Hello again, Ray
I said yesterday that I'd say a little more about differences in the way
Aboriginal people were treated in various parts of the Americas, focussing on
the difference between Canada and the US.
Before the American Revolution, both Canada and large parts of the US were
British colonies. What Britain decided with respect to Aboriginal peoples
applied to both colonies. A ruling known as the Royal Proclamation of 1763 was
issued by King George III to establish a boundary between lands occupied by the
colonists and lands occupied by Indians. In Canada, Indian lands lay generally
west of Quebec (excluding Rupert's Land) and in the US the Appalachian
Mountains were seen as the boundary between white and Indian lands. Whites who
had settled in Indian lands were asked to leave (whether they did so or not is
another issue). On their lands, as defined in the Royal Proclamation, Indians
should not be "molested or disturbed". Purchase of the lands could only be made
by the Crown. If Indians wanted to sell their lands, they could only do so if
via a tribal assembly for the purpose.
All of this changed in the US after the American Revolution. Lofty purposes
such as the Royal Proclamation no longer applied in the US, and the 19th
century saw a series of Indian Wars in which Indian people were dispossessed of
their lands and settlers took them over. In Canada, where the purposes of the
Royal Proclamation were still seen to apply, there may have been the odd
confrontation or battle, but negotiated treaties determined what lands
Europeans could occupy and what lands were reserved for Indians.
Not everything went as well in Canada as might have been expected, however.
Some years ago I worked on a project which examined whether the land
entitlement provisions of the treaties had been correctly applied. We found
that in ever so many treaties, lands that were supposed to be held by Indians
were in fact held by non-Indians and, in some cases, formed significant parts
of major cities. I'm not sure of what the situation is now but I believe a
process of sorting out what belongs to whom is still underway.
That's about all I can say on the matter right now. It's a long time since I
had anything to do with Indian land questions, and I must admit that my memory
is fading.
Ed
----- Original Message -----
From: Ed Weick
To: RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION,EDUCATION
Sent: Monday, June 06, 2011 6:37 PM
Subject: Re: [Futurework] The Shame of America, Canada,Meso-America and South
America
Hi Ray,
In referrig to the three state solution in Canada you must mean the country
as a whole via the Government of Canada, the provinces and territories via
their governments, and Aboriginal self government -- the right of Native people
to run their own affairs (even if they can't afford to do so). I'd argue that
there are important differences between how Aboriginal people were treated in
various parts of the Americas, in Canada versus the US for example. Let me
think about it and respond more fully in a day or so.
Regards,
Ed
----- Original Message -----
From: Ray Harrell
To: 'RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION,EDUCATION'
Sent: Monday, June 06, 2011 1:40 PM
Subject: Re: [Futurework] The Shame of America, Canada,Meso-America and
South America
PTSD, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder continues when crimes are ignored
and denied. In Spain and Northern Ireland it took hundreds of years to
resolve and even the resolution proved inadequate unless they exiled the other
side or just killed them. There seems to be a kind of "solution" of this
type arising in the Middle East these day on both sides. The Final Solution
is not new. It was the solution proposed for my people by the beloved Wizard
of Oz writer L. Frank Baum when he confronted the desolation of the reservation
solution. His beliefs flowed logically out of the philosophy of "usefulness"
from Locke to the Utilitarians. The weren't religious or personal they were
"just the market beliefs of the day."
Today in Canada we have a three state solution in a kind of commonwealth
but it will take hundreds of years for the Native people to recover and cease
the flinching that happens when one is touched on a wound. Native people get
cheloids on their scars that are lifelong and hard to forget. The path of war
is not the only human solution. And it certainly the only "natural" one
either. It is the path that Keith calls the "short term" solution. As
long as the path of peace is unknown or worse simply believed to be the absence
of war, its difficulties will go untried and unrecognized. Here are some our
thoughts taught to me by my Masters, about the Path of Peace and the Path of
War. We call them the Red and the White Path and once they were recognized as
incompatible and studied as designed strategies for living. A society had to
chose one path or the other and they did. Today the Path of War is the only
path anyone takes seriously. In 2012 it will have been thirteen cycles of 52
years of continual war.
1. There are two governing strategies in existence, a duality. The
Path of War and the Path of Peace.
2. Traditionally we have called these the Red or war and the White or
peace governments.
3. When one government strategy was used the other was not. The both
had their own distinct personnels.
4. The Path of War sees life in terms of scarcity.
5. The Path of Peace sees life in terms of plenty.
6. Both paths contain dissonance and repose. Both have their music.
7. The path of war is concerned with defense and governs defensively
usually in short time spans.
8. The path of peace is concerned with growth and governs as a long term
design.
9. The path of war is filled with defenders of the gate.
10. The path of peace is filled with keepers of the garden.
11. The path of war builds energy through an ever narrowing field.
12. The path of peace uses energy to create an ever widening field.
13. The path of war removes complexity through violence and growth through
destruction.
14. The path of peace diminishes complexity through a growing knowledge
and designs for the whole system.
15. The path of war uses violence to cull in order to feed.
16. The path of peace uses violence to accept what has been offered freely
in order to continue.
17. The path of war considers food to be dead and the end of consciousness.
18. The path of peace considers food to be alive and the continuance of
consciousness.
19. The path of war has winners and losers and considers life a game.
20. The path of peace does not accept the game as a metaphor for life but
instead considers it a dance.
21. The path of war is concerned with winning the day and will leave
tomorrow for the survivors.
22. The path of peace is concerned with choreographing the dance down to
the seventh generation for the good of the whole system of life.
REH
PS, If I were a Roman Catholic I would say that what Natasha Kandic cries
out for is the need for "confession." Mere documentation is a form of
"bully bragging" and is one of the power games of the War government.
June 5, 2011
The Shame of Serbia
By NATASHA KANDIC
Belgrade, Serbia
THE arrest of Ratko Mladic on May 26 caught me off guard. I couldn't
believe it. I clenched my fists, trying to grip him tightly in my hands.
Finally, I breathed a sigh of relief.
But then I heard the speech by the Serbian president, Boris Tadic. For him,
Mr. Mladic's arrest represents the closing of a dark chapter in our history and
a removal of the mark of shame that has stained the Serbian people for two
decades. But there was no mention of the many other perpetrators of genocide
during the 1990s or of the responsibility the Serbian state bears for those
crimes. Once again, it seems, we might lose the chance to open a painful but
necessary debate about the past.
Not long ago, for a brief moment, it seemed that all of Serbia would side
with "foreign" victims against its "own" perpetrators. That was in 2005, after
my colleagues and I uncovered and released a 1995 video showing the execution
of six Muslim men from the Bosnian town of Srebrenica. For the first time, the
Serbian public saw incontrovertible evidence of the state's involvement in
massacring 7,000 Muslims there.
The government was quick to respond by dissociating the state from the
massacre. Overnight, the police arrested five men and then declared them a
criminal group, denying any connection the unit may have had with state
institutions. At the trial, the Serbian court rejected the testimonies of the
mothers and children of the six executed Muslims. There was no evidence, the
court concluded, that the men were detainees from Srebrenica. That ruling was a
mark of shame on all of us. And we can't wash it off by sending Mr. Mladic to
the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal in The Hague.
Mr. Mladic's arrest brought relief to the families of victims. It offered
the Hague tribunal recognition that it is a successful agent of international
justice. And it granted Serbia the long-coveted prospect of membership in the
European Union. The Serbian government has managed to persuade the world that
it values a European future more highly than the criminal heroes of the past.
But I am not so sure that Serbia has given up on Mr. Mladic and his fellow
generals, who prosecuted a genocidal war in Bosnia. The sympathy that state
officials and the news media expressed for Mr. Mladic last week is yet another
mark of shame on all of us. The deputy prosecutor offered him strawberries. His
wish to be visited by the health minister and the president of Parliament was
granted, as was his request to visit his daughter's grave. The Serbian public
was constantly updated on his diet in jail, and we all learned that Mr. Mladic
flew to The Hague in the suit he'd worn at his son's wedding. He was treated as
a star.
Such adulation of murderers is dangerous in a region where the wounds of
war have not yet healed. Nationalism is still strong in Bosnia, Croatia, Kosovo
and Montenegro, and sometimes even stronger than it was during the wars that
tore Yugoslavia apart in the 1990s.
Recently in Croatia, politicians, the press, the church and civil society
groups protested the Hague tribunal's verdict that two Croatian generals were
guilty of war crimes, a ruling that challenged Croatia's official
interpretation of the war. They all acknowledge that some killings took place
in 1995, but they deny that the state and former leaders like Franjo Tudjman,
then the president of Croatia, were responsible for planning the ethnic
cleansing of Serbs.
In the eyes of the Bosnian political establishment and victims' families,
justice for the victims of genocide and ethnic cleansing will be served only if
Serbia and Bosnian Serb leaders acknowledge their role in the genocide. Yet
Bosnian Serb leaders still deny it took place and demand that more Bosnian
Muslim leaders face war crimes trials, too.
Similarly, little has changed in Kosovo, where the public opposes trying
the commanders of the former Kosovo Liberation Army. And in Montenegro, a court
ruled that the policemen who handed over Muslim refugees to Bosnian Serb forces
in May 1992 weren't guilty of a war crime - a slap in the face to victims'
families.
The region desperately needs an honest debate about the past. It is the
only way to recognize all victims and to stop the lies we tell about ourselves
and about others. Victims' families, 1,600 nongovernmental organizations,
veterans and clergymen have signed on to the initiative for the founding of a
regional commission that would compile a complete registry of victims,
including dead soldiers, policemen, volunteers and those who were targets of
ethnic cleansing.
Later this month, a request to establish this commission will be submitted
to leaders of all the successor states of the former Yugoslavia. If adopted, it
will put an end to the age-old Balkan practice of leaving victims nameless. And
we can only hope that it will eventually wash away the stain of the past once
and for all.
Natasha Kandic is the executive director of the Humanitarian Law Center in
Serbia. This article was translated by Vesna Bogojevic from the Serbian.
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