[News] Indigenous Struggles in the Americas
Anti-Imperialist News
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Wed Mar 3 11:21:17 EST 2010
Indigenous Struggles in the Americas
By
<http://www.zcommunications.org/zspace/roxannedunbar-ortiz>Roxanne Dunbar-ortiz
http://www.zcommunications.org/indigenous-struggles-in-the-americas-by-roxanne-dunbar-ortiz
Wednesday, March 03, 2010
Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, a writer, teacher,
historian, and social activist, is Professor
Emeritus of Ethnic Studies and Womens Studies at
California State University. She spoke to NLP
(<http://www.newleftproject.org/>http://www.newleftproject.org)
about the historical and contemporary impact of
imperialism in the Americas, and the nature of
Indigenous peoples resistance to it.
You have been deeply involved in Indigenous
peoples activism in the United States. What is
the current situation of Indigenous people in the
US economically and politically?
Decolonization is a difficult and long-term task
for Indigenous peoples in North America, no less
than for the peoples of Africa, Asia, Latin
America, the Caribbean, and the Pacific, with
advances and setbacks, and uneven
results. Politically, the current situation is
better than it has been since the onset of
colonization, and that is due to the Post World
War II surge of a permanent resistance to
colonialism. The best account of the foundation
for that movement is historian Daniel Cobbs
<http://www.amazon.com/Native-Activism-Cold-War-America/dp/0700615970>Native
Activism in Cold War America: The Struggle for
Sovereignty. As in the colonized world in
general, sovereignty is the essential element
without which nothing else is possible. The
Pan-Indian movement, most identified with the
American Indian Movement (AIM), rose out of the
ferment of the 1960s militant movements and led
to a pan-Indigenous movement, with notable
advances in international law protection of
Indigenous rights and limits on states
sovereignty. This in turn unloosed an
unparalleled cultural development of Indigenous
writers, poets, filmmakers, actors, visual
artists, sculptors, musicians, and an
intelligentsia, including lawyers, historians,
anthropologists, theologians, linguists,
philosophers, economists, museum curators, administrators, and teachers.
Economically and socially, the situations of
Indigenous communities in the United States are
dire, with astronomical unemployment, dependence
on federal transfer payments, with the resulting
social ills of poor health, family dysfunction,
alcoholism and increasing drug addiction and drug
gangs. A few Indigenous nations have benefited
from successful casinos where the income is
reinvested into infrastructure and human needs,
most notably in Oklahoma and New Mexico. But,
the casino industry does not provide many
jobs. The Chickasaw nation in Oklahoma have been
innovative in investing the income from their
highly successful casino into subsidized
enterprises, such as organic vegetable farms that
provide food for its citizens and school children
as well as sales at farmers markets. They have
created a number of labor intensive
enterprisespencil manufacturing, a chocolate
factory, and othersand market the products
throughout Oklahoma. The income is used to
develop intensive training in the Chickasaw
language, and they have established an endowed
chair for a Chickasaw Studies department, which
they subsidize, at the local state
university. They have also begun purchasing and
restoring charming old shuttered hotels in towns
in their area. The Chickasaws, like the other
five Indigenous nations forcibly removed in the
1830s from their ancient homelands in the
Southeast, at first received new national
territories in Indian Territory (Oklahoma), much
smaller in parameters, to replace the lost
lands. However, in the 1890s, the federal
government dissolved the sovereignty of those
Indian nations and divided their territories into
individual allotments that could be bought and
sold. So, they do not have territorial holdings,
as do most other federally recognized Indigenous
Nations west of the Mississippi. Other
Indigenous communities in Oklahoma are
implementing similar projects. Also, a number of
the Indigenous communities (Pueblo Indians) of
New Mexico who have established casinos have used
the income to return to irrigated farming as they
had practiced in the Northern Rio Grande valley
for centuries before colonization, but had nearly
abandoned in the past half-century. They have
developed local and national markets for their
traditional foods of green chili, squash, beans,
and corn, especially blue corn. And there is a
resurgence of use of the Indigenous languages.
How do you think the genocide of the native
population of the United States relates to US foreign policy today?
I think it relates to every aspect of U.S.
society, but especially foreign policy and
militarism. The British settlers in the 13 North
American colonies were organized into militias
during the century and a half before those
militias united into an army that established the
independent United States. The militias had only
one function: Kill Indians or drive them away in
order to take their land. Actually, the British
authorities attempted to limit the settlers
incursion on Indian lands, particularly following
the Treaty of Paris that ended the
French-Indian war (7 Years War in Europe) in
1760, when the British agreed to a line marking
its colonial holdings along the coast and agreed
to prevent settlement beyond the
Appalachian/Allegheny mountain chain, leaving the
rest of the continent as Indian Country. This was
one of the primary reasons for the settlers
decision to separate from Britain to form their
own continental empire. By the time of the War
of Independence, tens of thousands of settlers
illegally crossed the mountain barrier into the
Ohio Valley. Those settlers, mostly Scots-Irish,
formed the backbone of the army of independence
led by George Washington, himself a lifelong
colonial officer. This kind of colonial warfare
formed the purpose and goals of the U.S. military
after independence, what historian William
Appleman Williams called a policy of
annihilation unto unconditional surrender, a
policy that has remained in effect. This is by
definition a policy of genocide
How do you view North American traditions such as
Thanksgiving and Columbus day?
Dont forget July 4, a day that lives in infamy
for the indigenous peoples of North
America. Lincoln created Thanksgiving during the
Civil War, and Columbus Day by FDR in 1934, as
vehicles for controlling the narrative of settler
colonialism as heroic and liberatory. Indigenous
communities in the U.S., as well as Latin
America, have made good use of Columbus Day with
counter-events and information, and U.S. Indians
have been countering the message of Thanksgiving.
You were deeply involved in opposition to the US
proxy war against the Sandinista regime in
Nicaragua during the 1980s. It was frequently
claimed however that the Sandinistas were
violating the human rights of the Miskito
population. How do you reconcile your support for
indigenous peoples with your support for the Sandinistas?
Its interesting that the question is nearly
always put that way, clean cut, Sandinistas or
Indigenous, which side are you on, as if we are
talking about Nazis and Jews, or workers and
corporations, in which case one has to choose
which side. Following the Sandinista triumph
there was civil war, which of course the Reagan
administration exploited; there are always civil
wars following revolutions, since the revolution
itself is a civil war. Take the case of the U.S.
war of independence in which half the settler
population (Tories) fought with the British
against secession. The Miskitos were also
divided, and the U.S. Christian missionaries in
the Mosquitia had close relations with the U.S.
government. The U.S. based American Indian
Movement, already weakened by years of U.S.
harassment, divided with one group (that also
made up the International Indian Treaty Council)
supporting the Miskitos who worked with the
Sandinistas, while another, smaller group
supported the anti-Sandinistas Miskitos. In
Latin America, there was little support for the
anti-Sandinista Miskitos who took up arms and
allied with the U.S. intervention. So, it was
much more complex than simply pro-Sandinista
meant not supporting the Miskito demands for
autonomy and self-determination. I would say
that my own actions and position was in the
majority Indigenous thinking on the issue. The
northeastern region, the Mosquitia did become a
war zone (as did the northwestern region), with
U.S. controlled Honduras allowing camps across
the border for the Contras and for the Miskito
anti-Sandinista combatants who were supported by
the CIA and the Contras. The heavy presence of
the Sandinista army and restrictions and
deprivations caused by war certainly were
oppressive, and there were instances of abuses,
but clearly not policy driven. The propaganda of
gross human rights violations (Reagans UN
ambassador claimed that 100,000 Miskitos had been
slaughtered, which was more than the entire
Miskito population) was overwhelming, beginning in February 1982.
What were some of the social achievements of the Sandinistas?
In the short period the Sandinistas had before
the crippling effects of the Contra War, really
only 3 years, they put food, health care, and
literacy first, mobilized the already mobilized
communities all over the country to get involved,
all students and faculty to volunteer to teach
reading and writing to the 60 percent illiterate,
called for international assistance, both
voluntary, governmental, and from the United
Nations. The UN agencies, in particular, love it
when a government invites them in to set up
programs. UNESCO, for instance, provided
materials and teacher training in literacy, and
also awarded Nicaragua with its highest honor in
1981 for its success in wiping out illiteracy in
the country. In the Mosquitia the Miskitos, the
Sumos, the Ramas, and the English speaking
Afro-Caribbean communities demanded literacy in
their mother tongues, as well as bilingual text
books in the schools, which the Sandinista
government agreed to. The World Health
Organization organized polio and other
vaccination programs as well as training medical
workers in working with communities to prevent
infant mortality, largely caused by dehydration
from diarrhea, by introducing water purification
methods. The UN Food and Agricultural
Organization (FAO) implemented programs for food
production to replace the commercial wheat and
cattle agribusiness promoted under the Somoza
dictatorship. Land titles were given to small
farmers who had been pushed off their land by big
producers and provided with seeds and farm
tools. All of this took place in a devastated
country. Only the wealthy neighborhoods of
Managua had been rebuilt after the 9.0 earthquake
of 1972 flattened the city, and added to that 2
years of out and out warfare against the
Sandinista insurgents, including Somozas bombing
of most of the large cities, the Sandinistas had
to start from scratch and also bear the $90
million debt left by Somoza (a requirement from
the Carter administration in order to recognize
the new government). The Nicaraguan
constitution, which was developed in community
meetings all over the country as well as
consultations with international law specialists,
as well as with indigenous activists, included
the establishment of 2 autonomous regions in
eastern Nicaragua, southern region (majority
Afro-Caribbean with minority populations of
Miskitos, Rama, and Hispanic) and northern region
(majority Miskito, with Afro-Caribbean, Sumo, and
Hispanic minority populations), with parliaments
to be elected in each to control all aspects of
policy in their respective regions. Also,
autonomous universities were established in each of the regions.
What is your view of the current Nicaraguan
government led by Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega?
I tend to follow the views of the MRS, the
Movement for the Renovation of Sandinismo, which
split from Ortegas domination of the
FSLN. However, for the Miskitos, this
administration has been certainly more responsive
in terms of constitutional autonomy than those of the preceding 15 years.
Politically you have described yourself as being
an anarcho-syndicalist - can you explain what that means?
My grandfather in Oklahoma was in the Industrial
Workers of the World (IWW), a national and
international anarcho-syndicalist organization
founded in 1905. He joined at the founding; he
was already in the Socialist Party in Missouri,
then in Oklahoma. He died before I was born, but
I was always aware of his courage and commitment
and the achievements of the IWW. My father was a
sharecropper and tenant farmer, and he and his 8
siblings and mother had suffered a lot from the
repression that came down on my grandfather. I
call myself an anarcho-syndicalist in honor of my
grandfather and that organic tradition in U.S.
labor history. But, I dont like labels, and I
always want to be open to new thinking, changing
my mind, developing. I do still strongly think
that there is no better source for understanding
how capitalism works and why it must be done away with than Marx.
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