<html>
<body>
<h1><font size=4><b>Indigenous Struggles in the
Americas</b></font></h1><font size=3>By
<a href="http://www.zcommunications.org/zspace/roxannedunbar-ortiz">
Roxanne Dunbar-ortiz</a><br><br>
<a href="http://www.zcommunications.org/indigenous-struggles-in-the-americas-by-roxanne-dunbar-ortiz" eudora="autourl">
http://www.zcommunications.org/indigenous-struggles-in-the-americas-by-roxanne-dunbar-ortiz<br>
<br>
</a>Wednesday, March 03, 2010<br><br>
Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, a writer, teacher, historian, and social activist,
is Professor Emeritus of Ethnic Studies and Women’s Studies at California
State University. She spoke to NLP
(</font><a href="http://www.newleftproject.org/">
<font size=3 color="#0000FF">http://www.newleftproject.org</a></font>
<font size=3>) about the historical and contemporary impact of
imperialism in the Americas, and the nature of Indigenous peoples’
resistance to it.<br><br>
<b><i>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?<br><br>
</i></b>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
Cobb’s
</font>
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Native-Activism-Cold-War-America/dp/0700615970">
<font size=3 color="#0000FF">Native Activism in Cold War America: The
Struggle for Sovereignty</a></font><font size=3>. 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.
<br><br>
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.<br><br>
<b><i>How do you think the genocide of the native population of the
United States relates to US foreign policy today?<br><br>
</i></b>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
<br><br>
<b><i>How do you view North American traditions such as Thanksgiving and
Columbus day?<br><br>
</i></b>Don’t 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. <br><br>
<b><i>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?<br><br>
</i></b>It’s 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 (Reagan’s UN ambassador claimed that 100,000 Miskitos had been
“slaughtered,” which was more than the entire Miskito population) was
overwhelming, beginning in February 1982. <br><br>
<b><i>What were some of the social achievements of the
Sandinistas?<br><br>
</i></b>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 Somoza’s 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.<br><br>
<b><i>What is your view of the current Nicaraguan government led by
Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega?<br><br>
</i></b>I tend to follow the views of the MRS, the Movement for the
Renovation of Sandinismo, which split from Ortega’s 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.<br><br>
<b><i>Politically you have described yourself as being an
“anarcho-syndicalist” - can you explain what that means?<br><br>
</i></b>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 don’t 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. <br><br>
<br><br>
</font><x-sigsep><p></x-sigsep>
<font size=3 color="#FF0000">Freedom Archives<br>
522 Valencia Street<br>
San Francisco, CA 94110<br><br>
</font><font size=3 color="#008000">415 863-9977<br><br>
</font><font size=3 color="#0000FF">
<a href="http://www.freedomarchives.org/" eudora="autourl">
www.Freedomarchives.org</a></font><font size=3> </font></body>
</html>