KATRINA: “OUR GRANDPARENTS STARTED THE RENEWAL”, SAY ROTINOSHONNI ELDERS ABOUT NEW ORLEANS AND ITS DISASTROUS AFTERMATH

KATRINA: “OUR GRANDPARENTS STARTED THE RENEWAL”, SAY ROTINOSHONNI ELDERS ABOUT NEW ORLEANS AND ITS DISASTROUS AFTERMATH

Kahentinetha Horn Mohawk Nation News, September 8th 2005

MNN. September 8, 2005. Some Rotinoshonni/Iroquois elders recently came to the conclusion, “It’s our grandparents giving us a message. The wind is our grandfather and the moon which controls the water is our grandmother. It’s the natural world”. They were referring to Hurricane Katrina and its lethal devastation of southern United States. Humans are all so small. The natural forces are so great. When something like this happens, we ask what is nature’s force exposing? Can nature be cleansed by cleansing the political process? What does it mean when they immediately send in war helicopters to watch but not to help? Michael Brown, head of FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) said four days after the hurrican hit: “The federal government just learned about those people today”. Is the U.S. government’s holding back aid to the Black people of New Orleans and its disastrous aftermath making us push for something that might be within our grasp? The victims of the hurricane are our brothers and sisters. Like us, they are victims of genocide. This genocide happened right before our eyes on television screens. CNN’s Paula Zahn asked Brown “why bodies were left to rot and children went without food and water?”. Fox’s Geraldo Rivera said, “What has happened since (the hurricane) is as bad or worse than what mother nature did.” Classic government response is to set up martial law. It’s fascism to worry about property instead of a genuine rule of the law response of taking care of the people first. The essential goal of the oligarchy is to protect property in North America and to keep the blacks and the poor in submission. They put the Blacks in ‘ghettos’ just like they put Indians on “reservations”. That’s so we don’t take what the colonial “masters” think they own and deserve. This plan is not a mistake. This is what society has degenerated to. It’s part of the same dynamic used to oppress the indigenous peoples of North America. Round them up, fence them in and let them die! Who needs them? Their pollution clean-up plan consists of cleaning up the water and getting rid of the undesirables or potential threats to property. This is the capitalist system. The system is designed to abuse anything that gets in the way of private property that capitalists think they own. That is who George Bush is – the leader of the Iraqi oil grab, the protector of the Mississippi refinery system, the master of the idea that only a few should benefit from the world’s resources, the epitome of selfishness. Humanity and nature are irrelevant to those who attempt to wield this kind of power. That’s not how the U.S. system of property and government was originally designed, based on the Kaianereh’ko:wa/Great Law of Peace, our constitution. The Kaianereh’ko:wa offers a solution to this mess. The core idea is respect for humanity and all of nature. Listen to the Indian elders and address the Kaianereh’ko:wa. If only the reporters would take that additional step after their tears are dry. This could be a turning point for good rather than for evil. We have to make it happen. This may be the time to re-inaugurate the rule of law, where the relationship between humans and all aspects of the natural world are one. Thank ‘the great natural power’ or ‘god’ or “creator” – however you think of the spirit that is in us all, in all things. The U. S. Supreme Court is constitutionally independent of any political abrogation of the rule of law. It is the final line of defense that stops genocide. The genocide of the Kanionke’ha:ka/Mohawk and our indigenous allies has been going on for centuries. The North American people and the judiciary have always turned a blind eye to our suffering, and a covetous eye to our property. Witness genocide. Now for the last ten days the world has seen the actual carrying out of genocide. We have been living this genocide. No one wants to believe us. Several indigenous communities were also wiped out during the hurricane. No media reports have been made on their suffering. It has been ignored along with the rest of the genocide that has been ongoing since the first Europeans arrived on our shores and imagined that we were not human beings. Our history is genocide in all its shapes, colors and flavors. Over 100 million of our people died in the greatest holocaust in all humanity. This is totally unacknowledged, totally hidden. Resistance against the attempt to drive the last nail into our cultural coffin has been part of our daily lives for centuries. That’s what the “assimilation” policy means. There has been a horrific conspiracy of silence about this half hidden agenda. Everyone knows what’s going on but they refuse to see what it means. They don’t want to admit, not even to themselves, the nasty nature of their designs. Hidden agenda. Katrina blew the veil of pretence and exposed the raw brutality of official American greed and indifference. The plight of our brothers and sisters living at the grass roots where the real people live was exposed. The breakthrough. The world is witnessing a breakthrough for all victims of genocide throughout the world, past, present and future. Their suffering and ours will not be in vain. The rule of law, democracy and recovery of nature are the beneficiary of our suffering. We honor all victims for it. We honor that reporter, NBC’s Tony Zumbado, who broke out of the media stranglehold and reported with impassioned truth. He “cried” on television about the preventable death by starvation of babies in the ‘deathtrap’ set up at the New Orleans convention center. People were dying there. Guards surrounded the “refugees” who were trapped inside these ad hoc concentration camps. They wouldn’t let them leave. They withheld food. They held back water. Old people died. Babies died. What kind of protection is this? The face of the system has been exposed. We saw this in Oka Quebec in 1990 when the Canadian Army tried to starve us out. It’s an old strategy. Now the world has seen it too. What will happen to North Americans when those reporters allow this truth to enter into their minds? What will happen when they look further and find that this has been our history day after day after day, grindingly, grindingly. Is it not newsworthy because it’s us? We aren’t alone anymore. Nature has released us, all the victims of the horrific despoiliation of the environment and the placing of the most vulnerable people in the middle of it. This is the hallmark of the rapacious out-of-control fascist military state. This is the face America has always shown to us, the Rotinoshonni/Iroquois people. Genocide by inaction and attrition. President Bush did not act for four days to help these people in New Orleans and elsewhere. They suffered and died, while the military choppers buzzed overhead to make sure that nobody stole a loaf of bread or somebody else’s piece of plastic to shield them from the pounding elements. These well-fed, comfortable, well-paid fellow Americans pointed their guns at their brothers and sisters who were languishing and facing death by thirst, hunger and sickness. This is the life of indigenous people who resist oppression and refuse to die. How targets are picked. Something astounding happened on April 19, 2004. Justice Clarence Thomas of the U. S. Supreme Court acknowledged that he could find no evidence that the Indians had ever given up their sovereignty or their lands. This has been the Kanion’ke:haka/Mohawk point for centuries. That’s why we have been the targets of genocide. No one ever paid attention to our plight. In New Orleans, they could not hide the lies, deceit, fraud, callousness, and genocidal indifference. They have been doing this to us every day every year for centuries. Genocidal preference for property over persons has been going on throughout our lives forever. Kanion’ke:haka’s problem. Whenever we’ve tried to tell the world about the government’s actions, people can’t believe it because they can’t see it. It is never reported in the media. We have no voice. Now nature has forced a big crisis. It has made a visible demonstration of the preference of these colonial governments for property over persons and nature. This is being said over and over and over again by all kinds of witnesses and supporters, by thinking people all over the world. We have been living and dying saying this. We know it and pass it on to our children who pass it on to their children. The basic principle of the rule of law says human beings are not expendable. Nobody has a right to steal someone else’s life. It is too bad that our grandparents, wind, moon and water, had to get angry to make this clear. It is too bad that so many innocent people had to fir. Their suffering may lead to victory. Our shared humanity is inescapable. U.S. and Canada Supreme Court Cases. Our U.S. Supreme Court case No. 05-165, Kanion’ke:haka Kaianereh’ko:wa Kanon’ses:ne, is in conjunction with the foresight of Justice Thomas. We bring up the pure law dimension of this issue. Also in Canada A-363-05, we ask, how is genocide possible? The answer to both is the willful judicial blindness to the constitutional law. We must stop this. The rule of law must prevail. Military dictatorship and other bad habits must be broken. Their pieces must be buried so we can enjoy a fertile future together.

Kahentinetha Horn; MNN Mohawk Nation News; Email. Kahentinetha2@yahoo.com; Call: Katenies 518-358-6012