Kahnawake FN evicting non-Natives

Ghislaine, this is an issue which First Nations people must settle and determine themselves. Any interference by others - including "human rights complaints" under a different jurisdiction - would deny the inalienable right of FN to self-determination. I think we've done enough damage, to last an eternity, by trying to impose our so-called "superior" values on them. It's their call.

While I believe that massive reparations are owed by the Canadian, French and British states to the First Nations of Canada for the enormous theft that has occurred over the past 300-odd years as well as compensation being owed for the indignities that have been visited upon the First Nations during the same period, I cannot see how this exclusion does not constitute racism.

To claim that this is imposing “our” values is to ignore that Europeans who arrived from various monarchies in Europe had no democratic or human rights values until they learned them from the Iroquois Confederacy. This turning to racism on the part of First Nations is a betrayal of that tradition of participatory democracy poineered by the Iroquois. However the act is understandable given how viciously the Kahnawake along with the rest of the original people of this land have been treated. Thus it should certainly not be the role of Canadian State institutions to impose their human rights legislation on First Nations band councils.

First Nation and non-First Nation Canadians have both become embroiled in a pathological struggle for dignity that has become undignified for all parties. Human dignity is not a rare commodity that we have to wrest from each other in order to stand tall. First Nations cannot recover their dignity while mired in poverty irrespective of how pure they keep their race on the reserves.

So long as corporations (the successors to the Hudson's Bay Trading Company and their imperial ilk) control the affairs of Canada through their political stooges, the injustices that are centuries old will continue. We need a dialogue of the people freed from control by the elites and not Apartheid to restore dignity to the First Nations and all the other ordinary folk who live on this land called Canada.

E.Tamaran wrote:

Joey Ramone wrote:

E.Tamaran wrote:

And this whole intermariage bs is just a lame excuse to overwhelm the land mixed blood. Fine, marry a white or chinese whatever, but then don't expect to live on the Rez. And if they don't leave voluntarily then they should be rounded up and forced off. Remember the "human rights" laws don't apply on sovereign FN land.

Charming.  This racist crap, in support of evicting women and orphans from their homes, has no place on a "progressive" discussion board.  Not that it should matter at all to this discussion, but I am Aboriginal and an activist for Aboriginal rights.

 

It's not "their homes". The land is FN land. If the FN leadership decides that only FN peoples should live on it then I support them 110%. No other group has any "right" to live on FN territory. Deal with it.

Deal with what? Despotic, ethnically cleansed bantustans instead of real sovereignty based on First Nation's inherent rights and respect for at least minimal human rights?  That's a perversion of everything the indigeneous rights movement stands for and an ugly attack on people who are, for the most part, pretty poor, instead of fighting the real enemy.  In simple slogan terms: divide and conquer.

E.Tamaran wrote, "The FNs aren't savages, like the way the Serbs and Ugandans were about it."

Putting aside the Serbs for a moment, do you think that it's anti-oppressive or anti-racist to refer to Africans as "savages"?

It's not ethnic cleansing if it happens on FN land, because only FNs have a right, a legal right, to live on that land! Fuck, what don't you understand about that?

I agree with Joey Ramone: This discussion is a symptomatic consequence of a successful divide and conquer tactic originally employed by the colonizing imperialists and continued with consummate vigour by their settler state heirs.

E. Tamaran: So, when Israelis claim to have sole right to a certain chunk of Palestine, or when Serbs declare that they have a sole right to a certain chunk of the former Yugoslavia, we should simply accept those claims and turn a deaf ear to the other people who live on that land who state that they have a right to reside there? 

Do "mixed bloods" get any say in who is or who isn't First Nations, or are their voices dismissed a priori? How are you going to go about determining racial purity on First Nations land, E.Tamaran? Are you going to be drawing up family histories to determine the degree of non-Native blood people who currently live on the Rez possess? 

By the way, I should point out that I'm not, at this point, criticizing the actual policy being considered, but rather E.Tamaran's stated position on it. The policy itself may be ethically sound, but E.Tamaran's position clearly isn't.

Michael Nenonen wrote:

E. Tamaran: So, when Israelis claim to have sole right to a certain chunk of Palestine, or when Serbs declare that they have a sole right to a certain chunk of the former Yugoslavia, we should simply accept those claims and turn a deaf ear to the other people who live on that land who state that they have a right to reside there? 

Are those valid analogies?  I don't know.  But, either way, I would very much like to hear E. Tamaran's views on them.

Sven wrote:

Michael Nenonen wrote:

E. Tamaran: So, when Israelis claim to have sole right to a certain chunk of Palestine, or when Serbs declare that they have a sole right to a certain chunk of the former Yugoslavia, we should simply accept those claims and turn a deaf ear to the other people who live on that land who state that they have a right to reside there? 

Are those valid analogies?  I don't know.  But, either way, I would very much like to hear E. Tamaran's views on them.

Remember what forum we're in. I'm very close to asking a moderator to intervene. This is supposed to be a safe place to discuss FN issues. You want my views on Israel, ask me in the international forum. BUT NOT HERE!!!!

ygtbk wrote:

This will obviously strike some posters as naive, but I think it's pretty hard to argue, consistently, that a right to self-determination for a group takes precedence over human rights for individuals. Godwin's Law, you know?

Not really. The right wing wants to institute private ownership rules for land on FNs. Something about the individual will take better care of the land than some heartless FN council, or be able to get loans from the mege banks. What they really want is to see the FN broken up over time as it's eventually sold off by the individual owners. That's certainly one case where Group rights must take precedence over Individual rights.

ygtbk: I think that you're making the mistake of judging intimacy-based cultures according to the criteria specific to integrity-based cultures, a distinction outlined by Professor Thomas Kusalis in his book, Intimacy or Integrity: Philosophy and Cultural Difference (University of Hawai'i Press, 2002)

Kusalis argues that integrity and intimacy are the two basic and discernible perspectives underlying human cultures. For any given culture one of these perspectives will be dominant, shaping the way people in that culture think, learn, and behave. While the integrity perspective dominates Europe and its colonies, I believe that the intimacy perspective shapes many of Canada's First Nations cultures. The differences between these perspectives are profound.

Kusalis writes that "integrity means being able to stand alone, having a self-contained identity without dependence on, or infringement by, the outside." Integrity cultures associate objectivity with publicly verifiable empirical observation and logical reasoning. These cultures value intellectual and conceptual knowledge over intuition and embodied knowledge-that is, knowledge that comes from body-awareness. For integrity cultures, knowledge is separable from both the knower and the known, and therefore the process of learning doesn't change either in any significant way. The integrity perspective values knowledge whose ground, or underlying justification, can be clearly articulated. This is the kind of knowledge that can be found in textbooks and be taught by instructors who barely know their students.

The integrity perspective also governs how members of these cultures view relationships. In integrity cultures, relationships are believed to exist solely in the spaces between people and things. Thus, from this perspective, relationships don't penetrate their members in a way that would compromise their individual identities. Because relationships are seen as being external to the members of the relationships, the whole can never be greater than the contribution of its various parts.

Ethical thought within integrity cultures is shaped by impartial rules about rights, responsibilities, and social contracts. Metaphysically, the integrity perspective is expressed through atomism and a dualism that sees opposites as irreconcilable.

Intimacy cultures, on the other hand, operate on very different principles. Whereas integrity cultures focus on individual autonomy, Kusalis writes that "intimacy is most essentially a sharing of innermost qualities."

Like their integrity counterparts, intimacy cultures value objectivity, but they view objectivity as being personal rather than public. Kusalis illustrates this point with the example of sporting events like gymnastics and diving. These events can only be judged by experts who have an intimate knowledge of their aesthetic and stylistic dimensions. Because the experts' judgments in these events tend to deviate by no more than five percent they can be considered objective, but this objectivity isn't accessible to non-experts. Such personal, objective knowledge is at the core of intimacy cultures, and experts, masters, and elders are its revered repositories. Intimacy cultures also value intuitive and embodied knowledge far more highly than conceptual and intellectual knowledge. Knowledge, in this perspective, changes the knower and the known by bringing them together. This is the kind of knowledge that can only be imparted through empathic relationships between teachers and students, and whose ground can never be easily described.

Intimacy cultures view relationships as existing in overlapping spaces shared by their members rather than in the spaces between them. For this reason, relationships modify the identities of their members. Rather than being simply the sum of its discrete parts, the whole from an intimacy perspective exists within each of its parts, just like a hologram.

In contrast to integrity cultures, ethical thought in intimacy cultures is guided by situational responsiveness informed by discourses of love and compassion. Society, in this reading, isn't the sum total of individual social contracts, but instead an organic unity. The metaphysics of intimacy cultures are expressed in holographic paradigms that view reality as a web of interdependent processes, and by theories of the interpenetration of opposites such as in the yin-yang model.

Both perspectives have their virtues and vices. When taken to its extreme, the integrity perspective generates alienated and anarchic egoism, while unrestrained intimacy can produce totalitarian groupthink. Of course, no culture is purely one or the other. An undercurrent of intimacy flows beneath integrity cultures, just as an integrity undercurrent runs beneath intimacy cultures. Normally, these undercurrents help contain the dominant perspective and prevent its excesses.  

Despite these undercurrents, Kusalis believes that intimacy and integrity are essentially irreconcilable in the same way that the grammars of different languages are irreconcilable. To successfully resolve conflicts between integrity and intimacy cultures, people have to become culturally bilingual: we have to be able to speak the languages of both intimacy and integrity. This is difficult, because these perspectives differ so radically on so many levels. For someone entrenched in one perspective, the other can seem utterly nonsensical and perhaps perverse. The language of "human rights" in an intimacy based culture may, indeed, be inappropriate. That's not to say that criticisms of the abuse of individuals can't be raised in intimacy based cultures, but they would use a different kind of language, one focused on relationships rather than rights.

Michael Nenonen wrote:

ygtbk: I think that you're making the mistake of judging intimacy-based cultures according to the criteria specific to integrity-based cultures, a distinction outlined by Professor Thomas Kusalis in his book, Intimacy or Integrity: Philosophy and Cultural Difference (University of Hawai'i Press, 2002)

 

Kusalis argues that integrity and intimacy are the two basic and discernible perspectives underlying human cultures. For any given culture one of these perspectives will be dominant, shaping the way people in that culture think, learn, and behave. While the integrity perspective dominates Europe and its colonies, I believe that the intimacy perspective shapes many of Canada's First Nations cultures. The differences between these perspectives are profound.

 

Kusalis writes that "integrity means being able to stand alone, having a self-contained identity without dependence on, or infringement by, the outside." Integrity cultures associate objectivity with publicly verifiable empirical observation and logical reasoning. These cultures value intellectual and conceptual knowledge over intuition and embodied knowledge-that is, knowledge that comes from body-awareness. For integrity cultures, knowledge is separable from both the knower and the known, and therefore the process of learning doesn't change either in any significant way. The integrity perspective values knowledge whose ground, or underlying justification, can be clearly articulated. This is the kind of knowledge that can be found in textbooks and be taught by instructors who barely know their students.

 

The integrity perspective also governs how members of these cultures view relationships. In integrity cultures, relationships are believed to exist solely in the spaces between people and things. Thus, from this perspective, relationships don't penetrate their members in a way that would compromise their individual identities. Because relationships are seen as being external to the members of the relationships, the whole can never be greater than the contribution of its various parts.

 

Ethical thought within integrity cultures is shaped by impartial rules about rights, responsibilities, and social contracts. Metaphysically, the integrity perspective is expressed through atomism and a dualism that sees opposites as irreconcilable.

 

Intimacy cultures, on the other hand, operate on very different principles. Whereas integrity cultures focus on individual autonomy, Kusalis writes that "intimacy is most essentially a sharing of innermost qualities."

 

Like their integrity counterparts, intimacy cultures value objectivity, but they view objectivity as being personal rather than public. Kusalis illustrates this point with the example of sporting events like gymnastics and diving. These events can only be judged by experts who have an intimate knowledge of their aesthetic and stylistic dimensions. Because the experts' judgments in these events tend to deviate by no more than five percent they can be considered objective, but this objectivity isn't accessible to non-experts. Such personal, objective knowledge is at the core of intimacy cultures, and experts, masters, and elders are its revered repositories. Intimacy cultures also value intuitive and embodied knowledge far more highly than conceptual and intellectual knowledge. Knowledge, in this perspective, changes the knower and the known by bringing them together. This is the kind of knowledge that can only be imparted through empathic relationships between teachers and students, and whose ground can never be easily described.

 

Intimacy cultures view relationships as existing in overlapping spaces shared by their members rather than in the spaces between them. For this reason, relationships modify the identities of their members. Rather than being simply the sum of its discrete parts, the whole from an intimacy perspective exists within each of its parts, just like a hologram.

 

In contrast to integrity cultures, ethical thought in intimacy cultures is guided by situational responsiveness informed by discourses of love and compassion. Society, in this reading, isn't the sum total of individual social contracts, but instead an organic unity. The metaphysics of intimacy cultures are expressed in holographic paradigms that view reality as a web of interdependent processes, and by theories of the interpenetration of opposites such as in the yin-yang model.

 

Both perspectives have their virtues and vices. When taken to its extreme, the integrity perspective generates alienated and anarchic egoism, while unrestrained intimacy can produce totalitarian groupthink. Of course, no culture is purely one or the other. An undercurrent of intimacy flows beneath integrity cultures, just as an integrity undercurrent runs beneath intimacy cultures. Normally, these undercurrents help contain the dominant perspective and prevent its excesses.  

 

Despite these undercurrents, Kusalis believes that intimacy and integrity are essentially irreconcilable in the same way that the grammars of different languages are irreconcilable. To successfully resolve conflicts between integrity and intimacy cultures, people have to become culturally bilingual: we have to be able to speak the languages of both intimacy and integrity. This is difficult, because these perspectives differ so radically on so many levels. For someone entrenched in one perspective, the other can seem utterly nonsensical and perhaps perverse. The language of "human rights" in an intimacy based culture may, indeed, be inappropriate. That's not to say that criticisms of the abuse of individuals can't be raised in intimacy based cultures, but they would use a different kind of language, one focused on relationships rather than rights.

 

So, at the end of the day, how do we become a culturally bilingual nation giving full respect to both intimacy and integrety based cultures without respectful dialogue? Rather than the choice between absorbing the First Nations into the White Man's society or creating ethnocultural Bantustans, perhaps we should be attacking the insularity of the hegemonic culture in Canada and forcing the establishment to recognize the right of First Nations’ cultures to be equal participants in defining Canadian culture. This "two solitudes" mumbo jumbo we hear so much about, the English and the French parallel heritage that is supposed to define Canada, should be scrapped in favour of a more inclusive recognition of what the defining forces of an ideal Canadian society should be. Or perhaps we should aspire to a “non-country” that accords full rights and respectful recognition of the full extent of our diverse heritage. As it is, the treatment of First Nations is the single most spectacular shortcoming in the implementation of our multi-cultural policy and therefore the issue oif the First Nations is the obvious place to start in re-invigorating multi-culturalism. This multiculturalism need not exclude the rights of nations to self-determination.

So do humans have human rights, full stop, or do you have to ask the local government whether you're even allowed to ask that question? I would have thought that the progressive answer was obvious, but apparently not so. 

Al_Ar_Bee wrote:

 

To claim that this is imposing “our” values is to ignore that Europeans who arrived from various monarchies in Europe had no democratic or human rights values until they learned them from the Iroquois Confederacy. This turning to racism on the part of First Nations is a betrayal of that tradition of participatory democracy poineered by the Iroquois. However the act is understandable given how viciously the Kahnawake along with the rest of the original people of this land have been treated. Thus it should certainly not be the role of Canadian State institutions to impose their human rights legislation on First Nations band councils.

 

 I missed this upthread and have sat here debating whether to comment and how exactly to get what I mean to say right. I think because it's unclear and comes across as a bit of mishmash to me.  I can read a couple of different ways.   You've charged that 'First Nations' have turned to racism which is a broad brush descriptor and then refered to the betrayal of Iroquois Confedercy which is not "First Nations' but a reference to specific nations.  "First Nations" cannot betray something they never participated in the first place so the point doesn't make much sense.   Or by "First Nations" are you refering specifically to the people in question?  If so are you aware that Kahnawake is Haudensaunee (Iroquois) and therefore are saying pretty much that they are betraying there own traditions and history and turned to racism. Understandable or not that's a pretty big thing to say if thats the meaning.

If it is the latter or something similar to the latter, heck even if it's something close to the former then I will put a point of argument out that I have been given by some of the very people who do support this particular policy in some form. Namely that this action is actually an extension of the Great Law, which the Confederacy was formed on, that does give them the sovereign right to make determinations of who on an individual basis as well as on a nation to nation basis is part of the Confederacy or particular nation that makes up the Confederacy. So therefore not a betrayal but a taking back of the powers of that law, that the Canadian state has attempted to strip away.

The human rights issue had already been addressed:

"In 1981, the community announced a moratorium on mixed marriages, which meant that non-natives who married Mohawks after that year would no longer have the right to live on the reserve. Any non-native who had married a Mohawk before the moratorium is still permitted to live on the reserve.

In the 1980s, some Mohawks contested the policy before the human rights tribunal, but lost. The courts have ruled that Mohawks can make any membership policy they deem necessary for their survival as a people."

First Nation communities are for First Nation people....Having said that,I find it interesting that in the 1980's,Mohawk women were banished from the reservation for marrying non-Native significant others while Mohawk men were free to live on the reservation with their non-Native wives.There shouldn't be a double standard.

People are free to marry or bed anyone they like....Mohawks from Kahnawake all know that white girls throw themselves on their men.Joe Delaronde has a point...Native blood is drying up and the survival of their community relies on the Mohawks to keep their culture and very existance alive.

I see nothing morally wrong with protecting one's identity or survival.

seems to me the main problem here is the canadian governments position regarding status: 

"We're very concerned about protecting our identity because at a certain point, the Canadian government will look at us and say: 'You are not even Indians,' " Delaronde said.

if canada wasn't trying to find an excuse to strip fist nations of their rights all the time, this most likely wouldn't be an issue.

Please do not call FN's response to white racist culture, racist.  It shows a deep misunderstanding.

ElizaQ wrote:

 I missed this upthread and have sat here debating whether to comment and how exactly to get what I mean to say right. I think because it's unclear and comes across as a bit of mishmash to me.  I can read a couple of different ways.   You've charged that 'First Nations' have turned to racism which is a broad brush descriptor and then refered to the betrayal of Iroquois Confedercy which is not "First Nations' but a reference to specific nations.  "First Nations" cannot betray something they never participated in the first place so the point doesn't make much sense.   Or by "First Nations" are you refering specifically to the people in question?  If so are you aware that Kahnawake is Haudensaunee (Iroquois) and therefore are saying pretty much that they are betraying there own traditions and history and turned to racism. Understandable or not that's a pretty big thing to say if thats the meaning.

If it is the latter or something similar to the latter, heck even if it's something close to the former then I will put a point of argument out that I have been given by some of the very people who do support this particular policy in some form. Namely that this action is actually an extension of the Great Law, which the Confederacy was formed on, that does give them the sovereign right to make determinations of who on an individual basis as well as on a nation to nation basis is part of the Confederacy or particular nation that makes up the Confederacy. So therefore not a betrayal but a taking back of the powers of that law, that the Canadian state has attempted to strip away.

Are you saying that the Great Law would not allow a member of the Six Nations to bring a spouse from outside into the group? If you are correct then I have misunderstood the spirit of the Great Law of Peace and stand corrected.

However, when I consider these lines from the introductory paragraphs of the Iroquois Consitution:

2. Roots have spread out from the Tree of the Great Peace,
one to the north, one to the east, one to the south and one to
the west. The name of these roots is The Great White Roots and
their nature is Peace and Strength.

it would seem to me that any spouse of a Mowhawk would, in accordance with the spirit of the Great Law, be welcomed into the band if they embraced the laws and customs of the band. By participating in the customs and traditional practices of the band and by allowing their children to be raised within that band's cultural traditions, the group identity would be strengthened and the culture live on into the future. Why is there this need for a racist solution?

Al_Ar_Bee wrote:

 

Are you saying that the Great Law would not allow a member of the Six Nations to bring a spouse from outside into the group? If you are correct then I have misunderstood the spirit of the Great Law of Peace and stand corrected.

However, when I consider these lines from the introductory paragraphs of the Iroquois Consitution:

2. Roots have spread out from the Tree of the Great Peace,
one to the north, one to the east, one to the south and one to
the west. The name of these roots is The Great White Roots and
their nature is Peace and Strength.

If any man or any nation outside the Five Nations shall
obey the laws of the Great Peace and make known their
disposition to the Lords of the Confederacy, they may trace the
Roots to the Tree and if their minds are clean and they are
obedient and promise to obey the wishes of the Confederate
Council, they shall be welcomed to take shelter beneath the
Tree of the Long Leaves.

it would seem to me that any spouse of a Mowhawk would, in accordance with the spirit of the Great Law, be welcomed into the band if they embraced the laws and customs of the band. By participating in the customs and traditional practices of the band and by allowing their children to be raised within that band's cultural traditions, the group identity would be strengthened and the culture live on into the future. Why is there this need for a racist solution?

Unionist wrote:

Could you be more specific? Which rights are you talking about? And do you mean individual human rights, or rights of groups? Progressive people aren't libertarians or rugged individualists. We don't believe in "property rights", for example. We don't believe in the "right" to buy and sell firearms. We don't believe in the "right" to say whatever you want, regardless of the impact on others. And we certainly don't believe in the "right" of one country or people to dictate "morality" to another. That's why, to return to the subject matter of this thread, non-FN people and institutions should be very careful before intervening in a sovereign FN matter.

 

That was rather a long non-answer to my question. For what it's worth, I think that all the classical "negative" rights apply, to individuals. Perhaps there's a good example of a group right that's not just a restriction on individual rights, dressed up. What rights do you think individuals have? 

I also think that making the argument all about sovereignty, without addressing the obvious discrimination issues, is very dodgy. When progressives make arguments that would have been at home in the U.S. South during the segregation era, or in South Africa during the apartheid era, there's something strange going on. 

Just so people know, "the band" and the Confederacy (some one was refering to The Great Law) are not the same thing. Just siding with the band council's decision is as colonial and medling as "fighting for the individual rights" of people from Kahnawake. I would encourage people to review the Two Row Wampum, which outlines the relationship that the Haudenasaunee and settlers have. I would also remind people that history has shown that the people of Kahnawake and other Haudensaunee communities have done a much better job of holding their colonial band council governments accountable for decisions than, say, Canadians do with our colonial governement. As much as it goes against so many people's progressive white liberal tendancies, the natives do not neeed our help!

Al_Ar_Bee wrote:

ElizaQ wrote:

 I missed this upthread and have sat here debating whether to comment and how exactly to get what I mean to say right. I think because it's unclear and comes across as a bit of mishmash to me.  I can read a couple of different ways.   You've charged that 'First Nations' have turned to racism which is a broad brush descriptor and then refered to the betrayal of Iroquois Confedercy which is not "First Nations' but a reference to specific nations.  "First Nations" cannot betray something they never participated in the first place so the point doesn't make much sense.   Or by "First Nations" are you refering specifically to the people in question?  If so are you aware that Kahnawake is Haudensaunee (Iroquois) and therefore are saying pretty much that they are betraying there own traditions and history and turned to racism. Understandable or not that's a pretty big thing to say if thats the meaning.

If it is the latter or something similar to the latter, heck even if it's something close to the former then I will put a point of argument out that I have been given by some of the very people who do support this particular policy in some form. Namely that this action is actually an extension of the Great Law, which the Confederacy was formed on, that does give them the sovereign right to make determinations of who on an individual basis as well as on a nation to nation basis is part of the Confederacy or particular nation that makes up the Confederacy. So therefore not a betrayal but a taking back of the powers of that law, that the Canadian state has attempted to strip away.

 

Are you saying that the Great Law would not allow a member of the Six Nations to bring a spouse from outside into the group? If you are correct then I have misunderstood the spirit of the Great Law of Peace and stand corrected.

 

it would seem to me that any spouse of a Mowhawk would, in accordance with the spirit of the Great Law, be welcomed into the band if they embraced the laws and customs of the band. By participating in the customs and traditional practices of the band and by allowing their children to be raised within that band's cultural traditions, the group identity would be strengthened and the culture live on into the future. Why is there this need for a racist solution?

No that's not what I'm saying it does in terms of specifics. It's not about specifics because it's a hella lot more complex then just interpreting some lines, in an idealist fashion of an internet google search and passing judgement on what for most here are nameless people. My point was about the powers of soveriegnty and determination that are inherent in the law and your charge that it is a betrayal and they've gone racist. My point is only that there are other ways of looking at it, some actual people look at differently and that jumping to a charge of 'betrayal' and 'racism' as a result of what you might think....'or seems to me...' isn't a great thing. Can we get anymore paternalistic here. Ugh.