Malette, Chris
Friday, August 31, 2007 - 10:00
Belleville Intelligencer
Chris Malette ’At Large’ - Have you had a guilt-free summer?
You did? Well, settler, you couldn't have been listening to the news or reading your daily papers.
If you didn't attend the rally in Toronto this past Wednesday, at which, dozens of really, really, sweaty and cranky people demanded the immediate release and "staying" of charges against Mohawk icon and rabble-rouser Shawn Brant, well, you, mister-man and missus-woman were part of the problem and a cog in the conspiracy.
While many of us shamefacedly snuck off to beaches, campgrounds and cottages on lakes that used to be dotted with Indian camps and villages many were continuing the struggle here to reclaim ownership of lands long lost or still in dispute. In the interest of disclosure, your humble scrivener recently sold some land (stolen??!!) on a lake that was once given up by the Mississaga Chief Paudash in what has been now, quite clearly, shown to be a theft of grand proportions by the colonial British of the day (1818).
Good on our First Nations and godspeed for pursuing a just resolution to land claims, it says here, but our boy Brant has well and truly run afoul of the laws of the land and has been, until his release on bail this week, rightly cooling his heels in the crowbar hotel while his good wife pined for him and accused all in Canadian society, in general, as being responsible for Brant being held as a "political prisoner."
There's a growing clamour to climb aboard the Brant train by loopy lefties who, when it comes down to it, don't curry much cred in the real world, with the exception, perhaps, of one Toronto author who thinks the world sucks and we should all move to an asteroid.
Need a little back story to the current round of hyperbolic drivel?
In a 2006 interview with freelance documentary maker Folkard Fritz, who produced "Mohawk Smokes" that was aired on CBC, our lad Brant was given his favourite aphrodisiac, an open mic and a camera lens in front of which he expounded, at length, on a variety of topics. The doc was ostensibly about Brant's cheap smokes venture and the money it was designed to raise for "infrastructure" on Tyendinaga Territory (hmm, where did all that money go?), but came, naturally, around to the central theory that is now being shouted from the rooftops by the likes of above mentioned conspiracy theorist Naomi Klein (No Logo, etc.) and others who've taken up the cudgel to "Free Shawn," as though he was our aboriginal personification of Abby Hoffman or Nelson Mandella, ferchrisakes.
Here's a smidge of the pearls that tripped from Brant's tongue and were eagerly gobbled up by Fritz.
"I believe that government has always structured policies and regulations so that First Nations people aren't allowed to move beyond a moderate standard of living or modest means for generating wealth. The government has in the past engaged people and set up business loans through industry, trade and technology. Often, the outcome is not favourable to people because there's a great deal of things that are involved in business, and there are people that can manufacture things, but if they can't market them then they can't succeed.
"So government has traditionally sponsored initiatives which would allow for the creation of jobs in areas within our communities, but has always stopped short of providing the support and the assistance that was necessary to ensure the success.
"I very much believe it's done for systemic reasons, to show us as failures, to show us as people that have to be taken care of, have to have those decisions made for us. Although we're given so many chances, we are unable to break through those notions and those stereotypes. I can only believe, because of the means by which they start these projects and then just step back and let them fail, that's heartbreaking."
There you have it, from one of the tall thinkers of our day. Unbeknownst to most educated people in this country, there has long been a "systemic" plot in place to keep the native man and woman down, to just let them think they're getting ahead, then kick the stool out from under them.
And next time you go to Chapters or Greenley's and see a book by Klein on the latest convoluted, conspiratorial schemes to keep the downtrodden down, you'll know where she gets it.
Bongo - from our very own Bard of the Gravel Pit, St. Shawn, the Blue Eyed Mohawk Prophet, and, er, seller of cheap smokes.