Understanding the cause

Page 5

As of 9.11 Fear is the currency of our existence. It is projected into our lives; it is bought, sold, traded and consumed by us. We eat Fear for breakfast, take it home with us at lunch, and swallow it whole at supper time. It accompanies us on our daily journey-we go to bed with Fear at night, and we wake up with it in the morning. In the new day we walk with its cold hand on our back. Fear is our new reality.

In a much deeper sense than can be measured by counting the cost of a pile of rubble and numbers of dead bodies in Manhattan, the terrorist has accomplished his mission. What are desperate acts like this one after all, if not the projection of another's world of unending pain onto our own lives? It has been seven generations since our people have felt this type of fear. It has been a long time since we have known war in our homelands, and fought bloody battles to repel the white invaders. Since the time of our failure, our continent has been conquered; the Great Turtle Island, Kawennote A'nowarakowa to my people, has become the fortress of a great empire. Inside this fortress, even in captivity, we have been insulated and protected from the rest of the world.

But now desperate men from far away have shown that the fortress is weak; its walls have been breached and the rest of the world is ready to enter in force. This is an awakening to a fearsome future. Though this is the start of a cycle of violence that will likely result in the death of many, many people on far away shores and here at home, we cannot let fear rule over us. We must transcend the natural effects of witnessing such violence, and begin to wipe our eyes, clear our throats and open our ears so that reason can prevail over emotion.

If we are to survive with our sanity intact, we must not feel this event, we must understand it. It would be too simple to say that the United States 'had it coming.' The fact that the United States as a country is getting back what it puts out, 'what goes around comes around' is so obvious as to be meaningless. Though there is some satisfaction in speaking those words-the words feel like small acts of uttered revenge-'they are reaping what they sow' and such statements don't help us understand anything. 9.11 was not an attack on all of us; it was not an attack by barbarians on civilization. It was not even an attack on America. It was an attack on the U.S. military's occupation of the Arab homeland, and massive pay back for the U.S. government's crimes against Muslims in Arabia.

Contrary to what the politicians would have us believe, the attack on the World Trade Center was not unprovoked or unreasoned. In fact, as despicable as this may seem, it was entirely logical. That is, if you subscribe to a logic in which war is an extension of politics, and terror is just another tactic.

Both the U.S. government and its enemies in this dance of death are masters at manipulating the logic of terror to suit their own interests. It is a fact that the United States itself deals in oppression, death and destruction every single day the world over. Those now speaking out against the evils of terrorism paid for and promoted the same terrorist activities, calling them "freedom fighting" when used against Russia by Usama bin Laden's network a few short years ago, and before that by Contra rebels against Nicaragua. And what of the millions killed by United States' crimes against the people of Vietnam, the hundreds of thousands of Indigenous people who have been murdered in Latin America, and the virtual extermination of our own North American Indian people? Does the attack on the World Trade Center wipe America clean of these crimes and all of a sudden place the U.S. on the side of the good people of the world? No, it doesn't. Only a naive fool would accept the propaganda proclaiming American innocence spewing forth in sickening doses from the U.S. television networks. Even without a special understanding of world politics, wo would honestly believe that a country born out of murder, rape and pillage, and yet unrepentant, could be innocent in any sense of the word?

Hardly anyone wants to confront these facts of real life, preferring instead to hold on tight to the myths which offer them comfort and insulate them from taking any responsibility for creating a world where people are driven mad with rage against them. Instead of asking, why does half the world hate us? the citizens of the United States are told to sit in church, to pray for their victimization, and then open up the hymn books and begin to sing the songs of war (as their leaders led them in the Battle Hymn of the Republic in the U.S. national cathedral last week).

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord;

He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored;

He has loosed the fateful lightening of His terrible swift sword;

His truth is marching on.

Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!

Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!

Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! His truth is marching on.

To tell the truth, there's no difference between George Bush singing these words to Americans and Usama bin Laden preaching a Fatwah to his similarly deluded followers. The fanatical meaning of the song remains the same whether the words are English or Arabic: glory, Lord, trample, wrath, lightening, terrible, sword, truth, march, Hallelujah!

In spite of their hatred for each other, these enemies are very much alike. As the U.S. launches into what it temporarily called Operation Infinite Justice, and begins to rain bombs onto the unsuspecting poor of the Middle East and Afghanistan, we should stop to think about what justice really means. It means fairness, and acting in a way that is morally right. Is killing millions of Afghans and Iraqis and other Arabs a fair and morally correct response to the 9.11 attacks, which are likely acts of rebellion by people who have been playing both sides of a deadly game with the U.S. government for dcades?

If the U.S. government wants to achieve infinite justice, it should start by giving us our land back and honoring its treaty promises to our people. Is this a war to defend freedom? Well, how about giving us ours? This is mass hypocrisy on a scale to drive anyone crazy! But let's not be hypocrites too, brothers and sisters. We Indigenous people claim to be nations; we claim to have a memory; we claim to have pride in who we are. Yet, there are many of our people who identify so strongly with our oppressor that they begin to feel and think just like him.

Basic human compassion is a noble thing. But think about the orgy of suffering we have wallowed in and endured broadcast live on TV for the past two weeks: our oppressor suffers, so we hurt? They are humiliated, so we get down on our knees and pray for them, hope for them, cry for them?

The United States government has told us that we, along with the rest of the world, have a choice: we must join them or face the certain prospect of death and destruction. Predictably, our Canadian neighbors have heeded the warning from their big uncle (not without a large degree of sympathy, I should add, for the aim of a Christian crusade). Most are lining up to place their heads far up George Bush's behind so they can easily follow him wherever he wants to go.

Unlike the time when the Battle Hymn of the Republic was written, this is not a noble struggle against slavery; this is not a just war against Nazis bent on world domination; this is not even a necessary cold war to defeat communist tyranny. Simply put, the war that has recently come home to America is a long standing fight to guarantee American access to cheap oil and to make the world safe for the rich to profit off the poor. Is that something worth fighting, dying and killing for?

We Onkwehonwe, the real people, must keep in mind that this is not our war. Whatever tragedy that has befallen them, and whatever fears they hold to, the United States and Canad remain our oppressors. They deny us our rights, they steal our land and they humiliate our culture. 9.11 has not changed this. I hope and pray that in the coming dark days our people will have the strength, integrity and honor to remember who they are, and refuse to be swept up in the tide of the new crusade.

Let us resist, and refuse to join the chorus as all the good Christians march off to murder Muslims singing their national anthems and the Battle Hymn of the Hypocrites.