6-17-07, 9:07 am

Canadians are often surprised by the periodic renewal of visible indigenous resistance: the Oka summer of 1990, the Gustafsen Lake standoff in 1995, the Six Nations land reclamation at Caledonia. Schooled in the histories of European wars and U.S. presidents, many Canadians are only faintly familiar with the ancient record of aboriginal nations in the Americas, or during the five centuries since the time of Columbus.

History is written by the victors, as the saying goes. The official story goes something like this: European explorers 'discovered' the Americas, using their overwhelming firepower and technology to defeat the feeble resistance of the noble but backward inhabitants. Nasty things happened along the way, but that's in the past, we're all equal now, so there's no reason to make a fuss about who owns what.

But this myth is shattered by examination of the facts, including the hard evidence of nation-to-nation treaties which were signed and violated by the colonizing powers. Present-day racists thunder against 'race-based fishing and hunting rights' or land occupations; but would these same forces shrug and walk away if an invading power destroyed their homes and seized their possessions? Would they accept the argument that legally-binding agreements reached with such powers could be unilaterally nullified? Or would they use such agreements in the courts and to influence public opinion?

As the corporate media and Conservative politicians ominously warn about a 'long hot summer,' Canadians would do well to study history from the aboriginal perspective. A good starting point is Stolen Continents, by the renowned author Ronald Wright.

First published in 1992, this classic examines the myths of the 'New World' through Indian eyes, quoting extensively from the voices and writers of several nations which resisted the colonizers: the Aztecs, Mayas, Incas, Cherokee and Iroquois.

Key elements of the mythology are utterly demolished. Far from quaking in fear, aboriginal peoples largely regarded the white newcomers with a mixture of disdain and curiosity. As for 'technological inferiority,' Wright and many other researchers present a compelling record of highly-developed nations using science and technology which matched the advances of the Europeans.

The real cause of the swift collapse was invisible: germs and viruses which spread diseases such as smallpox, for which the indigenous Americans had no natural immunity. Within a couple of centuries, epidemics had wiped out most of the population of this hemisphere, a process speeded by slavery and slaughter. Otherwise, the invaders would have met with far more powerful resistance, resulting in a shifting kaleidoscope of military and political alliances among European powers and aboriginal peoples, and a completely different map of the Americas today.

Even so, the Europeans were frequently compelled to sign agreements and formal treaties with Indian nations. Wright's chapters on the Cherokees bring to life the story of that nation's relations with the Spanish and the British, and then the 'Americans.'

Originally numbering over half a million, the Cherokee Nation's traditional territories included most of present day Kentucky and Tennessee, plus parts of the Virginias, the Carolinas, Georgia and Alabama. Their heartland was a series of large towns in the Great Smoky Mountains.

While the 'Trail of Tears' is remembered by some, the full story leading up to and following that tragedy is little known. In essence, the expanding United States relentlessly squeezed the Cherokees. Tens of thousands of land-hungry invaders poured into their territories, ignoring the 1785 Hopewell Treaty between the two powers. Unlike the 'civilizing settlers,' the Cherokee Nation had its own government, constitution, printing presses, school system, and much more. But they were ultimately driven out, with one-quarter of their remaining 16,000 dying in the 1838 removal to Indian Territory in the distant western plains.

But even this genocide (as it would certainly be called today) could not destroy the Cherokee Nation. Despite their depleted numbers and internal divisions, the Cherokees reached a new treaty with the United States in 1846. They rebuilt their government, newspaper, and schools, regaining a measure of their stolen prosperity. Then, in 1890, the United States arbitrarily annexed the western half of Indian Territory into Oklahoma. When the Cherokee resisted a new invasion of settlers, Congress dissolved their national government and abolished indigenous land tenure.

The tenacious Cherokees still refused to disappear or assimilate. In 1970, they elected a principal chief for the first time since 1898, and later adopted a new constitution. As Chief Wilma Mankiller said in her 1990 State of the Nation address, 'We are going to do everything in our power to make sure that the Cherokee Nation continues to exist.'

The Iroquois have also never surrendered their national status. The Iroquois Confederacy (the Six Nations or Haudenosaunee, originally the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, and Seneca, and later the Tuscarora) held most of present day New York state and parts of Pennsylvania, Vermont, Ontario and Quebec. Their 'heartland' was the Finger Lakes region south of Lake Ontario, where the Onondaga served as Firekeepers in the Confederacy's widely-admired system of government.

The esteem in which the Iroquois were held by thinkers and leaders such as Benjamin Franklin did not spare them from inter-imperialist wars between Britain, France, and later the United States. Strategically located between New France and the British colonies on the eastern seaboard, the powerful Iroquois were eventually divided by these conflicts.

Those who sided with Britain in this complex struggle were rewarded with land grants: the Haldimand Tract (a twelve-mile wide strip along the Grand River, one hundred miles long from its mouth at Lake Erie), and land at the Bay of Quinte on the eastern end of Lake Ontario. The locations reflected the imperial strategy of the British, who hoped that the Six Nations aligned with the Crown would serve as military buffers against U.S. expansion.

The Iroquois were forced onto 'reservations', a tiny fraction of their original homeland, scattered from Allegany in western New York to Kahnawake, south of Montreal.

Nevertheless, for two centuries, they have resisted the whittling away of their land base, as witnessed when a municipality tried to expand a golf course on unceded Mohawk territory at Oka in 1990. The original Six Nations government was never shattered, despite the Canadian government's 1924 decision that a 'band council' would replace the traditional government at Ohsweken/Grand River. (Only 27 adults out of a population of 4,500 cast ballots to 'elect' the new 'band council.') For decades, the Six Nations have issued their own passports, conducted international diplomacy, and refused to accept that the Canada-U.S. border is a barrier to their movement.

From this perspective, we can see that every ruling class attempt to deny the nationhood of the Six Nations is a denial of reality. This denial, multiplied hundreds of times, is the true source of the estimated 800 outstanding land claims and disputes across Canada. Instead of attempting to achieve 'finality' by forcing aboriginal peoples to surrender their nationhood, the governments of Canada must be compelled to take a new and honourable direction, one which recognizes that genuine treaty-making can only be a nation-to-nation process between equal partners.

From People's Voice