In 2012 it will be 6 years since the Reclamation in Six Nations

So, that makes it four years now. For us at the time, it felt like we had rocked the Confederacy, like the waves would be felt across the Haudenosaunee territories. We had true power and we knew it. The power we had came from being of one mind, "This land is ours and we are not giving it up." Also, a good majority of people wo were on the ground there in Six Nations, at the site, agreed: the people are the decision-makers and no decision is legal or binding without our consent.

One year later I met a Kahnawake women, maybe 20 years old, and she had never even heard of Six Nations. She grew up in Kahnawake her whole life and hadn't a clue she was related to five other nations. I realized then the truth in all the rolling eyes and jokes about Mohawks. Basically, Mohawks can be really Mohawk-centric. And so far, four years and counting, I keep realizing it over and over again.

We're lucky in Six Nations, in a way. We're very conscious, most of us, to the notion of five nations (six nations) working together in a Confederacy using the Great Law. Mohawk people think of the Mohawk Nation. The Confederacy is an afterthought. Which isn't necessarily good or bad just challenging if you're not Mohawk.

I think the main, most immediate goal we face is educating one another. We need to raise the level or depth of how we talk about our issues. It always goes back to an individual holding up a meeting with something disrespectful and/or something lacking compassion to say. They have anger or a need to bully. This is what we faced at the Reclamation along with the Ontario Provincial Police and the angry non-natives. I suspect that those arrested that day would say the O.P.P are nothing compared to trying to get something accomplished, something positive, from a people's meeting. But can we leave people out, ignore them or majority rule them? We have to teach one another how a meeting is to be held.  We have to teach eachother to use our voices wisely, to have bravery, compassion and thick skin when we communicate. We have to stop taking people's BS. So then we can really get down to the business of making right what went wrong.

Are we any farther on the path to a united, whole, representative, accountable Confederacy? (Not a Confederacy of Chiefs by the way.) That is what we were expecting when we reclaimed a piece of land in the name of the people and their traditional government.

The land there was scraped clean, not much will grow there anytime soon. We were too late for the earth itself, we took too long. In fact we were blind to it, felt powerless until some people got behind a few brave women and said, "Ya, your right!" The land was saved for ourselves but we didn't manage to save much for Mother Nature.

If the land can't grow anything did we really save much? I guess we did. We're now in a negotiation process of some kind. But were we able to spark a fire or send a wave out to the rest of the Haudenosaunee communities?

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another low flying helicopter over kahnawake. white and might have blue on it. light on the tail. it's a grey day today. yesterday a transport drove two green APCs? through kahnawake. probably not connected but still odd.

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Did anyone see Avatar?

There's a lot of opinions and discussion on what Avatar is saying about indigenous people, race and "America".

But, as an 'indigenous' woman, the 'moral of the story' that was turning in my mind when I left the theatre was this:

Fight til the death because their gonna kill you anyway.

If you want to live the way you were meant to live, according to the values and traditions of your people than you have to fight to the death because the other choice is death anyway.

The main character is a human who uses an Avatar to dialogue with the natives. He tries to convince them to get out of the way. Basically he ends up telling the Na'vi that these humans will take what they want and that they, the Na'vi, must fight back. The Na'vi had no clue. They didn't understand the destruction that can be wrecked by the ruthless.

If someone had told Squanto the same thing about the Pilgrims what would he have done? Would he, in his kindness and respect for life, have shared his knowledge of the New World.*cough I guess he did know what this race/culture/society of people were about. He had visited the Old World. But could he really know? Could he have known, as an insider would, the ruthlessness and the greed of a foreign people? This is what the main character did know, and even though this film can be criticized for being another Pocahontas, white guy saving the day story, it taught me something.

I learned that even the man in the blue skin, even the man with the power of destruction running in his red veins, wants us to win. He wants a miracle of life, of animals, of spiritual power, he wants the earth itself to win over his own greed. He would rather be blue in a movie than himself in the real world.

I don't want to fight or kill or destroy. But this culture, this way of life seems to be forcing all humankind to make a decision. On this planet, in this movie, they forced the Na'vi to fight.

I can't be mad at this movie, it's like the Cinderella story, somehow they can't help telling a different version of the same story over and over again. This is THEIR culture, no matter how we try to graft ourselves on to it. We're still spectators to our own story.

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Journey to nowhere!?

Does anyone know the Great Law? Does anyone with a title, with a specific leadership role in ANY of our 16 Haudenosaunee communities even believe in it's power anymore?

On Wednesday October 28, 2009 SQ and Chateauguay police were in Mohawk Territory. Kanienkehaka were forced to the ground at gunpoint. They were simply at work, their place of employment.

The cigarette industry in our Haudenosaunee communities, is it legal? I'd say, of course! Products made and sold by us in our own and sister communities. Cigarettes are legal in Canada, it's not like we're making cocaine. If they wanted their people to stop smoking they'd make smoking tobacco illegal.

I'm tired of the complacency in this world. It's all opinions and no action. It's all bullies scared of the Canadian government but with just the evil balls enough to disrespect their own people.

A lot of people in this town can't see anything because their too busy avoiding looking at the one thing that matters, the Great Law. Foreign cops have no reason to stop our people, what are the PK's for and they have no right harassing us for pursuing a living in the tobacco trade.

This is karma for the Canadian, they benefited from our weakness by trading us alcohol for our furs. The difference is we don't do it out of meanness or out of a desire to exploit. We sell cigarettes to survive in a capitalist world - and that's all we're doing. Not illegal in their law or ours.

Comments for or against are welcome.

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"sprouting" a white pine tree?

Just letting everyone know I'm taking an online course with Taking It Global, called Sprout. I'm taking it so one day (soon) this magazine will finally emerge in print.

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what does it all mean?

http://www.flixxy.com/technology-and-education-2008.htm

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