Indigenous Struggles in the Americas:
Interview with Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2010/do230210.html
23.02.10
by New Left Project
Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, a writer, teacher, historian, and social
activist, is Professor Emeritus of Ethnic Studies and Women's Studies
at California State University.
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 Cobb's 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 enterprises
-- pencil manufacturing, a chocolate factory, and others -- and
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?
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.
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?
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.
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 textbooks 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.
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 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.
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 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.
.
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