding Trevor’s release, and his right to be governed by the laws of his own people.

More to come...



Videos About the Struggle to Free Trevor Miller!



This is a short film covering the December 9th protest outside the Hamilton Detention Center to free Six Nations Political Prisoner Trevor Miller. (From Google video.)





Janie Jamieson speaks about Six Nations Political Prisoner Trevor Miller, outside the Cayuga courthouse on Dec 11th, 2006. (From Google video.)





Stuart Myiow speaks outside Cayuga Courthouse on Monday Dec 11th 2006 about the case of Six Nations Political Prisoner Trevor Miller. (From Google video.)



Tuesday, December 12, 2006

Deepening Resistance, Upping the Anti



Upping the Anti is a radical journal, weaving together strands of non-party Marxism and grassroots anti-authoritarian praxis with some very interesting results. Here is how i describe it in my new catalog:

Upping the Anti #3 (November 2006 - 184 pages) The most recent issue of this radical journal from Canada includes interviews with Aijaz Ahmad (“The Anti-Imperialism of our Times”) and William Robinson (“Latin America vs. Global Capitalism”), articles by AK Thompson (“Making Friends With Failure” - thoughts about Richard Day’s book Gramsci Is Dead), Isabel MacDonald (“Haiti: Adventures in Colonialism”), RJ Maccani (“The Zapatistas: Enter the Intergalactic”) and Jen Plyler (“How To Keep On Keeping On” about sustainable modes of long-term community activism). Also, a fascinating roundtable discussion about the struggle at Six Nations and the possibilities and limitations of non-indigenous solidarity. Book reviews of Sociology for Changing the World (Caelie Frampton et al.), Outlaws of America (Dan Berger) and Autobiography of a Blue-Eyed Devil: My life and times in a racist, imperialist society (Inga Muscio).

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Like issues one and two, UTA3 contains interviews with movement intellectuals (some “organic,” some academic), articles by activists, and “roundtable discussions” with comrades involved in contemporary radical politics across Canada. It’s a winning combination, with the interviews and roundtables especially providing an accessible format for dealing with some very important issues, ranging from theory to practice and back again. Certainly not an academic publication (that’s a compliment btw), Upping the Anti is well written and touches on complex questions, providing much food for thought.

Issue number three starts off with a thoughtful editorial, Growing Pains: The Anti-Globalization Movement, Anti-Imperialism and the Politics of the United Front – an analysis of the state of the movement and then some. The authors do a good job at summarizing the “anti-globalization moment” of 1997-2001, and examining the differences between politics at that time and the anti-war movement today. More than just a trip down memory lane, this is an ambitious text, one which stakes out positions and tries to define terms.

The most useful part, for me, was how Growing Pains explores the tension between the “pedagogy of confrontation” (associated with the anti-globalization movement) and the politics of “the united front” (associated with the anti-war movement today). To discuss this properly would require a separate post, but to (greatly) summarize, the pedagogy of confrontation involves more aggressive tactics and politics aimed at empowering people and getting results, as “people will be moved to action once it is demonstrated that action is both possible and effective.” (35) The united front, on the other hand, is concerned with not alienating less radical people, pursuing “minimum demands while at the same time arguing against the limitations of the minimal platform.” (34)

It’s a good lens through which to examine movements, more fruitful (at the present time) than either the anarchist/socialist or reformist/revolutionary ones.

That said, Growing Pains seems to stretch a little too far, proposing that we need to transcend the “politics of responsibility to the Other” and use “dialectical images” as a way of moving forwards. While i agree with some of what i understood, it felt like the argument should have either been pared down or else given an extra few pages to fully explain what the authors mean. As it is, the logic seems a bit too fast and some of the examples a bit too easy, leaving this reader unsure if he had understood everything that was being said.

A good beginning nevertheless. Even if - or perhaps especially because – one may have to read it a few times to grasp what is being said. Editorials are often bland little things where the people behind a publication fly their flag and pretend to be important, indulging in their favourite platitudes – Growing Pains is several cuts above that.

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In previous issues the best parts of Upping the Anti were the interviews and roundtables, and #3 is no exception.

UTA3 features interviews with Aijaz Ahmad and William I. Robinson, each of whom discuss different questions pertaining to different parts of the world, but nevertheless return to some common concerns. I’m not sure if this was the intention of the UTA crew or just happy happenstance, but they work well side by side.

Ahmad, a leading Marxist academic from the Indian subcontinent, defends the need for a revolutionary party, argues that communists should immerse themselves in practical struggles responding to the needs of the oppressed, and briefly describes the different factions within right-wing anti-imperialist Islam. There is a lot going on here, and this interview could have easily been twice as long – as it stands parts of it feel more like a tease than anything else... (lucky me, i notice a local library has several of Ahmad’s books...)

Robinson’s interview is less far-ranging, focusing on the “turn to the left” in Latin America and the nature of global capitalism. Like Ahmad, Robinson argues that revolutionaries should not abandon the struggle for State power, while stressing that it is only because of the extra-parliamentary pressure from the masses that even “progressive” governments are enabled (or forced?) to stand up to global capitalism. Particularly interesting was his discussion of capital’s separation from the nation-state, and the strategic importance of indigenous struggles today – though again, each could have been discussed in quite a bit more detail.

If both of these interviews touch upon the question of the State, it would be misleading to pretend that this is a preoccupation of the journal as a whole. UTA is clearly situated within the non-party radical left, and i understand these dialogues as being a positive byproduct of an ongoing openness to the experiences and lessons of intelligent people, regardless of their precise tendency.

While the interviews with Ahmad and Robinson were very interesting, the Six Nations Roundtable is probably the most important part of UTA3, as a document from a struggle actually going on within/against Canada today. As readers of this blog will know, the people of Six Nations have been involved in a historic struggle to reclaim their land along the Grand River, a struggle which has had as its flashpoint the settler town of Caledonia, where this year Six Nations people managed to put a stop to real estate development on their land through a ten-month occupation.

UTA3’s Six Nations section starts out with a summary by Tom Keefer of the situation at the Kanenhstaton (Protected Place) reclamation site, providing an overview of what this struggle is about and what has happened, both during the “hot points” (a massive police raid, racist settler rallies, etc.) and the less dramatic day-to-day.

This is followed by an interview with Degunohdohgae (Brian Skye), a member of the Cayuga Nation who explains the significance of the Reclamation within the struggle against Canadian colonialism. Degunohdohgae also describes the positive role of solidarity from non-indigenous people.

It is this question of solidarity which constitutes the real focus of the entire Roundtable. Which is an honest thing to do, as UTA is a not an indigenous journal, but one mainly written by and directed towards the settler left. So the rest of the Roundtable consists of an interview with Jan Watson, a white woman from Caledonia who has been active in organizing against the rise of racism in the settler community, and with three members of the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty.

It is the discussion with OCAP members that is particularly interesting, as these are anti-capitalist, anti-authoritarian activists – people from the same broad tendency as UTA – discussing their own perceived strengths and weaknesses in regards to providing solidarity with Six Nations.

The question of solidarity, what it means and what its limitations are, is one which has been grappled with for years by comrades in North America. It has been of particular saliency to white activists, as so many of the heaviest struggles do not obviously involve us, and so many of us find ourselves more often in the position of “privileged outsider” than actual protagonist. The middle class complexion of the white left combined with the retreat of feminism and queer liberation onto the terrain of cultural politics just exacerbates this situation. And when we have gotten solidarity wrong, we have sometimes done more damage than the State itself...

So while these issues are addressed in relationship to events at Six Nations, there are some lessons here that will be familiar to many.

For instance, i can certainly relate to this observation by A.J. Withers:

It is very challenging as an outsider to negotiate the need for me to be in my place as a supporter and still be myself. In the beginning I acted very differently than I do now as I increasingly feel confident in myself and my actions. My desire to be pleasing when I first started going meant that I actually behaved poorly. Because I was afraid I would offend someone. I wasn’t as honest as I could have been, even when I was being asked for my opinion. That wasn’t fair to anyone. (161)

Many of us have struggled with this racist tendency to tailor ourselves to what we think people want us to be, making ourselves in fact disingenuous allies. Which is no way to be a real ally at all.

The discussion with OCAP folk has a refreshing lack of defensiveness, and participants seem to share a sincere desire to be honest about the racist errors that solidarity activists so often stumble into. Here is another useful observation Withers makes:

It is important to remember that we [non-native supporters] are not and never will be the central players in this movement. Solidarity work is not in itself liberatory, only the struggles of the people directly affected will see their liberation.

I think that it is key that we take leadership from native people and that we ensure that we are taking it from the people, not a few people. It isn’t hard, in a community of a few thousand, to find someone to tell you what you want to hear and call that leadership. It is hard to try and figure out what an actual community wants and do that. (163)

Of course, this in itself is not a perfect response. After all, “the community” is rarely monolithic. Acting on behalf of “the community” can translate into acting on behalf of those who have more power or prestige and have hegemony, rather than those whose struggle bears with it the greatest potential for liberation.

In certain situations the correct thing for revolutionaries to do is not to respect the wishes of the majority, but to ally with those people we have the most in common with, even though they may only be a minority.

I am not talking specifically about Six Nations here, nor am i talking about intervening in other people’s societies – in fact regardless of our alliances, i think we definitely should not intervene to boost those we consider the “most revolutionary” – but the basis of our alliance should go beyond simple solidarity. It should be based on a shared position of struggle, and with that grounding it should be with those whose struggles intersect with our own. With an eye to spotting class differences, and pushing against the capitalist grain that keeps our perspective pointed upwards, we must turn our sight to the most oppressed.

This kind of politics, which in bygone days would have been called “internationalism,” is clearly reflected in several things the OCAP comrades had to say. For instance, quoting Withers again:

The obvious connection to OCAP’s anti-poverty work is that a lot of Native people are poor, especially in the cities. [...] More than being about poverty, though, connecting anti-poverty and Native rights movements is about building resistance. Aside from there being a lot of poor Natives, poor people and First Nations people have a great deal in common in regards to our issues, struggles and repression we face. (156)

Or as Josh Zucker recalls:

I remember the first conversation I had with anyone at the reclamation site was about welfare rates. It was the first day I was there and I was talking with a man named John about when he lived on the streets in Toronto. He told me point blank that we should be fighting to get the welfare rates raised in Toronto and so we talked a bit about the OCAP “Raise the Rates” campaign. The connection is obvious. Native people live in extreme poverty unknown in many other communities across the country. (156-7)

As Stefanie Gude explains:

Our relationship to supporting indigenous struggle, as an organization, is centered on our own struggle against the government, for welfare, disability, housing, access to health care – a fight for respect and dignity, against poverty and oppression. (160)

Finally, Gude reminds us that:

Non-native activists need to understand that indigenous struggle will never be won because of the actions of settlers. We need to understand our responsibility to fight the racism and power on the settler side, which may not be the most glamorous or exciting part of the fight, but a part of it only we can and should do. Many people who spent time at the site or who came together to plan support for the reclamation here in Toronto are rooted in struggles of their own. This is one of the reasons why we came together, because we are already fighting. This is also one of the reasons why it is hard, albeit crucial, to support the six Nations peoples. You can’t drop your own fight – because it is exactly that which grounds you and offers one way to understand why indigenous struggle is so crucial and what your role supporting it should be.  (167)

These are all important points, positions which are the product of past generations of struggle. They don’t add up to anything particularly complicated or awe-inspiring, just a basic call to work within one’s own community, wherever that might be, and to use one’s grounding there as a basis for forging alliances with other people in struggle.

My one criticism of the Six Nations section as a whole is that, given its focus on solidarity, it could have benefited from a summary of what forms solidarity has taken. The roundtable format has important strengths, but because of its emphasis on subjective experience it is best tempered with more “objective” informational piece. This would make it easier to see how some of the self-criticisms advanced by the interviewees played out in concrete ways. References are made to spending too much time at the cookhouse, and insufficient ties to First Nations people in Toronto (where OCAP is based, 100km from the Reclamation site), but for people from other communities who have not followed this struggle closely, the relevance of this may not be clear.

Given that this section is a good historical document that comrades could learn from in future struggles, it should be noted that this shortcoming will be only grow in importance as time goes on. In this vein, i would recommend for instance Tom Keefer’s article Caledonia's fifth column: white anti-racism in solidarity with Six Nations which appeared in the August 2006 issue of Briarpatch magazine, which provides a good deal of background information and context to the debates around solidarity with Six Nations.

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Upping The Anti continues to be a welcome source of ideas for North American, and specifically Canadian, activists... and i haven’t even mentioned the articles about Canadian imperialism in Haiti, about the Zapatistas, or about sustainable habits of activism – perhaps in a future post!

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Hezbollah and the Left



During the failed Israeli invasion of Lebanon earlier this year many of us were both wary and intrigued about the political nature of Hezbollah, the Islamic organization which provoked and then successfully repelled the attack. Flags went up because of Hezbollah’s close ties to the Iranian regime, its religious ideology and past conflicts with the left. It was easy for us to assimilate it into the broader rise of right-wing anti-imperialist Islam.

While some comrades went so far as to describe the Party of God as fascist, others considered it to be progressive, even left-wing. Mention was made of current co-operation with the left, statements by leaders in favour of ethnic, religious and political pluralism, the prominent role of women in certain levels of the Party, and the fact that in areas under Hezbollah control women are not being forced to wear hijab.

Things still don’t seem clearcut, and while i think the term “fascist” definitely does not apply to Hezbollah, i would still not characterize it as left-wing , regardless of its undisputed anti-imperialism. Once the onus of proving “fascism” – i.e. a revolutionary and totalitarian programme – is abandoned, the much easier case of “right-wing” is still fairly easy to make. Not in the neo-liberal sense, and not in the pro-american sense, but in terms of promoting conservative gender hierarchies and a corporatist and paternalistic approach to class oppression. All of which is fairly standard for right-wing religious movements, and certainly not only Islamic ones.

(A list of some web postings regarding this debate can be found at the bottom of this post.)

Nevertheless, given Lebanese vulnerability to Israeli aggression, both overt and covert, Hezbollah has emerged as the champion of the people. We don’t have to like this fact in order to acknowledge it as true. In this regard, Mari Abi-Habib’s article from the December 10th edition of the Montreal Gazette, about support for the Party of God from Lebanese communists, is of some interest:

Secular meets sectarian
Lebanese communist party works with Hezbollah to promote stronger resistance

Ibtisam Jamaleddine stood in the room of her dead son, Maxim. Maxim was 18 years old when he was mistaken for a fighter and killed by an Israeli missile during this summer's war between Israel and Hezbollah.

Pictures of Che Guevara and soccer players as well as a plaque dedicated to Shiite Islam's most revered imam, Ali, adorn the walls of his room. They tell a story unknown in the West, of the complex nature of forces that fought Israel last summer.

During the war, U.S. President George W. Bush pitted the conflict as one fuelled by "Islamo-fascism," pushed by Hezbollah, the Party of God. But fighting alongside Hezbollah was an older, more seasoned resistance movement - the Lebanese Communist Party, which allied with the Islamic party for the first time and showed its members that Islam and communism can complement each other.

For Maxim's mother, the alliance of these two ideologies was natural and the pictures in her son's room of a communist martyr and a Muslim hero attest to that.

She said her son wasn't religious. She said she sees her son as part of a line of resistance fighters "that began with Imam Ali and went to Che and then to Maxim. It's one lineage of struggle."

The Jamaleddine family has increasingly woven religious symbols into their lives since the Aug. 14 ceasefire went into effect. Ibtisam's daughter, Lina, was hit by shrapnel from a missile that exploded outside the family's house. She now wears a head scarf. Ibtisam hung a picture of Hezbollah's leader, Hassan Nasrallah, in her living room "just to spite Bush." But both deny being very religious.

"The LCP's decreasing support shows that the (Lebanese) are becoming more confessional. They believe that because the state is weak they must turn to their sect for protection," said Saadallah Mazraani, vice-president of the LCP.

The communists' organizational and social clout was the envy of many militias at the onset of the civil war that raged from 1975 to 1990. The group's power began to dwindle with the rise of Hezbollah and other sectarian militias. Hezbollah formed in 1982 to fight Israel and hasten its withdrawal from the south.

The communist resistance dates to 1937, when members of the LCP contributed forces to communist Palestinian militias to fight Israeli militias. In that way, the group is known as the father of the resistance.

But Hezbollah has become the main source of resistance in Lebanon.

"It's not that we support (Hezbollah) because they are Islamic. We support them because they are a resistance," said LCP member Mohammed Jamaleddine, Ibtisam's cousin.

"There was no other strong, active resistance during the (summer) war," Ibtisam said.

"It's an internationally politicized resistance that Hezbollah promotes. We like that," Mohammed said.

The Jamaleddines have supported the LCP since its inception and live in the communist stronghold of Jemmalieh in the Bekaa Valley. Four of Ibtisam's family members - her brother-in-law, his son and two cousins - died fighting with the LCP during the Lebanese civil war.

"I've always voted for the LCP before the summer war," Ibtisam said. "This time, Hezbollah and the LCP better run together."

Hezbollah and the LCP are similar in their support for the poor. Both parties often build roads, schools and infrastructure for impoverished, government-neglected villages. The LCP, with support from the Soviet Union, once was the main provider for the poor. But Hezbollah has surpassed it in philanthropy with its larger coffers and support from Syria and Iran.

LCP party members have come to support Hezbollah in growing numbers, mixing secular politics with sectarian beliefs, an alliance to promote a stronger resistance.

The LCP's mandate is to protect Lebanon in the absence of a strong state, Mazraani said. He pointed to the party's fight against the 1976 Syrian occupation as proof that resistance is not woven into religious strife.

University of Chicago professor Richard Pape argues in his book Dying to Win that communist and socialist groups accounted for 75 per cent of suicide attacks during Lebanon's civil war. Pape also asserts that 70 per cent of suicide bombers during the civil war were Christians belonging to secular parties.

This summer's war "was not a religious conflict - Jewish vs. Muslim. It was a political conflict," LCP vice-president Mazraani said. Israel turned "the conflict into a religious one because they are a Jewish entity. They try to show their enemy as a religious force, to unite Jews for Israel and get support from American Jews by showing the conflict as a clash of religions and not as a resistance to Israeli aggression."

Hezbollah members displayed their political sentiments over what they perceived as Israeli-U.S. political aggression during the war. Anti-Bush Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez's image was often altered to appear next to Nasrallah's, illustrating their resistance to U.S. policy and downplaying claims of religious strife.

Although their goals might be similar, their tactics during the war differed. "We worked more with the people of the villages," Mazraani said. "Hezbollah had its own independent faction. We collaborated with citizens to provide local protection. We wouldn't seek conflict, but resist attempted occupation."

According to Huessein Diab, an LCP commander and a fighter in this summer's war, LCP fighters mainly fired at planes trying to land and release ground troops into Lebanon.

The Bekaa valley has about 400 villages and the LCP has sympathizers and members in most that number several thousand, Mazraani said.

An official LCP decree released at the start of the summer conflict told members to organize and "resist attempts of Israeli invasion."

"We're closer to Hezbollah (now) as we both have one goal: to resist Israeli occupation," Mazraani said. "The Resistance is not just Islamic."

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Those interested in checking out one section of the debate regarding Hezbollah may want to read these texts. Unfortunately - and gallingly so, given the importance of gender to all positions in this debate – all these pieces were written by men. None by women, never mind by women living in Lebanon...




Thursday, December 07, 2006

December 7th Update from Grand River

The following update from Hazel Hill from the Six Nations reclamation site just outside of Caledonia:


Good Morning from Grand River.  I know everyone has been wondering what is happening with negotiations and our land reclamation of Kanonhstaton.

Since I last wrote after our November 14th Lands Side Table, there has been no meetings so nothing really to report.  Unfortunately, we had another death in one of our Clanmothers family's and so our meetings that were scheduled for the end of November were cancelled.  They have been re-scheduled to December 13th and 14th and we will see then how the Crown responds to our presentation of our documents and historical evidence as provided through our Wampum and Oral History at our last meeting.  

Clearly the Crown has found itself in a dilemma since we have presented the TRUTH.  They know for a FACT that the title for Plank Road (also known as Argyle Street and formerly #6 Highway) itself still rests with the Six Nations/Haudenesonne, they cannot contest this.  They also know that the so-called land surrender that they are resting their entire case on is merely minutes of a council meeting with no order in council to support it, and no legal grounds to support it. they also know that the Indian agent at the time who was drafting these fraudulent surrenders, was also the individual who was translating them to the Six Nations, and who clearly was telling the Chiefs one thing, and then recording it as something else.  This is not a new practice.  Our Chiefs pointed out several times in history how this was done, including the Nanfan Treaty, the Simcoe Deed, many areas that the Crown, when realizing that they still were'nt satisified with our generosity and good-will, needed to not only take more of our lands, but to create their own patents so that they could take ownership of them.  This is no more valid then as it would be today, and yet the Crowns Legal Advisors have told them that they have a valid surrender.  Most of their principal negotiators continue to mislead the people of Caledonia telling them that they have a presented a bill of sale for the lands and that the Six Nations will not get it back.  The politicians of today are speaking with the same forked tongue as the Indian agents back then did. They do not know how to speak the truth.  They cannot look their people in the eye and tell them that their ancestors lied cheated and stole to get what they have today, and they cannot tell them that their True Landlords are the very people who have been treated with such disrespect, racial discrimination and have been the victim of many hate crimes and antagonistic behaviours since the land reclamation began in February.        

You know, one of the things I forgot to tell you about from our last meeting was one of the most significant events since we've begun.  Our people decided to see what the crown representatives would do when put in the same situation our people were in during the 1800's.  Jock had put together a document written in the Cayuga Language that outlined our presentation that day.  He stood and read this document to the Crown representatives in the traditional language, and then he translated it into english for them.  He also asked them to sign this document to verify that they had heard this presentation today.  None of the Crown representatives would sign.  At that point Jock then thanked them for proving our point.  

Our ancestors were faced with this throughout our history, with Crown representatives being the ones who not only drafted the documents, but also translated it, having the opportunity to give false information to our people.  The difference being is our people trusted the Crown, and this is where we went wrong.  They were continually being scammed and mislead, and the evidence was clearly represented that day because what was written and what was handed down orally through our history was not the same thing.  After he thanked them for proving that point, Federal Representative Ron Doering put "His X Mark" on the paper.  While again, he did so only after being shown that this was how they frauded our people.  It would be very easy for anyone to put an "X" mark there, and for us to write down who it was and what their role was.  As a matter of fact, that is what we intended to do to show them how we can see through the veil of deception of the past.  Jock told them, we were going to get you to put your "X" mark there and we would give you an Indian Name to describe who you are.  He also told them that we could have written that you just signed all of Canada back to our people, and you have no way of knowing because it is not your language of understanding.  Just as it wasn't our ancestors language of understanding and again, our ancestors trusted your people. Today we know better. This is one of the reasons why I've always said, and quoted Pope John Paul II, it’s not the LAW, it's only paper.    

Today, we are faced with having to deal with all of this.  However, many things have progressed and continue to progress.  At last Chiefs Council meeting there were at least six development companies that have come to our Traditional Council in hopes of finding a way to begin consulting with the Landowners as opposed to the Crown.  Interestingly enough, each of those developers have stated that the Crown representatives continue to mislead them.  In this case every single one of them mentioned that the lead provincial negotiator Jane Stewart continues to tell them that they need only to consult with the band council.  I guess the Crown hasn't clearly understood what is happening in our community as well as across the country and the world with respect to the Onkwehonweh.  The PEOPLE have said they have had enough.  We are no longer going to tolerate the Crowns interference in our governance.  The band council does not represent the people.  Please understand that it is not the individual people within that system who are at fault, they have been mislead into believing this is the government because this is what the Crown, and its corporation of Canada has set up.  It is the system itself that has been developed to do exactly what it has done, to undermine the authority of our traditional government, our people, for one thing; but also to assimilate our people into canadian society so that the crown will never have to answer to its crimes.  This is why the people have stood and will not back down.  It is not a personal attack against the Elected Chief, or the elected councillors,  nor is it an attack against any of our other brothers and sisters who have been forced into a system to try and help their people.  It was a set up.  It was part of the genocidal practice of the Crown.  Well, again, our people have turned that negative into a positive.  The Chiefs Council has invited representatives from across Canada to join us for a meeting on December 9th.  All of the Chiefs of Ontario as well as the AFN have been invited to come to meet with the Traditional Council.  All of our territories and people are invited to attend.  The purpose of this meeting is to explain the very same wampum and history as was explained to the Crown.  Only in this instance, to show how that relationship worked with the other Nations, how they fall under the shelter of that Great Tree, and how today that can be worked out so that the Haudenesonne Council, the Original League of Nations, will have its rightful place again, and carry the voice and concerns of the Onkwehonweh to the Crown.  This is the way it was, and this is the way it should be.  We had an opportunity to look at minutes of the council meeting from 1870.  Many of our people traveled to Six Nations at that time to counsel.  There were representatives there from Rama, St. Francis, Muncey, Alderville, Chippewas of the Thames, Oneidas of  Muncey, Sarnia, Lake of Two Mountains, St. Regis, Caughnawanga, Saugeen, Cape Croker, Walpole Island, Rice Lake, Sauble, Kettle Point, Bay of Quinte, Snake Island, Mississauga of the New Credit, Moravians of Thames as  well as Six Nations.  What is happening today is exactly why the Crown brought in the Indian Act in the first place.  To prevent the Haudenesonne from doing its job.  So, this meeting on December 9th, 2006 is like a continuance of our counsel from June 10th 1870.  We've been slightly interrupted for over a hundred and fifty years, but again, as was pointed out to the Crown, our Traditional Council has continued, uninterrupted, and nothing the Crown has done, nor can do, will ever cancel that out.  This is something that was given to us by the Creator, and this is what the people continue to uphold.

I guess, while there are going to be many who say that our Confederacy Council cannot work with the band council, it is this very issue of governance that our people must begin to put their minds to.  To figure out how we can help our people who have been taken outside of that circle, and bring them back in.  Again, we can say that they have done so willingly, and that they have no voice.  From my perspective, just like when our children were stolen and put in residential schools, or when our children were beaten and strapped for speaking their own language, or how we were forced into their education and religions, and how today when our people are criminalized for trying to defend the future of our people and our homelands.  It was all part of the overall plan to get rid of the "Indian Problem".    When the Peacemaker came and reminded us of the Great Law, he also gave us the mechanism to work together in Unity & Peace.  This was the Five Nations Confederacy.  The Original League of Nations.  It is very much alive today, as it was the day it was given.  Anything we are faced with can be resolved through the Great Law, and through the Confederacy Council.  We need only take up our responsibility to it and uphold what was given to us.  This is how we can bring the other councils in, they can come under the Confederacy and support the Confederacy in carrying the voice of all of the Onkwehonweh to the Crown.  We must stand United and we must stand Strong.  This is all part of the prophecies and it is also what the Crown has been trying to prevent from happening for many generations.  

This is also why they continue to use tactics such as instigators like Gary McHale to come in and hopefully create a situation that will divert the people from our path.  Last weekend they had the nerve to use the Canadian Troops as an excuse to try and create such a situation.  They claim they wanted to hang ribbons and flags up in support of the troops in Afganistan.  They had the television media there even before they got there with their flags, waiting in anticipation and hoping our people from the site would come out and try to stop them or fight with them. They did not anticipate that we would simply inform the OPP to deal with their people, and that again, we have been respectful.  we have our flags flying on the site and in front of the site.  we could go into the town of Caledonia and fly them, because as i've said, we've proven that the road itself is still ours, and that most of the town is still ours too, but we have respected the people and have maintained our presence on and near the reclamation site.  We only ask that the same respect be shown in return.  We do not have a problem with them hanging their flags anywhere outside the proximity of the site, it was being veiwed as it was intended, to try and instigate a fight.  When the OPP prevented them from hanging the flags across the road from the site there was much anger at the fact that they should be able to hang their canadian flag on canadian soil.  I understand and respect this.  However, it is questionable whether there is any land within Turtle Island that they can claim as Canadian soil, and in this particular case, again, the road itself we have already proven is within the Six Nations jurisdiction and we were within our rights to ask them to respect that.  Interestingly enough, when they did go down just past 6th line to hang their flags in support of the troops, (still in our jurisdiction but we gave them permission to hang them there) the television camermen didn't follow them.  Again, they were there only to make sure they caught on tv any violence that they were hoping would erupt.  Shame on those who used the troops in that way!  

There are many things going through my mind and things I would like to share, but at this point, I will close with one last message.  I want all of you to keep in mind December 17th 2006.  It appears that since the Crown has been put in the position of having to address the issue of the theft of our lands and resources, at having been put in the position of answering to the crimes they have committed, we are going to be faced with continued attempts of instigation and potential violence. Gary McHale is again planning another rally.  I've been told he has the help of a woman (sorry I don't know her name off hand), but she is like the president of a white supremist group.  Again they are hoping to bring violence to our people at Kanonhstaton. I would like all of you to bring your minds to PEACE on that day, and offer your sacred tobacco or medicine to help support us in upholding the LAWS OF CREATION. According to the star map, December 17th is directly under the Temple of Taurus, and Orions Belt which is representative of the Peacemaker.  The Temple of Taurus is our Rosetta Stone.  It is our Great Law.  It is who we are and how we connect to the Peacemaker.   These are things our people have forgotten, but it is how our ancestors knew when to do things, just like they know when to begin the midwinter ceremonies and our other ceremonies.  Through the Stars.  It IS OUR MAP in Creation. But, the Crown has learned this too.   Throughout history the Crown has used the stars just as our ancestors did, to sanction their continued use and abuse of our people and the Great Law.  This is how they have been able to keep our people down and under their thumb for so long. They have kept us in spiritual bondage.  They use our own people and our medicines to do this. This is what the People have been fighting and this is what the Women and Clanmothers stopped the day they went onto our lands to stop development, and this is what the Men have been standing and protecting.  And this is what today, we have to continue to stop.  Today, we need to bring all of our minds together to do this. All of the Onkwehonweh must stand before the Creator and acknowledge the Law that was given to us, we need to acknowledge our responsibilities to Creation, and acknoweldge our duty to uphold and protect the Law that He provided.  That is what I would like each of you to do everyday, and specifically on December 17th.   We need only to let Creation know we are standing strong and doing our best, and Creation will respond.

That's all I have to say for now.  Nya Weh!

In Love, Light and Peace,
Hazel



The Death of Mohamed Anas Bennis: More and More Questions, Still No Answers



Sorry i didn’t post this earlier – i’m no longer in the habit of reading the Mirror. This article by Montreal activist/journalist Stefan Christoff is a welcome mention of Mohamed Anas Bennis in the local media.

Montreal Mirror: Why did Mohamed-Anas Bennis die?
by Stefan Christoff
One year after Montreal police killed the 25-year-old, his family and community are still in the dark
One year ago, Montrealer Mohamed-Anas Bennis, 25, was shot dead by a police officer in Côte-des-Neiges. Circumstances leading to the death remain unclear, while the official police report on the killing, now in the hands of Quebec's Ministry of Public Security, has not been released to date.

According to Pierre Paquet, the lawyer representing the Bennis family, a Montreal policeman fired on Bennis shortly after dawn prayer at the Kent street mosque in NDG at approximately 7 a.m. on Dec. 1. Prior to the shooting, Montreal police had been called in to back up Sûreté du Québec investigators executing a warrant in a fraud case. Bennis was not the subject of the fraud investigation, but apparently stabbed a police officer for an unknown reason, provoking the police shooting.

According to the Montreal police, the shooting was an act of "self-defence". Sameer Zuberi of the Canadian Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), however, views the case as "an illustration of the potential danger that Canadian security and police officials can pose to the Muslim community." The umbrella organization Muslim Council of Montreal is also supporting the family.

"Mohamed was very focused on his personal faith and was someone who people had nothing but good things to say about," says Zuberi. "Now people in the community are standing up and supporting his family due to the tragedy they have experienced."

"Why is this case so secret?" asks Bennis family lawyer Paquet. "I found it alarming that the police officially declared they acted in self-defence against Mohamed-Anas on the very same day of the incident, without any substantial investigation."

While Quebec City police have been assigned to investigate the shooting, Paquet's legal appeals to provincial authorities to release the original police report have failed.
Quebec's Ministry of Public Security refused to disclose the original police report on the  shooting, also deciding last Nov. 4 not to press criminal charges against the police officers involved in the incident.

"Essentially I am looking for what happened on that day," says Paquet. "The problem is that the decision from the Ministry of Public Security can't be appealed, and now the Bennis case is, on the legal side, technically over."

Calls to both the Quebec City police and the Ministry of Public Security for comment on  the case were not returned by press time. But Bennis's father, Mohamed, contacted in Morocco last week, says he only wants to know how and why his son died. "We don't want to keep these things hidden," he says. "We want the truth to be revealed concerning what happened last year."

To mark the anniversary of the police shooting, community and activist groups are coordinating neighbourhood activities in Côte-des-Neiges to build public awareness concerning the case.

"We are organizing a vigil [on Saturday, Dec. 2] at the same place the shooting occurred," says Rachid Najahi, president of Atlas.Mtl, a community newspaper. For more info on the time and place, see www.atlasmedias.com.

Local activist group the Collective Opposed to Police Brutality [COPB] has also taken up the case. "The cops that killed an innocent person could still be walking the streets without being brought to justice," says COPB's Kerre King. The COPB rally takes place on Friday, Dec. 1 from 5.7 p.m. at the corner of Kent and Côte-des-Neiges.


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i did not make it to last Friday’s vigil, having unavoidable personal responsibilities elsewhere. It was freezing rain, about the most inhospitable kind of weather you can get here this time of year, but a couple of dozen people did turn out nevertheless. Mohamed Anas’ father spoke, as did local activists from COBP and Solidarity Across Borders, as well as a comrade from Mexico’s Other Campaign who spoke of repression in that country.

i did manage to get to Saturday’s noontime vigil. There were about fifty people, many from the Muslim community but also some from the anti-authoritarian activist scene. If nothing else i found it... very very sad, being there where the cops had killed this guy a year ago, seeing his father and sister and knowing how this must now be killing them.

Off he goes to mosque, and he never comes back... shot through the heart by police who then put on some cockamamie story about how Anas “just went crazy.” The fact that he was Muslim, and they were on a testosterone-charged raid on a criminal enterprise “with links to terrorism”... this just had nothing to do with it...

As has been amply documented, the State has decided to cover up what happened that morning. I’m not saying the cops shot Anas because they are racist, because they thought he was a terrorist, because of mistaken identity because they were involved in some kind of conspiracy, or anything else for that matter... how can i given that there aren’t enough details known to even explain the most basic elements of what happened?

i mean space aliens could have come down, engineered the whole thing, the flown off the Cloud Cuckoo Land and we wouldn’t have a clue, because everything about that morning has been kept under wraps, nothing plausible has been made public.

One thing i do know for sure, though, is that the cops’ story is inadequate, to the point that you’d have to be crazy not to assume it was a lie. According to the Coroner’s Report, “The two officers [Bernier and Roy of Station 25] were walking on the sidewalk towards the building when Mr Bennis headed southwest in their direction; when he reached the police he stabbed one of the officers in his neck and in his right leg for no known reason.”

Now i was at the spot where this happened, and for the first time had someone point out where the mosque Anas had been praying at was. It completely changes the nature of the cops’ story, because the mosque itself is on the corner of Kent and Cote-des-Neiges, on the southwest corner. If Anas Bennis was walking southwest to intercept the police, then he was walking back towards the mosque, not away from it. This, combined with the fact that he was killed fifty minutes after morning prayers ended, raises serious questions about what else the police are leaving out. What else went on between Anas Bennis and officers Bernier and Roy during those fifty minutes?

It feels obscene to wonder what happened to lead to someone’s death. Especially when you’re doing the wondering in public (i.e. on a blog) and you know the family of the deceased have themselves been denied any answers.

How offensive it is to guess at what led to this young man’s death. How horrible it is to know that his sisters and brothers and parents must be wondering this too, running scenarios through their heads, trying to come to terms with a wall of State secrecy.

The evil genius of the cops in this case is that by suppressing all information they have left us with no idea what questions we should be asking. The pathetic evil of this moment in history is that so few even care to wonder what this means, never mind how to stop it.



Wednesday, December 06, 2006

Kenya and the Crimes of Colonialism


Kikuyu are rounded up for internment and interrogation
during white Kenya's "Operation Anvil", April 24th 1954


The dirty war Britain fought to maintain its control of Kenya was tantamount to genocide.

The entire Kikuyu nation (the largest national group within Kenya) was considered to be under the sway of the Mau Mau insurgents, and treated accordingly.

Hundreds of thousands of men were sent to prison camps, while almost the entire female population (along with children and elderly) were imprisoned in fortified “villages” set up by the British, surrounded by spiked trenches and barbed wire, the site of torture, starvation and forced slave labour.

Indeed, at one point or another almost the entire Kikuyu population of 1.5 million were detained.

Such are the crimes of colonialism.

Earlier this year i read an interesting book – Histories of the Hanged by David Anderson – which recounts and explains the most important episodes of this dirty war. From my position of ignorance, it was a good introduction to the history of the anti-colonial struggle in Kenya, and (amongst its strengths) Anderson’s book provides ample description of the role class struggle within the Kikuyu nation played. (Indeed, while Mau Mau killed almost two thousand African collaborators, only thirty two European settlers were killed during the entire rebellion - estimates of the number of Mau Mau killed range from 12,000 to 20,000.)

As a liberal “coming to terms” with Britain’s colonial crimes, Anderson’s book works. There is an unfortunate bias, though, in that the thread he follows is the list of incidents around which men were sentenced to die by the settler government (merely being a member of or associating with members of the Mau Mau was a capital crime). As he notes, the number of men sent to the gallows in Kenya was “more than double the number of executions carried out against convicted terrorists in Algeria, and many more than in all the other British colonial emergencies of the post-war period – in Palestine, Malaya, Cyprus and Aden.” (7)

However, as he also points out, of the 1574 freedom fighters who were sentenced to hang, fewer than thirty were women, and of these every single one had their sentence commuted to a life sentence. So although the British imprisoned the entire female population in prison-villages, although rape and other forms of violence were directed against the Kikuyu women, and although the colonial government time and time again described the women as the most steadfast Mau Mau... women are marginalized from the very title of Histories of the Hanged, by virtue of the fact that they were subject to other mechanisms of social violence and control.

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i was making buttons yesterday, and as many of you must know, this means i was looking for podcasts to keep my brain occupied. (I needed a break from Quirks and Quarks...)

I don’t know if it’s just me, but there don’t seem to be a lot of good educational podcasts out there. Seriously, lots of links, but not lots of quality.

Which is why i was particularly pleased to find that Kennesaw State University in Georgia is putting the 2006-2007 Kenya Lecture Series online...

The most recent lecture is by Caroline Elkins, Associate Professor of African Studies at Harvard University, whose book Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain's Gulag in Kenya is a study of concentration camps Britain ran in Kenya during the dirty war. The book took ten years to research, and relies heavily on oral histories of both victims and perpetrators.

I have not read her book, but after listening to her lecture and reading some reviews online it is being added to my list.

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While we’re on the subject: can anyone recommend a good book about Mau Mau and the anti-colonial war in Kenya and what it meant to women?



Tuesday, December 05, 2006

Stan Goff Rejects Marxism

Stan Goff, retired Special Forces, anti-war and feminist activist, author of Hideous Dream, Full-Spectrum Disorder: The Military in the New American Century, and Sex & War, (former?) member of the Freedom Road Socialist Organization... has now renounced Marxism.

Or at least, has renounced Marxism as a doctrine, though perhaps not as a method.

You can read his reasoning on his blog here.

I think he makes some good points, and some which i’m not sure i follow... but definitely there is some food for thought here...



[Toronto] December 6th: Societal Indifference, Is It Costing Native Women Their Lives?



The following activities tomorrow in Toronto:
Free Public Forum:
Societal Indifference: Is It Costing Native Women Their Lives?
Wednesday, Dec. 6, 2006
8:00-10:00 pm
following the Candlelight Vigil (see below)

Location:

St. Lawrence Centre for the Arts,
27 Front Street East,
2 blocks east of
Union Stn. Toronto


To download printable flyer click here!

Young Indigenous women are at least five times more likely than all other women to die as the result of violence. Hundreds of native women have been murdered or disappeared and their stories are only now being told. A few police forces and the Canadian government have taken some steps but statistics suggest a lot more needs to be done.

Consider this: 32 women - many of them Native - disappeared or died on a 500-mile stretch of road in Western Canada dubbed the Highway of Tears. Many of these crimes were not investigated and most are unsolved.

And this: Of the 60 women who disappeared from Vancouver's downtown eastside almost half were native. A British Columbia pig farmer is charged with the murder of 26 of these women. Jury selection begins in December and the trial is expected to get underway in January.

Join us for an art exhibit, a film showing and a panel discussion of the racial and social dimensions in the murders of native women and their treatment by the police, the courts, the media and a society that is slow to demand action.

What can you expect:

  • Walk the Talk shoe exhibit (see below for more detail)

  • film showing of The Heart Has Its Own Memory

Engaging speakers:

  • Dawn Lavell-Harvard: Wikwemikong First Nation, President of the Ontario Native Women's Association

  • Audrey Huntley: filmmaker of The Heart Has Its Own Memory and Go Home Baby Girl; member of No More Silence Network.

  • Sherene Razack: A Professor of Sociology and Equity Studies in Education, The Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE), University of Toronto.

Moderator: Naomi Clarke, Producer of Contact, Aboriginal Peoples Television Network (APTN).

Presented by the St. Lawrence Centre FORUM, the Native Women's Association of Canada and Aboriginal Peoples Television Network in cooperation with Women Won't Forget and the Women Abuse Council of Toronto.


Women Won't Forget Candlelight Vigil to Remember all Women Murdered by Men
Gather at Philosopher's Walk on Wed. Dec. 6 at 6 p.m. (S/W corner Bloor & Avenue Rd, enter off Bloor St.) All women, men and children are welcome to attend.

WALK THE TALK to End Violence Against Women & Children is an exhibit of shoes symbolising the women and children killed this year in Ontario. The exhibit will be on display the night of the FORUM. Doors open at 7:30 p.m. For more information contact Margo Kennedy at the Woman Abuse Council of Toronto at 416-603-5800 x3214



Sunday, December 03, 2006

[Indymedia] Mohawk Political Prisoner Challenges Jurisdiction of Colonial Courts

The following from Indymedia:

Mohawk Political Prisoner Challenges Jurisdiction of Colonial Courts
By Fiona Becker
Indymedia
November 30th, 2006

Over 50 people packed the Cayuga courthouse on Wednesday for Trevor Miller, a Six Nations Mohawk of the Turtle Clan, as Trevor declared to the court that the colonial Canadian system has no jurisdiction over him. When the judge walked into the courtroom for the pre-trial hearing of Trevor Miller, and the bailiff called “all rise”, only the cops and the lawyers stood up. When Trevor Miller walked in, however, the packed courthouse stood up, and they remained on their feet throughout the proceedings.

“I am a sovereign Mohawk man, you have no jurisdiction over me,” he said to the judge in tight handcuffs, with a freshly-shaven Mohawk and donning a traditional Haudenosaunee shirt.

Trevor Miller, 31, has been sitting in a Hamilton jail for over four months, after being arrested near Grassy Narrows for charges related to the Six Nations Land Reclamation adjacent to Caledonia in southern Ontario. Trevor Miller was denied bail in October, and has yet to be given a trial date. He is from Six Nations of the Grand River Territory, and is the father of three young children.

The court proceedings were attended by members of the Traditional Mohawk Council, who went before the judge and demanded his release. “You are holding him in custody illegally, and you’re breaking your own laws,” they said, with a Two Row Wampum in hand. The Two Row Wampum is one of the oldest treaties that exist between the Haudenosaunee and colonizing nations. It demonstrates, through beadwork, the separateness of the Iroquois to the Europeans, and allows for the collective use of the land as long and only insofar as the ways of the white man are not enforced on the ways of the Onkwehonweh. “You are keeping him only for political reasons,” continued members of the council, “we demand that you release him and hand him over to the Mohawk traditional council, who operates under the Great Law of Peace.”

The Judge, though clearly uncomfortable, told Stuart Myiow of the Mohawk Traditional Council that he had neither authority to address the court nor to speak on Trevor’s behalf. Trevor’s court supporters then proceeded to demand that the judge release him. Both his mother and sister were in tears. “They do not regard our people as human beings,” Trevor’s mother, Trudy Miller, said.

Trevor will be challenging the jurisdiction of the court via the Attorney General, and returns to court for the 20th of December, at which point it will be over 5 months in custody. His supporters and friends are urging that people send letters of support to him while he sits indefinitely behind the state’s bars.

Letters of support to Trevor Miller can be sent to:

Trevor Miller
165 Barton Street East
Hamilton, Ontario
L8L 2W6
Range 5CR



[Movie Review] Songbirds, a Musical Documentary about Women in Prison



Songbirds, a film by Brian Hill
lyrics by Simon Armitage, music by Simon Boswell
UK / 2005 / Betacam / 62 min / english
Contact: Sue Collins, Century Films, Studio 32, Clink Street Studios, 1 Clink Street, Londres SE19DG Angleterre. T: +44-207-378-6106 F: +44-207-407-6711 | sue.collins@centuryfilmsltd.com | www.centuryfilmsltd.com


i saw Songbirds somewhat by accident. It was on a double-bill with Cottonland, a film about drug addiction in Cape Breton Island. Cottonland was so good that i would have left the theatre right away to gather my thoughts and write a review, but i had bumped into friends and so i stayed to hang out with them for the second feature – and i was glad i did.

Songbirds is a documentary about women who are in prison. Not about “women in prison” – with the exception of a few incongruous discussions of lesbianism and masturbation there is nothing about prison life here – but about the lives and experiences of the women who end up incarcerated.

So this is about what happened before getting locked up, and it’s pretty horrific. Almost all of the women featured in Songbirds are survivors of male violence, including rape at the hands of strangers, husbands and fathers. With the exception of Theresa – the only obviously middle class woman interviewed, and tellingly the only one who committed a serious violent crime (manslaughter) and who was nevertheless getting out soon – male violence forms a backdrop from which it is almost impossible to separate their current imprisonment.

There is Mary, who is 35 and has been in and out of prison since age 15, when her own mother turned her in for having drugs in the home. As she explains it, her mother wanted to scare her, but never imagined she’d actually get locked up. Today, she has been in and out of prison for all but one of the past twenty years. At one point she mentions that she has been raped five times, at another she talks about her child being placed in care. We see scars up and down her arms from slashing.

Another woman, Sam, had a father who beat and raped both her mother and herself. When as an adult she saw her child beaten by her partner she found herself unable to intervene, so she brought him to school, hoping that the teacher would see the bruises and notify children’s services. They did, but with unforeseen consequences: her kids were taken away from her. This led to her marriage to an abusive well-to-do man, in a desperate (and unsuccessful) ploy to win custody back by showing that she had “gotten her life together.” She ended up in prison after setting his house on fire after he tried to coerce her into having sex with him.

Most of this film introduces us to other women with similar stories. In and of itself, i think this makes Songbirds well worth watching, and these interviews remind us that traditionally prison is not the main institution of patriarchal control.

As former political prisoner Susan Saxe explained in Gay Community News back in 1987:

My own experience among women in prison tells me, as numerous studies and observations of others have shown, that an overwhelming majority of incarcerated women began as victims of child abuse. What differentiates them from all the rest of the abused women who do not go to jail? Not much, except that like the battered women who finally turn on their attackers, they sometimes fought back. They rebelled against their abusers, became throw-away or run-away children, were jailed, or were placed in institutions by parents who saw them as “crazy” or “delinquent.”

Again, the message is the same: submit to abuse in private by a parent, husband or boyfriend, or fall prey to abuse by strangers – the pimps and pushers on the street or the social workers, wardens, officers and attendants in the prisons, mental hospitals and detention centers. (Susan Saxe, Telling Someone reprinted in Cages of Steel: The Politics of Imprisonment in the United States, Maisonneuve Press, Washington DC 1992)

Historically, for more “privileged” women the father and then husband was supposed to be able to play the role of jailor; she was in his custody, and the State was simply a last line of patriarchal defense if these more personal and informal mechanisms of control were somehow breached. The situation was more complicated for working class and poor women, and women from oppressed nations, but informal mechanisms of control were still far more important here than they were for men.

Today still, this history of informal male control means that for many women there is little freedom to be found on either side of the prison walls. This is the jarring fact alluded to by one woman after another in Songbirds, who explain that life “on the outside” is in many ways worst than life behind bars. Mary explains quite matter-of-factly that she got herself caught on purpose last time, just so that she could go back to her “home” behind bars. Sam described prison as a time out from the hell her life had become with her “successful” abusive husband. In a statement that really spoke to the fact that as a survivor she is both stronger and more “free” than many, she explains that if she doesn’t like things when released, she’ll just come back. “You can do that? Just choose to come back here?” asks the director… “Sure, I’ll just get a gun and shoot a few perverts. I could do that no problem,” she answers. And i’m sure she was not kidding…

Black Liberation Army member Assata Shakur noted this very same phenomenon when she was being held at Rikers’ Prison in 1978. As she wrote in her essay Women In Prison: How It Is With Us:

For many, prison is not that much different from the street. It is, for some, a place to rest and recuperate. For the prostitute prison is a vacation from turning tricks in the rain and snow. A vacation from brutal pimps. Prison for the addict is a place to get clean, get medical work done and gain weight. Often, when the habit becomes too expensive, the addict gets herself busted, (usually subconsciously) so she can get back in shape, leave with a clean system ready to start all over again. One woman claims that for a month or two every year she either goes jail or to the crazy house to get away from her husband.

For many the cells are not much different from the tenements, the shooting galleries and the welfare hotels they live in on the street. Sick call is no different from the clinic or the hospital emergency room. The fights are the same except they are less dangerous. The police are the same. The poverty is the same. The alienation is the same. The racism is the same. The sexism is the same. The drugs are the same and the system is the same.

i am also reminded of the words of former political prisoner Bo Brown, who in the movie 3 Black Panthers and the Last Slave Plantation explains that “Prisons are just a microcosm of this [the outside]. This is just minimum security and it’s prettier you know, it’s green and lovely and we have more choices about where we go and what we eat and who we do things with, but the same things operate.”

There is no illusion here about prison playing a positive or therapeutic role. Just some stone cold realism and honesty about the extent to which you don’t have to be in prison to be imprisoned.

A truth which of course has more or less reality depending  on your class, nation, race, age… and most definitely your gender.

Songbirds would have been more on the mark had its director Brian Hill heard the words of these former political prisoners, who all analyze prison as an extension of other mechanisms of control. Unfortunately Hill seems to paint it as some kind of benevolent alternative. The words “country club” almost come to mind... so much so that i can’t help but see this as a bias, a desire to frame prisons (and, more broadly, the State) in a positive light. But then i also appreciate what he has said, that “it’s an awful indictment of any society that some people prefer to be in prison than out.”

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A film about women who have survived abuse is something of a long-shot in terms of the “public at large.” In real life women often have their very survival held against them; to have been a “victim” is to be dehumanized, and makes one less interesting than the “heroic” fantasy-figures Hollywood preps us to admire. Women who have survived male violence are often considered something of a social eyesore. The capitalist patriarchy trains us to mistake their battle-scars for weakness, their virtues for vices.

Much the same for prisoners – to be locked up is to be considered a “loser,” and the eyes glaze over as people tell their stories of how they ended up behind bars. Living in a capitalist society, infected with its shallow individualism, our minds acquire an orientation by which we focus on the trivial and ignore the very facts we should be paying most attention to. So the million and one details of how people end up faced with choosing between imperfect options, each of which brings them further from where they want to be, most often alienate the viewing public. While they should in fact be startling to us, angering us, waking us up to the fact that something is not right in this world.

Or at least that’s my experience of how many people (the kind of people who think of prison as a place they could never end up) react to this kind of story.

Which is where the music comes in.

After being interviewed by director Brian Hill, these women had their words taken to poet Simon Armitage, who composed songs based on their stories. The women were given singing lessons, and professional quality video editors, and we see them perform these songs throughout the movie. So you have women telling these gut-wrenching stories of their lives before prison – the lowest common denominator being rape and battery from men, and the use of drugs to dull the pain – interspersed with these moving songs they’re singing about the very stories they have just told.

To say that this format is effective would be a major understatement.

Music – which is really just poetry with a tune – is capable of communicating truths in a way that a simple account of the facts cannot. Perhaps in the same way that expressionism or surrealism provide more accurate representations of certain relationships and dynamics than realism does. Where people have internalized the system’s lies and acquired this capitalist knack of blaming the victim and celebrating the bully… music and poetry become ways to catch people off guard, to outflank our own subconscious complicity with repression.

Or as Songbirds director Brian Hill explained to CBC’s Rachel Giese:

if you’re dealing with people who are marginalized and people who have committed crimes, no matter how liberal you are and how sympathetic, i think there’s a tendency to define people by what they’ve done: she’s a crackhead, or she’s a prostitute. It stops us from seeing anything else about them. If you get people singing, they’re actually pretty vulnerable. It gives them another dimension: this is a person who has talent, creativity and is brave enough to stand up and do this.

[…] The women were much more involved in the process than in a traditional documentary. They okayed all the lyrics and had a sense of ownership over the project. i do think the women are magnified. The music does give them an extra dimension. Take Maggie, for instance, the Irish traveller in the film, who sings a country and western song and then a lullaby for her children who’ve been taken into care. Maggie is a crackhead. She is a bogus caller – i don’t know if you know that expression in Canada, but it’s a person who knocks on the doors of elderly people and then invites themselves in and robs them. It’s horrible what Maggie does. But she’s something else, too. She’s a mother who grieves for her children. And she’s someone with talent. She can really sing. And that’s the truth about Maggie. She’s all of those things.

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While Songbirds is a very moving and well done film, a thorough look at women in prison it is not.

As i already mentioned, there is no real discussion of life in prison. The violence and oppression that Hill shows us is purely intimate and interpersonal. The violence these women have endured is at the hands of “their men,” and hardly a word is said about other agents of oppression. If anything, the State appears as a benevolent actor.

i don’t want to exaggerate this criticism. These women are saying that in their lives it is their fathers and boyfriends and husbands who have been their oppressors, not the local cops or capitalists, and we should listen to this and mull it over and if this shocks you then you should rework your theories to take this into account. It doesn’t mean we should stop being anti-cop or anti-capitalist, just that we should not blinker ourselves to the fact that this may not be enough, may in fact cover up the “primary contradiction” in many women’s lives.

But we know that in real life many women are abused by an alliance of intimate and impersonal oppressors. This is the point so well made by the three women former political prisoners i quoted above. As Bo Brown, Susan Saxe and Assata Shakur each noted independently, the cops and courts and prisons are not an alternative to patriarchal oppression, just a different expression of it. An extension of oppression on “the outside.” When they do occur, collective responses to male violence are hindered if not simply repressed by the State. And finally, just as many men take advantage of the informal power they enjoy in intimate relationships to abuse and exploit women, so also do many men take advantage of the opportunity offered by their formal class position and relationship to the State – as bosses and managers and cops and social workers and prison guards too – to do the same.

Songbirds came out in 2005, the year that an increasing rate of suicides in women’s prisons in the UK finally crested. The preceding several years had seen a constant increase in the numbers of incarcerated women killing themselves – and for every woman who succeeded many many others would make the attempt. The widespread self-violence in women’s prisons in grim testimony to the fact that these are not “nice places” the State maintains – and the fact that the wave subsided when it did is proof of a direct correlation between repressive sentencing, overcrowding, and an unsafe environment. (2005, the first year the suicide rate decreased, was also the first year that the number of women in prison in the UK decreased.)

All of which is missing from Songbirds.

Viewers may also come away with a distorted idea of how much women in prison may or may not have in common. There is a national divide here which speaks volumes about capitalism and imperialism, but which is glossed over, its true import covered up.

Songbirds introduces several “traditional” white prisoners, four of whom are English and one Irish, each of whom has their own song and their own in-depth interview in which they discuss their life herstories. We are also introduced to many foreign women, some of whom are serving very long sentences, who were caught trying to smuggle drugs into the country. The interviews with these foreign women are much more superficial, and rather than each singing their own song, they all do one musical number together. What's more, unlike the citizen-women whose songs recount their lives and what led them to finally break the law, the foreign women's song only deals with the actual crime of drug smuggling itself. Hill gives a quick overview of how these women end up working as drug “mules” perhaps, but he chooses not to provide anywhere near the same degree of detail or focus as provided the other prisoners.

This emphasis on British citizens blurs several facts. To gloss over the “drug mules” is to gloss over one of the most important new elements in women’s imprisonment, for more than anything else it is the incarceration of female drug couriers which lies behind Britain’s skyrocketing women’s prison population. One in five woman prisoners in Britain today are foreign nationals, and half of these are from Jamaica. So that Afro-Caribbean women, only 1% of the general British population, account for 24% of women in prison in Britain today.

That these women’s predicament is also a result of men and male violence is documented in the film – but completely absent are the other (fairly obvious) factors that push Third World women to accept this dangerous work.

To flesh out this picture we can turn to feminist anti-prison activist and scholar Julia Sudbury, who has written about precisely this phenomenon:

Between 1980 and 1989, Edward Seaga’s conservative Jamaica Labour Party (JPL) pursued the ‘Washington Consensus’ model of neo-liberal economic reforms, privatizing state-owned companies and public utilities, scaling back local government services, introducing user fees for education and health care, and obliterating an already weak social safety net. Although People’s National Party candidate and former socialist Michael Manley was reelected in 1989, Manley and his successor J.P. Patterson have continued the economic path established by Seaga and his powerful international backers. These policies have led to layoffs of public service employees, many of them women, a reduction in social service provision, and dramatic increases in the cost of basic necessities. The impact on poor women has been particularly harsh because traditional gender roles burden women with the responsibility of caring for children and sick or elderly relatives. When the state sheds its role in providing social support and public infrastructure, poor women fill the vacuum. (Julia Sudbury, “Mules,” “Yardies,” and Other Folk Devils, in Global Lockdown: Race, Gender and the Prison-Industrial Complex, Routledge, New York, London 2005)

Sudbury notes that these women, pauperized by neo-liberalism, are the “exploited, poorly remunerated, and ultimately disposable workers of the global drug industry” – making the drug trade no different from other sectors of global capitalism, in which all manner of mechanisms both formal and informal concentrate the harshest levels of exploitation on to the female proletariat.

To say this, and to say that this is an important factor in women’s imprisonment even in countries like Britain, is not to deny the importance of “intimate” male violence, but simply to insist on telling the whole story, which is that there are different ways in which patriarchal oppression plays out for different women. Nation-class joins gender-class as a factor that can lead a woman through the prison gates.

An entire film could be devoted to the super-exploitation of women by the illegal drug sector, and their scapegoating by “tough on drugs” politicians, and i don’t want to fault Hill for not having chosen to make that documentary. But given the fact that the incarceration of foreign women for drug offenses is such an important factor in women’s prisons in Britain, and ever-increasingly so, it comes off as almost offensive that all of these women got such (comparatively) superficial treatment. (Not to mention the fact that their musical number was almost upbeat in a goofy kind of way.)

Despite these shortcomings, Songbirds remains a truly amazing movie, in both content and form. The “musical documentary” aspect, which had turned me off when i read the description (sounded awful corny, you know) makes this film a truly powerful experience, allowing the women to express far more than a dry interview format would. So much so that i left the cinema in a daze, blown away by what i had seen and heard, and it was only much later that i realized that fine as it was, it could have been even more.

Still, a real treat for a movie i initially had no plans on seeing…