"Indigenous Soldiers" & "Bigger Bazookas" are Canada's Military Solution

MNN.  April 13, 2007.  “The Candian Army was itching to kill us in 1990”, said a young Mohawk, referring to the Crisis at Kanehsatake.   That’s when the army surrounded us for 78 days.  We didn’t want the nearby town of Oka to put a golf course over our burial and ceremonial site.  We saw Indigenous faces sticking out of the tanks and standing around with their fingers on the trigger ready to kill us.  It was sickening!  Now Denis Coderre, Liberal Defence critic in Ottawa, wants Canada to build a special Canadian Forces base to train native soldiers. 

What’s going on?  Are they planning to send native soldiers against us like they did in the past?  This announcement comes right after Canada put out the National Defense training manual calling us “domestic insurgents”, with tactics on how to attack unarmed Indigenous civilians.  They categorized us as “Taliban”, “Tamil Tigers” and “Al Queda”.  They are, in all reality, “freedom fighters”.  The Mohawk Warrior Society are not criminals.  They are standing for the rule of law and for colonial states to obey the laws.   

Is this how Canada tries to deal with recent worldwide criticism over their continued genocide of our people?  The idea came up because natives are crossing the border to join the U.S. armed forces.  There is no border for us.  It is an imaginary colonial line.

What is the army doing?  We are told that the military mission in Afghanistan is supposed to  “win the hearts and minds of the Afghan people”.  How are Canadian forces under U.S. command trying to win their “hearts and minds”?  

Recently, the Canadians were helping the locals fix a power generator and water pump.  They needed spark plugs, which they should have brought with them from Canadian Tire before they left home?  20 soldiers decided to go almost 100 miles away to Kandahar in four heavily armored vehicles.  These roads are always under the protection of the Taliban.  Was this provocation!  As the Canadians traveled, they kept firing warning shots at cars or trucks they thought might attack them.  One of these shots caused a truck to go off the road.  It rolled over and over causing many injuries.  Compare the cost in ammunition and human misery for not remembering to bring spark plugs from home!

Is it any wonder Afghanis don’t trust anybody?  Even as the soldiers distribute medicines and civilian aid, they are creating more need for it.  Soldiers are assuming that everyone could be a Taliban.  It isn’t safe for anyone to come within firing range of these so-called “saviors” carrying machine guns and riding around in their supped-up tanks.    

Canada wants more efficient killing machines.  They just bought new air-conditioned Leopard tanks from Holland.  Now the soldiers can sit comfortably while they go on playing this real life version of “halo”, a “shoot and kill the enemy” video game.     

Canada knows we don’t trust their military.  Do they think we’ve forgotten how we felt when they pointed their guns at us at Kanehsatake, Gustafsen Lake, Ipperwash, Tyendinaga, etc.?  Is recruiting our men and women to fight for them what they call “appeasing” us for all the lethal gestures the military made against us in the past?  This is not an olive branch they’re extending.  It's a death trap for our people to fall into.   

This first training base in Canada would be built in the Restigouche area where government and corporations create high unemployment.   

Mr. Coderre said, "… we have to show “sensitivity” since Canada is also composed of first nations”.  He uses a bizarre adjective to describe Canada and U.S. past history of brutality against us.  There was Champlain’s attack on us, the war on the Metis, on Riel and George Washington’s campaign of genocide with the help of the rabble sent over from Europe!  When have Canadians and Americans ever taken up arms to defend us and our lands?   Never!

We have to stop and think.  Remember when Indians wore foreign uniforms to attack us?  Remember Apache warrior, Geronimo? His own men turned traitors and helped the U.S. army to capture him.  In the end, they held his family hostage and tried to starve them to death to make him surrender.  Then the U.S. turned around, disarmed their Indian helpers and took them on the same train to a prison camp with Geronimo.  How’s that?

During WW II, the Iroquois Confederacy wanted to defend Turtle Island against a purported German invasion.  We went on the steps of Congress and declared war on Germany.  When the war was over, the Confederacy was not invited to sit at the peace table.  Technically we are still at war with Germany.  But the U.S., Canada and the British would not allow the German Government to make peace with us even though they wanted to.  

If an Onkwehonwe soldier is told to kill his own, he has to do it.  If not, he will be murdered by his commander.  That is why these officers wear the 45’s on their belts.  If you disobey, they can shoot you on the spot. 

Mr. Coderre said, "I promise to speak about this project with our leader, Stéphane Dion, and I hope that it can become a campaign promise."   He plans to meet aboriginal leaders to get their support.  How about consulting us.  It’s our sons and daughters they want!  Coderre, don’t talk with the head of your puppet organizations.  If you want our people, speak to us on a nation-to-nation basis.        

If Canada is sincere about wanting peace, we’d be glad to advise them.   The Kaianereh’ko:wa, Great Law, is the recipe for worldwide peace. These bankers, military, multinational corporations and their government puppets are the only beneficiaries of this cruel dynamic.

History repeats itself.  They still want to get the population down to a controllable number.  They don’t care if they bomb and kill each other.  They will give both sides the weapons to do it.  That is what they did here to us.  This brought nothing but grief and destruction.

 

The colonizers trained the Vietnamese to kill Vietnamese, Indians to kill each other and Africans to kill each other with guns supplied to both sides by the same dealer.  Let’s not forget how the U.S. and Canada used our own to kill us.  Every reserve has Indian police to enforce the colonizers laws of exploitation and extermination on us. 

Indigenous brothers and sisters:  Why are we letting these colonial brutes put Canadian and U.S. uniforms on us and guns in our hands to kill for them? The Iraqi and Afghans never did anything to you.  They are fighting for their country, their resources, their people and their future.  The same way as Geronimo, Crazy Horse, Sitting Bull, Tecumseh, Chief Seattle, Pontiac and other Onkwehonwe did.  They stood up to protect us, our homes, our land, our mother and mostly our freedom.  

What’s conspicuously missing is any attempt to make peace with the Taliban.  This is where the principles of the Kaianereh’ko:wa, the Great Law of Peace, would come in handy.  It may take a few days to sit down and hack things out.  Once an agreement is reached there will be no need for their new lethal toys.    

Will these Indigenous soldiers come back to us with their minds changed around just like after World Wars I and II?  The returning brainwashed soldiers helped the colonial governments impose their foreign systems on us. 

When are they going to rescind the order to exterminate the Indigenous people of Turtle Island?  The white race continues its genocidal plan to control people of color worldwide. 

Any idiot can kill.   No one needs training to do that. That’s proven every day.  If you guys are so eager to get military training, why don’t you learn how to defend us?  Don’t help these colonial foreign states oppress us and take everything of value from us.     

In our scenario there’s no place for any “War Czar”.  We have more to gain by fighting for the truth rather than swallowing all the lies we’re being fed.  Don’t be brainwashed into murdering your own people.  We all have the ability to reason.     

Kahentinetha Horn

MNN Mohawk Nation News