Infamous [Lawerence] Summers' Memo

Anyone who believes that Harvard as a supposed "institution of higher learning" has any value need only consider that George W. Bush managed to get an MBA from there (after getting in as a "legacy" which is "affirmative action" for rich in-bred white people) and that the president of Harvard is Lawrence Summers who wrote the following memo that could have been written by Adolf Eichmann.

The Memo

DATE: December 12, 1991TO: DistributionFR: Lawrence H. SummersSubject: GEP
'Dirty' Industries:

Just between you and me, shouldn't the World Bank be encouraging MORE migration of the dirty industries to the LDCs [Less Developed Countries]? I can think of three reasons:

1) The measurements of the costs of health impairing pollution depends on the foregone earnings from increased morbidity and mortality. From this point of view a given amount of health impairing pollution should be done in the country with the lowest cost, which will be the country with the lowest wages. I think the economic logic behind dumping a load of toxic waste in the lowest wage country is impeccable and we should face up to that.

2) The costs of pollution are likely to be non-linear as the initial increments of pollution probably have very low cost. I've always though that under-populated countries in Africa are vastly UNDER-polluted, their air quality is probably vastly inefficiently low compared to Los Angeles or Mexico City. Only the lamentable facts that so much pollution is generated by non-tradable industries (transport, electrical generation) and that the unit transport costs of solid waste are so high prevent world welfare enhancing trade in air pollution and waste.

3) The demand for a clean environment for aesthetic and health reasons is likely to have very high income elasticity. The concern over an agent that causes a one in a million change in the odds of prostrate cancer is obviously going to be much higher in a country where people survive to get prostrate cancer than in a country where under 5 mortality is is 200 per thousand. Also, much of the concern over industrial atmosphere discharge is about visibility impairing particulates. These discharges may have very little direct health impact. Clearly trade in goods that embody aesthetic pollution concerns could be welfare enhancing. While production is mobile the consumption of pretty air is a non-tradable.

The problem with the arguments against all of these proposals for more pollution in LDCs (intrinsic rights to certain goods, moral reasons, social concerns, lack of adequate markets, etc.) could be turned around and used more or less effectively against every Bank proposal for liberalization.

Postscript

After the memo became public in February 1992, Brazil's then-Secretary of the Environment Jose Lutzenburger wrote back to Summers: "Your reasoning is perfectly logical but totally insane... Your thoughts [provide] a concrete example of the unbelievable alienation, reductionist thinking, social ruthlessness and the arrogant ignorance of many conventional 'economists' concerning the nature of the world we live in... If the World Bank keeps you as vice president it will lose all credibility. To me it would confirm what I often said... the best thing that could happen would be for the Bank to disappear."

Sadly, Mr. Lutzenburger was fired shortly after writing this letter.

Mr. Summers, on the other hand, was appointed the U.S. Treasury Secretary on July 2nd, 1999, and served through the remainder of the Clinton Admistration. Afterwards, he was named president of Harvard University.

Appeal For Assistance and Caring

Imagine a seasoned, highly trusted and highly committed Elder/Activist of one of the six nations governed by The Great Law of Peace, who is involved in legal actions against the U.S. government designed to reveal evidence of genocide and to push sovereignty of his and other Native nations. Imagine that this Elder/Activist, running on financial fumes like so many activists, is offered $5 million to push legal challenges by an investor who is willing to finance legal actions if, and only if, a guarantee is given that a casino will be built with 40% of all profits going to the"investor" in perpetuity. Imagine that this Traditional Elder, fully aware of what casinos typically bring--corruption, dope, alcohol, gambling addiction, only token jobs for a few Natives, no more than 8 cents on agross profit dollar going anywhere near the average Native, organized crime, loss of even marginal sovereignty etc--has no choice but to turndown the $5 million as it would only cause more of the same that the legal challenges are designed to stop or mitigate.

These legal actions are causing some real stress on the powers-that-be on both sides of the US/Canadian border as they are designed to use the legal procedures and institutions of "The Man" to bring evidence, law (even "TheMan's own laws), international law and consciousness raising in Native communities to domestic and international venues never before used.

This is not fanciful or utopian (we are fully aware from experience that Natives in US and Canadian courts are like Jews and Roma Sinti going to Nazi courts) but the evidence is that the powers-that-be are terrified of this approach. Anyone interested in inflicting some truth, law, morality, evidence andcreative chaos on "the system" and may be moved to donate to this cause(involving some 13 Native Nations) may contribute directly to:

Any donations may be sent to Bank: Canada Trust; Account Name: 13 MoonHorizon; Comany Name: 3273946 Canada Inc.; Account Number:32326-004-0260-0316261; Address: 45 O'Connor St. Ottawa, Ontario K2P 0W5 or directly to Michael Swinwood, RR#3 Almonte, Ontario KOA 1A0 This will be only to advance collective action (not only for Blackfoot).


Lawyer challenges the legitimacy of Canadian law over First NationsSubmitted by eisengrimm on Mon, 04/26/2004 - 23:18.

Canada Indigenous Natives not bound by laws of Canada, lawyer argues An Ottawa lawyer is challenging the authority of Canadian governments to apply laws to native people.

Jake Rupert, The Ottawa Citizen, April 25, 2004

A judge has agreed to hear a claim that sovereignty over Canadian lands was never fairly transferred in any of the ways recognized by international law.

Jake Rupert reports on Michael Swinwood's effort to change Canadian history. It's an issue that has been debated for years in native and legal academic circles but hasn't been answered by Canadian courts, say aboriginal law experts. But it looks like the question will have to be answered soon, after lawyer Michael Swinwood, on behalf of two natives in North Bay charged with fraud, filed a constitutional challenge to the Crown's right to apply the Criminal Code, or any other law, to aboriginal people, and a judge agreed to hear it.

Mr. Swinwood says aboriginal people never ceded sovereignty to British or Canadian governments in accordance with recognized international standards such as conquest or purchase.To have jurisdiction over people who occupied land first, according to law, sovereignty must be properly handed over, Mr. Swinwood says in documents filed in court. It wasn't, so.

Canadian governments have no right to enforce their laws on natives, the documents say."The federal government lacks proper legislative authority in the territory it is alleged these illegal acts took place," Mr. Swinwood argues." No treaty has been entered into ... therefore the federal government has no jurisdiction in the territory where these acts are alleged."

Mr. Swinwood will ask a judge to "nullify the application" of Canadian laws against natives because, he says, according to the current state of the law, Canada's laws have "no force or effect as against these Indian persons or any other Indian person."Earlier this year in North Bay, Mr. Swinwood convinced Ontario SuperiorCourt Justice J.S. O'Neill, himself an expert in native law, to hear the challenge and order the government to pay for it. Judge O'Neill found Mr.Swinwood raised "important" legal questions that need answering and ordered the provincial government to give Mr. Swinwood $35,000 in order to argue the case properly."The issues raised ... are of sufficient merit that it would be contrary to the interests of justice for the opportunity to pursue these questions andthese issues ... to be forfeited if legal funding is not provided," the judge wrote in his reasons for granting Mr. Swinwood the money."

It is to be remembered that the legal community in Canada is only beginning to come to grips with issues involving aboriginal title and rights," Judge O'Neill said. After getting the funding order in March, Mr. Swinwood hoped to make his case this spring in front of Judge O'Neill, but the Crown appealed the judge's ruling on the funding application, arguing that the judge should not have granted the money because there is no merit to Mr. Swinwood's assertions. No date has been set for the appeal, but Mr. Swinwood has decided to press ahead with the constitutional challenge, which he'll pay for out of his own pocket and with money collected from native organizations.

In other cases involving native clients charged with crimes, Mr. Swinwood tried and failed to have judges agree to hear the constitutional challenge. Now that a judge has agreed to hear it, the matter is just too important to walk away from over money, Mr. Swinwood said. "Like Justice O'Neill said,it's been a long time coming, so it feels good that we're finally getting to table some of our issues," he said. "The Indians got messed over here in this part of the world pretty badly, and it's time some one should speak for them. On this issue, it just happens to be me. "

Those who say thatCanadian laws are applicable against Indians in this country don't know their history. We're just pointing this out."If Mr. Swinwood's first argument fails, he has another, darker allegation that he says strips the Crown of its ability to apply its laws to natives.

According to his application documents: "The legislature of Canada and Her majesty the Queen deprive themselves of legislative authority by being complicit in the crime of genocide against the Indian Nation ... and have acted and continue to act contrary to their international obligations codified in the convention for the prevention and punishment of the crime of genocide."

At the very least, he's asking the judge to find that a 1704 royal proclamation stating that any disputes between natives and government officials should be adjudicated by an agreed upon third party is still in effect. Mr. Swinwood says after exhaustive research and consultation, he has come to the conclusion that Canada simply has no jurisdiction over natives in this country.There's no legislation saying so. There's no case law saying so. In fact, the law says the opposite, Mr. Swinwood says. "It's an interesting and important question that has not been answered by Canadian courts," said Kent McNeil, a law professor at Osgoode Hall in Toronto who specializes inaboriginal rights. He said there have been some cases in Canadian law, dating back as far as the 1800s, that touched on the issue, but that Mr.Swinwood is the first to take direct aim at the fundamental jurisdiction argument in court.

Brad Morse, a University of Ottawa aboriginal law professor concurs. "This really will be the first time that these issues are looked at in court, andI think it will be interesting to see what happens," Mr. Morse said.

At the heart of Mr. Swinwood's argument is the issue of sovereignty. Under international law, sovereignty is generally gained under three conditions. A government can assume jurisdiction over unoccupied land simply by populating it. Sovereignty also can be formally handed from one government to another after a conquest. Or a government can gain the right to enforce its rules when occupiers of land sign a purchase agreement or treaty relinquishing jurisdiction to the newcomers.

Mr. Morse said Mr. Swinwood's challenge is legitimate because the first two conditions don't apply in Canada, and in the annals of history there is very little evidence of Indians surrendering sovereignty to Great Britain.Where there is evidence of jurisdictional surrender, there is much debate over whether native leaders understood what they were doing when they"signed" treaties and purchase agreements.

Although this is the first time Canadian courts will be asked to deal with this issue, courts in other countries already have. In a landmark case, Australia's highest court found the Crown there has sovereignty over aboriginal people and land despite not having any of the three accepted conditions for jurisdictional transfer. The court found that over time control of the land and people simply eroded away from the country's first people into the hands of the newcomers and should remain there for the betterment of all.

Many years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court found differently. Judges there decided that the U.S. government didn't have sovereignty over natives or native land. However, it ruled that basic human law as defined by U.S. statue applied to all people regardless of their heritage.

Some may look at Mr. Swinwood's position as preposterous, but he says without proper government mechanisms in place to address the gross injustices committed upon natives in Canada, he is simply doing the next best thing. He said in a prefect world, government officials would come to the conclusion that they've failed the natives of Canada, and that Canadian laws aren't helping the situation.They would say they're sorry for messing things up as badly as they have, cede sovereignty over vast tracts of Crown land, and let natives live in accordance with traditional spiritual, moral, and legal codes that were working just fine before the white man arrived. "We have the law on ourside," he said. "We have history on our side. We have morality on our side.What's happened hasn't worked. It's time to try something else." "The time has come," he said. "The government has had a lot of time to do this themselves, and they haven't, so we're going to try to force them to by using the courts. I see no reason why we should fail in this.

The Ottawa Citizen 2004 [reprinted under fair use doctrine for educational purposes only]

The Evolving Concept of Social Capital, Markets, Market-Based Processes and Socialist Construction

Paper delivered Sept 1-2, 2004 at the International Symposium on the Reform of Property Rights and Enterprise Development in Transitional Countries at Tsinghua University, Beijing, China

The Evolving Concept of Social Capital, Markets, Market-Based Processes and Socialist Construction

By James M. Craven (Blackfoot Name: Omahkohkiaayo i’poyi)
Professor, Economics; Chairman, Business Division, Clark College, Vancouver, WA.

“Every nation in the world has its own history and its own strengths and weaknesses. Since earliest times excellent things and rotten things have mingled together and accumulated over long periods. To sort them out and distinguish the essence from the dregs is a difficult task…Of course this does not mean that we do not need to learn from foreign countries. We must learn many things from foreign countries and master them…We learn foreign things because we want to study and develop Chinese things…We must not be like the Empress Dowager Tz’u-hsi who blindly rejected all foreign things. Blindly rejecting foreign things is like blindly worshipping them. Both are incorrect and harmful…In learning from foreign countries we must oppose both conservatism and dogmatism…To study foreign things does not mean importing everything, lock, stock and barrel…We must give our attention to the critical acceptance of foreign things, and especially to the introduction of things from the socialist world and from the progressive people of the capitalist world…”

(Chairman Mao Zedong, “Talk to Music Workers”, pp. 85-88, in Chairman Mao Talks to the People: Talks and Letters 1956-1971, Stuart Schram ed., Pantheon Books, N.Y. 1974)

Introduction

The People’s Republic of China stands as one of the major political-economic powers and social formations in the world today; it ranks about sixth place in terms of most economic aggregates commonly used to rank-order different economies in size and influence in the global economy. For a nation that had been kept backward, fragmented, feudal and colonized by foreign imperial powers and internal contradictions until the People’s Revolution in 1949, and, for a nation that has been subject to imperial encirclement, threats of nuclear annihilation, destabilization campaigns and demonization and ostracization in the global economy for many years, with a large population of 1.4 billion people with myriad wants and needs awaiting fulfillment, the present level of development and standing of China is no small achievement And there is no doubt, in the opinions of many observers, that “socialist values and consciousness”, created and reinforced by the developing “social capital” of Chinese socialism, have constituted a significant and material force in those achievements—often against overwhelming odds and against technologically-sophisticated and vicious foreign forces bent on isolating, demonizing, destabilizing and sabotaging socialist construction in China.

Yet despite the tremendous advances made by the Chinese people, much work remains to be done and many wants and needs remain unfulfilled causing China to explore, at various periods of Chinese history, diverse approaches, models, instruments, measures and paths of growth and development. According to the 16th Congress of the Communist Party of China in 2002:

“We must be aware that China is in the primary stage of socialism and will remain so, for a long time to come. The well-off life we are leading is still at a low level; it is not all-inclusive and is very uneven. The principal contradiction in our society is still one between the ever-growing material and cultural needs of the people and the backwardness of social production. Our productive forces, science, technology and education are still relatively backward, so there is a long way to go before we achieve industrialization and modernization.” 1

Since 1978, China has experienced the progressive widening of markets, market relationships and categories along with some changes in political, economic, cultural, legal and social institutions and superstructure necessary to facilitate widening and deepening market involvement in socialist construction. Some of these policies and initiatives have included: export-led growth; increasing reliance on long-term foreign direct investment (FDI both into and originating from China); increasing privatization; lowering of trade barriers; decentralization of planning; increased authority for (and responsibilities on) local governments; increasing integration into global networks of manufacturing, finance, trade; critical technology transfers; new forms of enterprise organization (e.g. Individual Family Contracts (IFCs) in agriculture, Township and Village Enterprises (TVEs), privatization and self-financing of state-owned enterprises(SOEs) and SBCs or share-based cooperatives); labor market reforms; currency exchange-rate stabilization; etc.

But the debates, inside and outside of China, have continued to rage: Does this emerging market socialism model represent simply a necessary—and necessarily hybrid—model that is based upon, and is addressing, the myriad real-world legacies, constraints, conditions and forces with which China has to deal, and that will, or can possibly, result in using markets and capitalism to build socialism in China?. Or, as some would argue, does this hybrid model represent the reverse of using socialism (real or nominal) to build and extend markets, market-based processes and wholesale capitalism thus subjectively or objectively sabotaging long-run conditions and prospects for ongoing socialist construction throughout China?

The Allure of Neo-Liberalism

The neo-liberal narrative, and the narrative of neoclassical economics upon which it is largely based, are quite alluring and seductive. Starting with some unproved—and largely metaphysical—“axioms and postulates that form a view of eternal and immutable “human nature”, basic economic—and even non-economic—outcomes are said to be the inevitable and predictable results of the unfolding or playing-out of human nature—on both the supply and demand sides of a given market—under “given” conditions, institutional arrangements and constraints; and the macro is said to be nothing more than the sum of the aggregated micro. What could be more natural and “efficient”, the neoclassicals argue, than a system (Capitalism) that, rather than trying to deny or suppress or change eternal and immutable “human nature”, instead, harnesses, celebrates and utilizes human propensities and instincts that form human nature in order to produce optimal social outcomes not even intended by the “Economic Man” (who is asserted to be atomistic, calculating, rational, selfish, competitive, egoistic, materialistic) “agent” who is owning, buying or selling only for himself/herself in accordance with his or her own “rational self-interest? It of course never occurs to the proponents of neo-liberalism and neoclassical economics (who have only recently got around to the concept of social capital) that maybe what they are observing is not some eternal and immutable “human nature”, but, rather, the social capital of capitalism doing one of the things it is supposed to do: creating and reinforcing the very “human nature” (and associated human values, behaviors and proclivities) that is necessary for the functioning, imperatives (e.g. mass consumption, markets, profits, market shares etc) and expanded reproduction of capitalism itself. These proponents also deny that these supposed eternal and immutable propensities and proclivities of “human nature”, operating on the micro levels of the economy, when aggregated to the macro levels, can, rather than producing optimal macro outcomes, instead, produce social chaos, instability, mass alienation, environmental degradation, hollowing-out of industrial bases, involuntary unemployment, lack of mass access to health care, loss of mass acceptance of the system, etc.

Here we have systems through which forces of supply and demand for various commodities interact—markets. They are often portrayed as rather technical, mechanical, impersonal and endogenously self-equilibrating (in response to “exogenous” shocks) sub-systems that are relatively value-free, requiring only supporting institutions of private property and a relatively business-friendly and non-interventionist state. Markets are said to represent the most superior (in terms of narrow and contrived definitions of “efficiency” and the greatest good for the greatest number) mechanisms (that stand opposed to the mechanisms of tradition and command) for posing and solving the classical “What”, “How” and “For Whom” questions faced by all societies at all levels.

The neo-liberal and neoclassical narratives operate like “String Theory” (“The Theory of Everything”) in Physics. Where the narratives and visions of Quantum Mechanics at the micro or particle level (focusing on micro chaos and only probabilities and no certainties) contradict the narratives and visions of General Relativity on the macro levels (focusing on general order, equilibrium, stability, symmetry and certainty) the claim is made that String Theory bridges and reconciles the two contradictory visions and narratives. The same claim is made by the neo-liberal and neoclassical theorists. When markets are allowed to do what markets do, when they are left relatively free and unfettered by over-regulation, when they are supported by “given” and “appropriate” politico-legal-cultural-social policies and institutions (superstructure or social capital), then, out of the potential chaos of greed/selfishness/profit/utility-driven interactions at the micro level, we get stability, equilibria, efficiency, growth, development, employment, incomes, global competitiveness, comparative-advantage-based trade, invention/innovation, etc on the macro level. The macro “order”, “stability” and “certainties” will supposedly follow from the potential chaos and “probabilities” at the micro level in the long-run; that is, if short-term adjustments and “sacrifices” can be accepted and handled by the masses and the state. The greatest good for the greatest number, consumer and producer “sovereignty”, efficiency, demand and supply reflecting revealed preferences of those with the most dollar votes, political as well as economic democracy and “rising tides lifting all boats” or the so-called “trickle-down effects” are but some of the promises of neo-liberalism and the neoclassical paradigm. As Edward Luttwak, put it:

‘At present, almost all elite Americans, with corporate chiefs and fashionable economists in the lead, are utterly convinced that they have discovered the winning formula for economic success—good for every country, rich or poor, good for all individuals willing and able to heed the message, and of course, good for elite Americans: PRIVATIZATION + DEREGULATION = TURBO-CAPITALISM = PROSPERITY’ 2

Markets, the neo-liberal and neoclassical proponents argue, are the ultimate in democratic institutions; even more democratic than de jure institutions such as legislatures, voting, elections, government etc. Consumers, looking to maximize total utility, with given incomes, expectations, information about prices and preferences cast their dollar votes while producers, driven by the imperatives to maximize and realize total profits, with given technologies, information about prices, and given resources respond to those with the most dollar votes; they act like ongoing public referenda according to this narrative. And then, markets do what market do:1) commodification; 2) price determination; 3) act as information systems (about conditions, trends and profit/utility opportunities); 4) resource allocation; 5) rationing; 6) clearing surpluses and shortages.

Supply and demand interact and prices are determined. Prices communicate information about market conditions, trends and possibilities and allow calculation/estimation of comparative profit or utility potentials by sellers and buyers in order for them, as “sovereign individuals”, to determine what is likely to maximize total profits or utility and thus What shall be produced or consumed. Prices of inputs and outputs, along with the imperatives to minimize total cost on the supply side, or maximize total utility on the demand side, then allow determination of “optimal” production and utility functions and thus “How” to produce or consume and the allocations of given resources. Further, prices and relative prices of commodities answer the “For Whom” question through rationing (those willing to pay the most are most likely to get the commodities being supplied) while the relative “incomes” of inputs (land, labor and capital) and supposedly based upon their relative marginal contributions to the value of total output, reflect and shape the distributions incomes and wealth among the owners and sellers of those inputs.

It is all a nice and neat narrative. In the neoclassical theory and narrative: all exchanges are “voluntary” and mutually beneficial to the participants otherwise they would not have occurred; causality is unidirectional with “ultimate” independent variables (e.g. tastes and incomes on the demand side and technology and input costs on the supply side) acting as “exogenous variables” that trigger endogenous and self-equilibrating responses in and through markets; the economy is thus propelled from equilibrium state (harmony and balance of contending interests) to equilibrium state in response to exogenous shocks and variables.

The determinants of those “exogenous independent variables” are not the subject of inquiry for the neoclassical/neo-liberals. They have little or nothing to say about the real-world of monopolies, oligopolies, engineered supply and demand magnitudes and elasticities (e.g. Enron), administered prices, imperialism, social systems engineering, ideologically-driven embargos, asymmetric information, asymmetric ownership, asymmetric powers in international organizations like the UN or WTO, asymmetric access to political influence and justice, etc. These real-world phenomena are never even discussed in their textbooks let alone seen as inexorable or likely outcomes of the systemic structures and survival imperatives of capitalism itself. If these phenomena are ever even recognized, they are dismissed as simple anomalies and exceptions not disturbing the overall narratives.

When the widening and deepening of markets, market relations and market institutions result in such crises as recurring and mounting unemployment, environmental degradation, wealth and income inequality, alienation among the youth, commodification of the “sacred”, inflation, loss of mass access to health care, increasing capital and labor migration, losses of traditional societies, budget and trade deficits, exchange-rate instability, etc, such outcomes are typically characterized by the neo-liberals and neoclassicals as either “growing pains” in countries like China3, or, in market-based economies, that have been “growing” for some time and in which some of the same crises are nonetheless evident, such crises are said to be the result of excessive government intervention and regulation, lack of appropriate and supporting politico-legal institutions (the subject of this symposium), imperfect information, non-market (government) corruption, trade protectionism, etc—not letting markets freely do what markets do.

Systemic Imperatives of Market-based Economies

Under market-based—capitalist—economies and processes, all entities, whether individuals, firms, organizations or even whole economies in global competition, are locked into certain fundamental and interrelated imperatives that shape what might be termed the “teleological logic” of capitalism. These fundamental survival-competitive imperatives also apply—in varying degrees—to socialist social formations when operating in global markets governed by capitalist institutions as well as to entities operating in and through markets within socialist social formations. These interrelated fundamental imperatives are:
1) Realization of Maximum Possible Total Profits;
2) Accumulation of Capital: Expanded Reproduction (Widening and Deepening) of the Capital Base and the Capital-Labor Relationship;
3) Maximization of Productivity and Enhanced “Efficiency”;
4) Effective Competition.

These competitive entities (individuals, groups, firms and whole national economies) must attempt to produce and actually realize maximum possible profits in order to have the retained earnings and/or creditworthiness as a necessary—but not sufficient—condition for continual expanded reproduction of their productive bases. These entities must continually attempt to reproduce and expand (widening and deepening) their productive bases and relations as a necessary—but not sufficient—condition of maximization of productivity and overall efficiency. These entities must attempt to maximize productivity and enhance overall efficiency as a necessary—but not sufficient—condition of effective competition (leading to expanded market share and power, name recognition, etc). And these competitive entities must attempt to effectively compete as a necessary—but not sufficient—condition of further production and realization of maximum possible total profits. Further, these fundamental imperatives of survival and effective competition create further derivative imperatives that shape the content, parameters and effects of human behavior as well as of “human nature” itself. For example, tactics such as outsourcing, union busting, not paying true costs of profits/benefits received and/or not receiving true profits/benefits for costs paid, or environmental degradation, flow from the imperative to minimize total costs (along with the greed and selfishness celebrated by the social capital of capitalism) that itself flows from the imperative to effectively compete that flows from the imperative to realize maximize possible total profits.

Different systems embody, create and reinforce different structures, contradictions, conditions and imperatives of survival within those structures and under conditions that in turn shape the content, frequency, effects and “permissibility” or taboos of human behavior. One of the purposes of social capital is to create, teach, reinforce, sanction, celebrate, legitimate or de-legitimate certain relationships, values, norms, customs, institutions, habits, myths, traditions, ideologies and paradigms in accordance with certain systemic imperatives among which is the imperative for expanded reproduction of the whole system itself. Sometimes, however, the types of habits, norms, values, paradigms and behaviors most necessary on the micro level, may, when aggregated, produce macro effects or contradictions opposite of those intended or predicted from behaviors on the micro levels.

From the perspective of the “profits-for-power-and-power-for-profits” and competitive imperatives of a typical businessperson or entity in a market-based/driven economy, the type of person/customer that would be ideal would likely possess the traits and proclivities of Homo Oeconomicus incarnate. This person would typically be: narcissistic; highly subject to fads and peer pressure; unable to delay gratification—wants it all and wants it now; predatory and calculating—for the next profit or utility opportunity; unable to assess real and long-term costs and benefits—caught-up in the illusory, the superficial and in the moment; a pleasure-obsessed conspicuous consumer— acquiring and expressing identity and “individuality” through consumption and types of commodities consumed; highly competitive; materialistic; acquisitive; rational—but only in the narrow and bounded sense; self-centered and self-absorbed; unwilling to sacrifice in the short-term for long-term goals or a transcendent causes; willing to go into debt to finance current conspicuous consumption; ultra-individualistic equating individualism with “individuality.”;etc.

This type of “Homo Oeconomicus”, celebrated by and the cornerstone of neoclassical economic theory, is, however, for most people, not the type of person one would like to have as a son or daughter-in law, friend, mother or father, husband or wife, brother or sister, member of a military unit in combat, voter, public servant, neighbor during a natural disaster or someone involved in or guiding socialist construction. Indeed, even within capitalist social formations, the requisite social capital of markets and capitalism, without which markets could not do what markets typically do—and that is necessary for the expanded reproduction of capitalism as a whole—involves potentially contradictory missions or purposes. On the one hand, the purpose of social capital in market-based societies is to teach, legitimate and reinforce those ideas, values, norms, habits, myths, traditions, behaviors, proclivities, institutions and productive and other relationships necessary for creating and expanding markets, profits, capital accumulation, etc—e.g. values and proclivities such as ultra-individualism, conspicuous consumerism, etc. On the other hand, the purpose of social capital also involves teaching, legitimating and reinforcing certain forms and levels of social awareness and concern, cohesion, cooperation, reciprocity, civic engagement, personal sacrifice for the nation, buying into the system, etc.

When markets are introduced and expanded within socialist social formations, the requisite social capital of markets becomes potentially not only internally contradictory with respect to expanded reproduction of markets and market-based processes, but also, such requisite social capital can—and will likely—become a destructive and sabotaging force against socialist construction and the expanded reproduction of socialist relations and institutions—even allowing for some varying and diverse definitions of what socialism is about and the positive effects of markets in terms of building productive forces rapidly.

The Evolving Concept of Social Capital

The term social capital was first coined in 1916 by L. Judson Hanifan4 to refer to social networks and institutions/norms of reciprocity (goodwill, fellowship, sympathy and social intercourse) associated with them. Hanifan, by his own admission, employed the term “capital” (anything that has been produced and used to produce—for profitable exchange—something else) to catch the eye--and patronage--of the business community. Hanifan suggested that these social networks and institutions could, on micro as well as macro levels, enhance productivity, competitiveness, employment and income creation, etc. in some of the same ways that physical capital and human capital can, also, produce the same effects.

Subsequent to Hanifan’s apparent coinage of the term social capital, the term and concept was reintroduced—and partly redefined—at least six times up to the present: 1) in the 1950s by sociologist John Seeley5 to refer to ‘memberships in clubs and associations’ that act just like negotiable securities in producing career advancement and tangible returns to individuals; 2) in the 1960s, by urban economist Jane Jacobs6 to refer to the collective value and effects of informal neighborhood ties and associations; 3) in the 1970s by economist Glenn Loury7 to refer to wider social ties lost by African Americans as one of the legacies of slavery; 4) in the 1980s by social theorist Pierre Bourdieu8 to refer to the actual or potential resources linked to durable networks of institutionalized relationships of mutual recognition and assistance; 5) in the mid-1980s by economist Ekkehart Schlicht9 to refer to the economic value and productivity-enhancing effects of organizations, moral order, cooperation and cohesion; 6) in the late 1980s by James Coleman10 to refer, as Hanifan had done, to the social arrangements, relationships and institutions creating and shaping the environment or social context of education.

The above-mentioned definitions of social capital are all closely related and narrow in their focus. They focus on immediate relationships—institutionalized or informal—and the networks, and norms of reciprocity that serve as tangible assets and have economic impacts not only on the micro level (personal career advancement, obtaining employment, political influence, personal safety etc) but also on the macro level in terms of enhancing productivity, reducing information and transactions costs, enhancing competitiveness, enhancing community safety and reducing crime, encouraging cooperation, limiting destructive forms and levels of competition etc.

A wider definition of social capital, one employed in this paper, is closely akin to the concept of Social Structures of Accumulation (SSA)11 which involves a complex of institutions (political, social and economic) and domestic and international relations supporting and legitimating the process of capital accumulation (which includes not only accumulation of wealth and physical/human capital but also expanded reproduction of fundamental and defining socio-economic-political relationships of the whole system itself. This is also close to the classical Marxist concept of “Superstructure”.

Even allowing for the more narrow definition of social capital employed by Putnam et al., recent studies reveal the steady erosion of social capital in the U.S. in the last thirty years. They have more or less consistently documented solid trends reflecting steady declines in various indices of: political and civic engagement (voting, contributions, electoral participation, signing petitions, writing polemics, working on political campaigns, running for political office); community involvement ( charitable work and donations, blood donations, religious participation, memberships in professional associations, clubs and societies). These studies have also documented steady increases in various indices of alienation and apathy among various age cohorts of the U.S. population (dinners outside the home, incidents of road rage, polling on social trust and trust in political figures, daily television viewing and percent of population using television as central form of entertainment, percent of population disobeying traffic signs and rules, polling on greed trumping community involvement among college freshmen, suicide rates in various age cohorts, percentage of population reporting frequent malaise—headaches, insomnia, indigestion—and percentage of population reporting overwork and multiple jobs as a matter of necessity rather than choice).

These trends in the U.S., revealing steady erosions of social capital with the ripening of U.S. capitalism, are highly correlated with other social outcomes: increases in child abuse; decreases in quality and effectiveness of educational institutions; increasing television watching and reduced effective literacy among children; increases in crime; decreases in health and perceptions of being healthy among the general population; decreases in perceptions of social-connectedness among the general population; increasing membership in dangerous cults like offering messiahs, instant gratification and easy answers to complex problems; increasing divorce rates; increasing tax evasion, anti-statism and distrust of politicians or political solutions to current problems; decreasing percentages of the population willing to trust or help fellow citizens who are strangers.

When the work of Putnam et al was extended to the international level, exploring similar data and trends in eight major capitalist societies (Australia, France, Spain, Germany, Japan, Sweden, Great Britain and the United States), in all cases, except Sweden, the trends in social-capital-erosion in countries other than the United States strongly paralleled (in timing and patterns of change) those of the United States.12 Also paralleling these trends, and consistent with the wider definition and socializing-ideological functions of social capital, in all of these countries, the central themes of culture (television, movies, literature, games, art, music, etc) are increasingly centered on and around promoting and celebrating narcissism, ultra-individualism, competition, ruthlessness, duplicity, pleasure maximization, instant gratification, materialism, luck, returns without sacrifice, predatory calculation and manipulation and other concepts and values definitely useful from the standpoint of mass consumption and profitability but also definitely inimical to socialist construction however one may define socialism.

Conclusion


China has come a long way in promoting levels and forms of human progress for the broad masses of people that were simply unknown in the China before 1949. This achievement is truly remarkable when one considers the legacies that were inherited along with the extent to which China has been subject to imperial aggression, isolation, ostracization, embargos, social systems engineering campaigns, demonization and even outright threats of nuclear annihilation—causing diversions of precious and scarce resources for defense instead of directly into development. The current problems that China faces simply cannot wait and the imperative to develop the productive forces as rapidly as possible to deal with the myriad issues, constraints, inequalities and crises faced by China should be evident to all but the most insulated and callous of observers and critics. Certainly socialism cannot be built and defended without the participation and allegiance of the broad masses of Chinese people who must, first of all, simply survive in order to participate in socialist construction.

On the other hand, socialism is not simply about building productive forces or dealing with the “What, How and For Whom” questions differently than they are dealt with under capitalism. Socialism is not an end-state but rather a long protracted process and it is also about teaching and reinforcing human values and relationships that are very different from—and stand in contradiction/opposition to—the types of values and relationships embodied in the social capital of capitalism and most conducive to the expanded reproduction of capitalism: greed, selfishness, ultra-individualism, competition, narcissism, instant-gratification, predation for profit/utility opportunities, inequalities of wealth and incomes, commodification of everything including the sacred, etc. As William Hinton summed it up:

“Socialism is after all not something given, something fixed. It is a process, a transition from one state to another…As such it bears within it many contradictions, many inequalities that cannot be done away with overnight or even in the course of several years or several decades…Yet as long as these inequalities exist they generate privilege, individualism, careerism, and bourgeois ideology. Without a conscious and protracted effort to combat these tendencies they can grow into an important social force. They can and do create new bourgeois individuals who gather as a new privileged elite and ultimately as a new exploiting class. Thus socialism can be peacefully transformed back into capitalism.”13

The basic values, institutions and relationships most conducive to the expanded reproduction of capitalism act as weeds in the garden of socialism threatening to choke off the new flowers in the emerging garden. That is precisely why the introduction and expansion of market and market-based institutions, values, relations and imperatives within the framework of a socialist social formation, which may be tactically necessary as was the case with the NEP in the Soviet Union, must be handled carefully and from a position of strength and willingness to sacrifice if necessary. This is especially the case when it is clear that the major capitalist power, the U.S., seeks hegemony in the global community of nations and regards itself as locked into a global war of conflicting systems and ideologies (Capitalism versus Socialism) in which it is prepared to use cultural, political, economic and military means—covertly or overtly—to ensure the victory of neo-liberal capitalism and its associated institutions, values and relationships on a global scale. As James Petras put it:

“U.S cultural imperialism has two major goals, one economic and the other political: to capture markets for its cultural commodities and to establish hegemony by shaping popular consciousness. The export of entertainment is one of the most important sources of capital accumulation and global profits displacing manufacturing exports. In the political sphere, cultural imperialism plays a major role in dissociating people from their cultural roots and traditions of solidarity, replacing them with media created needs which change with every publicity campaign. The political effect in to alienate people from traditional class and community bonds, atomizing and separating individuals from each other.” 14

No doubt that significant changes in institutions—political, legal, social, cultural and economic—will take place as markets and market institutions/relations/values are introduced more and more in China to help to handle domestic conditions and facilitate China’s increasing integration into a global economy organized on capitalist foundations and categories. The real challenges will be not to lose sight of the ultimate goals and necessity of socialism, to appreciate the roles and effects of social capital (along with physical and human capital—under socialism as well as under capitalism), to assess and appreciate the true costs (private plus social) and true benefits (private plus social) of markets, market relationships, values and institutions under socialist construction, and, not to wind up “bringing a tiger in through the back door to chase out the wolf at the front door.”


Footnotes

“Report of the 16th Congress of the Communist Party of China”, 2002 quoted in “Some Basics on China “(online edition) by D. Raja and He Yong, Political Affairs Net, at http://www.politicalaffairs.net/article/articleview/256/1/32, p. 1

Edward Luttvak quoted in Frank, Thomas, One Market Under God: Extreme Capitalism, Market Populism and the End of Economic Democracy, Anchor Books, N.Y. 2000, p. 17

“China’s Growing Pains” in The Economist, August 26, 2004

Hanifan, Lyda Judson, “The Rural School Community Center”, Annals of the American Academy of Political Science, 67 (1916): pp. 130-138. Note: An excellent overview of the development of the concept of social capital, for which I am indebted, can be found in: Putnam, Robert D. Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community, Simon and Schuster, N.Y. 2000 and also in Putnam, Robert D (ed), Democracies in Flux: The Evolution of Social Capital in Contemporary Society, Oxford University Press, N.Y. 2002


Seeley, John R, Sim, Alexander and Loosley, Elizabeth; Crestwood Heights: A Study of the Culture of Suburban Life, Basic Books, N.Y. 1956

Jacobs, Jane, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Random House, N.Y. 1961

Loury, Glenn, “A Dynamic Theory of Racial Income Differences” in Women, Minorities and Employment Discrimination, Wallace, P.A. and LeMund, A (eds),
Lexington Books, Lexington Mass. 1977

Bourdieu, Pierre, “Forms of Capital” in Handbook of Theory and Research for The Sociology of Education Richardson, John (Ed), Greenwood Books, N.Y. 1983

Schlicht, Ekkehart, “Cognitive Dissonance in Economics” in Normengeleitetes Verhalten in den Sozialwissenschaften, Duncker and Humblot, Berlin, 1984

Coleman, James, “Social Capital in the Creation of Human Capital” in American Journal of Sociology, 94 (1988)

see Diebolt, Claude, “Towards a New Social Structure of Accumulation” in
Historical and Social Research, Vol 27, No. 2/3 2002; also see Gordon, David M:
“Stages of Accumulation and Long Economic Cycles” in Hopkins, T and Wallerstein, I (eds) Processes of the World System, Sage Publications, Beverly Hills, 1980; Bowles, S “Social Institutions and Technical Change” in Di Matteo, M; Goodwin, R.M. and Vercelli, A. (eds) in Technological and Social Factors in Long-Term Fluctuations, Springer Verlag, Berlin, 1989; and Kotz, D.M; McDonnoug, T; Reich, M (eds) Social Structures of Accumulation , Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1994

Putnam, Robert (ed) Democracies in Flux: The Evolution of Social Capital in
Contemporary Society, Oxford Univ. Press, N.Y. 2002

Hinton, William Turning Point in China, p. 20 quoted in Monthly Review , July
-August 2004, Vol. 56, No. 3 p. 128

14. Petras, James, “Cultural Imperialism in the Late Twentieth Century”, internet Ed

Interview, WBAI, NY, 11-27-03

First Voices, WBAI, interview with Prof. James Craven, Economist at Clark College, 11/27/03, day of mourning (aka “Thanksgiving”). Contact info: jcraven@clark.edu; 360-992-2383; firstvoices@wai.org.

Song by John Trudell: “Look at Us”

TIOKASIN-- And that is John Trudell on his original CD or original tape way back in the early1980’s That is called “Look at Us”. And, uh, if that didn’t wake you up, and some of you who think that, uh, myself and other people who you’ve heard here on this station, WBAI, haven’t heard enough; and if you think that we are ultra, ultra liberal, ultra left wing, I say to you that, as one native person I am neither left wing nor right wing. That is your business; that is your politics. And that game is a loosing game. I can say that.

So, uh, we will bring to you now Prof. James Craven, a Blackfoot. He is a professor and consultant of Economics and Business. He is the Division Chair of Clark College out in Vancouver, Washington. And I bring to you now Prof. James Craven, a Blackfoot warrior.

Good morning Prof. James or Jim, how are you doing?

Prof. JAMES CRAVEN: Okay Tiokasin. Can you hear me okay?

TIOKASIN: I can hear you very well. Thank you for coming on this morning and joining us on this, uh, infamous day.

Prof. JAMES CRAVEN: Thank you for having me.

TIOKASIN: And, uh, you know, we’ve been quite a while since we’ve had you on –I think it was early spring or something, the last time you were here.

Prof. JAMES CRAVEN: Yes.

TIOKASIN: At that time you were working on-- First of all, how –let’s do this for the listeners out there: How do you view today?

Prof. JAMES CRAVEN: I—Today is a day of mourning for me and for all native people, and it should be for non-native people as well. There is an unbroken chain from the time that those Pilgrims came, right up to the present, of genocide against our people. And not only genocide against our people, but oppression of other people as well: poor people, poor white people, African American people, gay people, and so on. There’s a long chain of abuse that goes right back to the Pilgrims. And in fact, many of the so-called Pilgrims, with names like Phillips and Whitford and so on, not only went on to become the Plutocrats who formed the Republic --and who designed a constitution that only white propertied males could vote, and held slaves and wrote in their own declaration of Independence that we’re savages, basically to be exterminated--but those same creatures, or their descendants, are still to this very day in the highest echelons of government. They are in Skull & Bones, they are in the highest echelons of government, they’re in Homeland Security. And they’re doing the same things that their ancestors intended a long time ago. You know, the Pilgrims –everybody portrays the pilgrims as these poor persecuted people who came to America looking for freedom. Uh, in fact, the Pilgrims were persecutors. They were chased out of where they were because they were trying to ram their stuff down every body’s throat. And then when they wanted a Theocracy in England and Holland, dominated by them, and even the English couldn’t handle them. So they came here, not refugees from persecution, but seeking a more open field to do more persecution, and to create a kind of anal-retentive society that they wound up building. And so there’s a long, unbroken thread. So it’s a day of mourning. Uh, it should be. For native people to celebrate Thanksgiving is like for Jews and sensible non-Jews celebrating Hitler’s birthday. It’s an abomination.

TIOKASIN: Jim, I’m going to play uh, what I would call their, illusion of the Devil’s advocate here-

Prof. JAMES CRAVEN: Yes

TIOKASIN: Is uh, you know, what happens when --you know, they call it a day of mourning-- what happens when we have these nay-sayers, who are also native people who say, “Well, you know, that’s fine Jim, but let’s move on, let’s get to business.” What would you say to that?

Prof. JAMES CRAVEN: It’s like telling a rape victim “Why don’t you just get over it?” You see, the problem is, you can’t move on as long as the past is embodied in the present and constrains the present. You know, for example, you know I’m an Economist, I teach Economics. Wealth begets wealth and poverty begets poverty. You see that for example when the original Pilgrims came, they immediately occupied positions of power from which it was relatively easy for them to gather more power and more wealth. And power begot wealth and wealth begot power. And so, the same inequalities and the abuses, and the same genocide and theft and deceit upon which this republic was founded, continue to this very, very day. And so we can’t get over it, because it ain’t over. It’s still going on. It’s in our face as we speak. You know the average life expectancies for reservation Indian males and females is 47 years old in the United States, it’s lower than Ghana. That’s as opposed to 71 and 73 years old for white males and females respectively. Um, the instances of Meningitis, tuberculosis, influenza—deadly influenza—uh, various, AIDS and other diseases, are 10, 15, 20, 30 times what the national rates are in the United States. And we don’t have a Bureau of Caucasian Affairs, we have a Bureau of Indian Affairs. And we don’t have a Caucasian Act, we have the Indian Act in Canada and the Indian Reorganization Act in the United States.

This country was founded upon theft, deceit, genocide, racism, white privilege, and that continues to this very day. We can’t get over what’s not over. And that’s my answer to that.

TIOKASIN: Uh, that- that’s uh… I’d like to add one more thing to that, Jim, the… day of infamy. Millions of Americans celebrate Thanksgiving. And they gather to feast, and most are unaware of the true holiday, or the history of that holiday. And America’s schools have taught that the coming of the Pilgrims made everyone happy. In reality, it was the beginning of the longest war in the US –the extermination of the indigenous peoples. Thanksgiving Day was first proclaimed by governor of Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1637 to commemorate the massacre of 700 men, women and children who were celebrating their Annual Green Corn Dance in their own house. Gathered at this place, they were attacked by mercenaries –English and Dutch. The Pequots were ordered from the building. And as they came forth they were killed with guns, swards, cannons and torches. The rest were burned alive in the building. The very next day the Governor proclaimed a holiday and feast to –quote-“give thanks,”unquote-- for the massacre. For the next 100 years a governor would ordain a day to honor a bloody ‘thanking God the battle had been won.’ And that’s from two books: Where White Men Fear to Tread, by Russell Means, and Facing West: the Metaphysics of Indian Hating and Empire Building, by Harr Drinnan, 1990. And that’s another explanation for why a lot of Native people will just not celebrate, and not even eat tofu turkey. And that’s another reason for why not to celebrate Thanksgiving, because it’s just a day for Capitalism, as I see it.

Prof. JAMES CRAVEN: Yes. Ya, exactly. And it’s a cover-up day. And, you know, as I said before, if people only understood the thread, going back to 1619, 1620, up to the present day –including the same family names—the thread is unbroken. And if people could really see that, how history way back then is alive and well within the present. It’s shaping the present that we see. And, uh, for example, amongst us Blackfoot, we have a lawsuit right now going in Canada, where we’re basically putting the Canadian government on trial for genocide in their own courts.

TIOKASIN- Let’s talk about that, Jim, let's talk about how they are treating you in both countries. It seems like to me, from what I’ve been reading, that the United States will not pay attention to this case, but in Canada it seems to be a major, a major uh, thread in changing the history of how native people are treated in that country.

Prof. JAMES CRAVEN: Yes

TIOKASIN: Could you give us a background on that?

Prof. JAMES CRAVEN: Well, as you know, we—Blackfoot nation still survives to this very day, although they would try to deny that it exists. We still have our traditional government and our mechanisms for selecting our leadership; which, of course, have been the same ones we’ve used for thousands of years. And we are divided by the US-Canadian border. We have Blackfeet in Montana, in Browning, Montana. They’re called “Amskaapipiikani. And then we have three major Bands of Blackfoot in Canada: the Kanai, or the Blood Blackfoot; Apatohsipiikani, or what some call Northern “Pagan” Blackfoot –an ugly word; and then we have Siksika, which are Blackfoot at Gleichen in Alberta. And we’re a divided people. And, for example, in Canada, our people live on $229 a month Canadian. And yet, we’re mandated, -- we’re living on isolated, poor, desperate reserves in the middle of nowhere, with no facilities. Okay. If you get sick, there’s no health service available, there’s, there’s nothing. And you have to go to Lethbridge, for example. Well they mandate, also, insurance. We pay sometimes $1,000 a year to drive off [the reservation] –if we got caught without insurance, our vehicles are impounded, and before we even get to court our vehicles are sold. So before even being charged and convicted our vehicles are impounded and sold. And we argue that this constitutes one form of Genocide. Okay. It’s called deliberately inflicting upon people conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical destruction in whole or in part. It’s Article 2C of the UN Convention on Genocide –Article 2. And we’re arguing in court in fact that Canada has violated all five specific, uh, tests of genocide given in Article 2. And the same with the United States. The United States didn’t even sign the 1948 Genocide Convention until 1988 –forty years after; and is still not in compliance with it. So, we have nowhere to go; we have no weapons except the truth and the courage to tell it. And so what we’re doing is we’re simply --we’re resisting the only way we know how. And that is to continually try to tell the truth to anyone who will listen and refuse to obey their laws. An Indian who obeys the Indian Act in Canada, or the Indian Reorganization Act in the United States is like a Jew who obeys the 1935 Nuremberg Race Laws—they’re aiding and abetting their own extermination and that of their own people. And since Canada became a signatory to the UN Convention of Genocide in 1953, um, and Canada has a supremacy clause as the United States does in the Constitution, therefore, it becomes the supreme law of the land. And we’re arguing that this Canadian government is violating the supreme law of Canada, and that native people have an absolute duty to refuse to sign on to, or participate in, any form of registration or Indian Act or so-called “special treatment” that we natives get. And so, what we’re doing, we’re having a court case. We’ve already been in court several times. We’ve been subjected to all sorts of misconduct –playing games with Discovery, all sorts of other things—and now we’re going back to court on January 23 and 24. And we’re going to make the case that not only will we not obey the Indian Act, we can’t. If we do we’re aiding and abetting our own extermination, and that of our own people. We have an affirmative duty. And that we’re actually paradoxically upholding Canadian law. And of course we’re also asserting the existence of sovereignty of the Blackfoot nation and our own traditional governments. Because we regard the tribal councils that are set up by the Department of Indian Affairs in Canada and the Bureau of Indian Affairs in the United States, we regard those councils as, basically, uh, traitors. That doesn’t mean that everybody who sits on them is a traitor. But, they are set up sort of like the Vichy Government was set up by the Nazi’s in occupied France. They’re set up as puppet governments to keep us down and eventually to exterminate us. And that’s what our case is about there. And we’ve got a lot of support from different nations in Canada and the United States. And this is one form of resistance that we’re doing. And we’re not going to stop. We’re just going to keep going until the last one of us is left.

There’s only 35,000 Blackfoot left, probably. And our land base is 2.6 million acres. It’s bigger than Israel and Palestine put together. And they want it cause our land has oil and gas and, um, pristine water and other things. And so this genocide goes back even before the Pilgrims, but especially with the Pilgrims. It’s an ongoing thing. And there are other forms of disrespect to which we’re subject. For example, one of the things that people should understand is the early Pilgrims who came here, who formed the Plutocratic families, who became the leadership and the “founders” of the Republic, then went on to become the richest families in America. Their descendants, for example, many of their descendants went into organizations like Skull& Bones, which is an extremely treacherous, evil kind of society. And to this day they’re, for example, holding the skull and artifacts and remains of Geronimo illegally in that tomb. This is the kind of arrogance and contempt they demonstrate. But one of the things that people don’t know is, one of the reasons that they got into the whole skull business, is these same individuals, the descendants of the Pilgrims, uh, members of Skull & Bones, were instrumental in the Eugenics movement in the United States, which passed sterilization laws in 37 states defining native people as feeble minded –as inherently feeble-minded and thus subject to sterilization. And according to Ward Churchill in his book Fantasies of the Master Race, by 1977 almost 40% of native women had been sterilized. And so they formed these eugenics societies which continue to this very day; the Pioneer Fund, and so on, who would claim that Indians had different types of skulls and different sized skulls. And so they would go around for example in the early 1800’s and later decapitating Indian bodies and sending the skulls back to Washington DC for examination to “prove” their so-called racial theories of what they called “skull science”.

So this thread continues from the Pilgrims, from the founding of the Republic on slavery, theft and deceit, all the way through the 1800’s, the formation of the Skull & Bones and other such societies, the Pilgrim Society, later the council on Foreign Relations, Trilateral Commission, Ford Foundation. All of these are different fronts that they are using to this very day for eugenics, for population control of non-white people, and for all of their racist theories. And so there’s an on-going thread. If I could, Tiokasin, I just wanted to read –this is not a new story I’m giving. For example, from the Louisville Courier Journal, okay, magazine section Sunday, October 8, 1989: “Bonesman’s Bond” and the subtitle reads: “President’s, Poets, Pundants and Pinkos, have sworn allegiance to Skull & Bones, Yale’s rich and powerful secret society and the most exclusive college club of all. So what’s all this Nazi stuff doing in the club house?” And they know that inside “there they have a Nazi shrine in one room on the second floor with a bunch of swastikas and a kind of, uh, SS Macho iconography.” And here, from the New Haven Advocate, October 19, 1989: “Bone of Contention: Skull Duggery at Yale”:
It’s an extraordinary story. Skull & Bones temple at Yale is illegally holding the skull of Apache Chief Geronimo, stolen from the grave by Senator Prescott Bush, father of President Bush, and other Bonesmen. The Apaches want the skull back. Under Connecticut law, section 53-334, Offenses Against Public Policy, and title 45-253 of the State Probate Law, the holding of human remains is illegal. New Haven lawyers, according to Altman, are reluctant to sue or press for criminal or civil complaint because of the power of Skull & Bones. To which we say, wait a minute, this isn’t Russia. The local prosecutor has a duty to prosecute if the evidence is credible. After all, we live under the rule of law and that includes presidents. Mr. Bush is accessory to criminal offense, apparently compounded by Satanism. He has to be brought to the bar of justice. “

And it goes on. It says: “other news sources please copy.” This goes back to 1989. Holding native remains and using them for satanic rituals that they routinely engage in goes on in Skull and Bones. This is the kind of arrogance of these creatures. That… —they would never do this to some other groups of people. And so there’s an unbroken thread of arrogance, of genocide, of racism, of attempts to exterminate native people. And it continues to this very day. Mr. Bush just appointed five Bonesman to the US government including Mr. Donaldson, the head of the SEC. Members of this secret, satanic, very sick and twisted society. By the way I might add that these people, Bonesmen, for example, including Prescott Bush and George Herbert Walker were principle financers of Hitler from 1924 onward. They were also involved in a 1934 plot to overthrow FDR and set up a fascist dictatorship in the United States. That plot was, was uncovered by Major General Butler, Smedley Darlington Butler, twice won the Medal of Honor. They were trying to recruit him to be, uh, the general to lead veterans, to create a veterans army that would help to take over the US government. Then they went on. Prescott Bush was found guilty of selling Nazi securities after Pearl Harbor. Investing Order 248, issued in November 17, 1942, the Union Banking Corporation run by Bush and Walker was –the assets were seized for trading with the enemy during war time. Then they went on from there, uh, the Bush family had a plant, along with Fritz Tyson, at Auschwitz, that used slave labor in Auschwitz to build a plant that profited directly from slave labor in Auschwitz that formed the core of the Bush money that helped to get that present preppy moron, uh, help him steal the white House. So when we look, we find the thread going back from the Pilgrims, to the founding of the Republic, to the founding of the secret societies like the Skull & Bones and others, through the eugenics movements of the 1920’s, and through the same people financing Hitler. And I might add, by the way, that Hitler himself, from his own mouth, said that the American eugenics movement, along with what was done to native people –he used to read “Wild West” novels of Karl May, —Hitler said that was his inspiration for the possibility of genocide, for the possible methods of genocide, and how to cover up genocide. From Hitler’s own mouth, he said that the American and Canadian experience was his inspiration for what to do with Jews and non-Jews, what they called “untermenschen”, and, uh, in German they called “lebensuwertes leben or “life worthy of life”. This is the same thing; we’re the Canary in the mine. What’s been done to native people has also been done to other people, but done more intensely to us. But the same creatures and their descendants –going back to the Pilgrims, to this very, very day, with the Preppy occupying the White House that he managed to steal--um, this is the same thread. And so we can’t get over what ain’t over. It ain’t over. It’s still going on.

TIOKASIN: When you said it ain’t over, it’s still going on , is uh, part of the mind set of Americans –every day average Americans who all say: “Well Jim, that kind of like, you know, prove it… Let’s --let’s get on with life, let’s –look, we’re the greatest country, the greatest democracy we, you know, that was then, and uh, if we keep voting, if we keep doing this thing called Democracy, then it’s going to get better.…” What do you say to people like that who are looking for a way out?

Prof.. JAMES CRAVEN: Well, first of all, a Democracy --well of course we’re not even a Democracy. In Constitutional terms we’re set up as a Federal Republic. But, you see, the problem is, even if you had –Democracy—it means not only voting from a given menu, it means having some real say in who’s on the menu in the first place. Look what we got in the last election. Both Mr. Bush and Mr. Gore were literally declared front runners before they’d even run in one primary. The menu had already been rigged by the backroom boys with the big money. And we choose between Tweedledee and Tweedledumb and dumber. We have no input whatsoever on what’s on the menu in the first place, that’s number one. Number two: even if we were to get someone of our choosing that would actually be respectful of, you know, some basic principles of Democracy that we lecture the rest of the world about, then there’s the whole system. The problem is getting in in the first place, and then, once you’re in, what do you do once you’re in? Because now you’ve got a Congress, again selected by the big money boys, in some cases they are the big money boys themselves. Um, then you’ve got a whole bureaucracy, where you’ve got all the –again- the big money boys are planting their minions in them, as Bush did with the Bonesmen, so on. And then there’s the problem of information. To have a democracy you need a free and open flow of information, and the right for all different ideas to contend. We have no such thing now. You know, our media here, are largely whores--on-their-knees-whores. They know what questions not to ask. It’s not a conspiracy that way. They all know the limits. Imagine any journalist who asks Mr. Bush certain questions, like, for example: “Could you pass –you know--could you pass the same security check that other people under you have had to pass? You know, would they [those under Bush] be allowed to say--on the dope question—‘Well, I‘m not gonna say yes and I’m not gonna say no. Let’s just say I had a wayward youth.”; that journalist who posed that type of question would be finished. See, so, we’ve got another problem that way. And then there’s the system itself and how and for whom the system works. Capitalism. Although it does sometimes a great job in terms of developing material forces of production and so on, Capitalism favors the few over the many. Because wealth of the few can very easily turn into more wealth. Even if you’re stupid, and you don’t know much, you can always get somebody else to turn your wealth into more wealth. Whereas if you’re poor, you’re trapped in poverty and getting out of poverty is almost impossible, especially under this system. It happens, but they’re rare occasions. So we also have a system where the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. And the rich can use their wealth to buy political power and then use political power to get laws in their favor that give them more wealth. And that’s the Medici family that used to run Italy, they had a slogan which was “Money to acquire power, power to protect money.” That was the slogan, and that should be the slogan of the Bush family, and the Rockefellers and the rest of them. So, there’s the illusion of freedom, but if you really start asking some tough questions, then, watch what happens. So when you watch the talking heads on the news shows, nobody has to tell them what questions not to ask. They know what questions not to ask. Because they know if they dare ask them, that a) they won’t be called on again. And that means b) they don’t get the scoop. Without the scoop they don’t get c) exposure; and without exposure they don’t become a d)name; and without becoming a name they don’t get more access. That’s what journalists do. Access brings the scoop, scoop brings exposure, exposure makes them a name like Dan Rather, Tom Brokaw. And having a name gives them more access. But they only continue to get the access as long as they do a Faustian deal and agree not to ask certain nasty questions. They let Bush get away with stuff all the time. And they’ve done that in the past with Clinton and the rest of them. So we can’t rely on the mainstream media. What we have to do is educate ourselves, check our sources very carefully, have an open mind. If we make mistakes, be honest, don’t do what they do and cover it up. We make a mistake, be honest about it, say “ya, we goofed up, we thought this was true, but, but it turns out it wasn’t.” And then try to reach as many people as we can. But the whole voting scam, I mean the one thing about this last election is --this wasn’t the first one that was stolen. This was –there’ve been-- many elections in the American history were stolen, literally stolen. Where, where the people that were selected were not the ones elected. It’s nothing –John Kennedy;’s case may have been another case; it was very close. But we know other cases where, uh, the Tilden case, and so on. And so, the game is rigged. You’ve got to understand that right now. And, choosing –you know, we don’t even have the lesser of evils anymore, we’ve got the evil of lessers. And so the answer is not in the people playing the electoral game. I mean I’m all for getting Bush out, because I believe that we’re on our way to full-blown fascism in this country. I believe that 9-11 is for Bush what the Reichstag Fire was for Hitler. It is a pretext. Okay. Now that’s no disrespect to the tragedy or to the victims. But the fact is, 9-11 was foreseen and foreseeable. Uh, and the fact is also that all over the world, many more people who died in the world trade center are dying every day from conditions this country -and regimes- this country has helped to set up and helped to survive—have helped to perpetuate.

TIOKASIN: And that’s our experience as indigenous people here in this country. And uh, I- I, my ears are ringing, and, uh, there’s a lot of people out there who, simply will not, I would say, uh, bend their ear a little bit to what we as indigenous people are saying, because ‘that can’t be true with America, that’s can’t be true with us, why don’t you Indians just get with it, why don’t you just pull yourselves up by your boot straps and get with the program’. Uh, but before we do that, Jim, I want to say that you are listening to WBAI –I totally forgot about this ID that we’re supposed to do. WBAI, New York, 99.5. And we are talking with Prof. James Craven out of Clark College, Vancouver Washington, and his is a professor of Economics, consultant of Business and a Division Chair at that College. And so what we have here is a case of um, not listening to the experience we have had as native people. Because after 9-11 no one came to native people to ask: “What is your experience with this type?” Because we’ve had terrorism on this country for, you know, for many centuries. From the beginning--it was the onset of the Eurocentric mind. And, uh, we in our own quarters, so to speak, is that we have also the same type of mindset of the sellouts. We have the spiritual sell-outs. We have the ones who just basically don’t want to be native. There’s the ones who have become ‘American Indians’ –America’s Indian, so-to speak, you know what I mean?

Prof. JAMES CRAVEN: Yes.

TIOKASIN: And uh, right now there are native people out there listening. They consider themselves “Native Americans.” And I know this is a word of contention here when I say “America” –and I say “Ame” which is the root word or etymology of “Amour,” which is a Spanish word meaning “the love of,” and Rica, which means riches. So we’ve got “Amer-Rica.” And, and when you become an “American,” you become “one who loves riches.” And that’s just the opposite end of a native person. “Native America” is an oxymoron and it should not even be said in the same breath.

Prof. JAMES CRAVEN: I don’t, I refuse to use it.

TIOKASIN: Hmm. Why is that?

Prof. JAMES CRAVEN: First of all, it implies that the more further back in the American history, or occupation on Turtle Island that your anscestors go, the more real American you are. It’s a form of nativism. Most Indian people that I know don’t believe that. Okay. The second reason is that we weren’t even American citizens until 1924. And nobody asked us if we wanted to be. The United States declared American Indians American citizens in 1924, --uh, Canadians in ’63—and the central purpose of that was to make them national minorities so that they wouldn’t be covered under international law dealing with genocide and so on. Cause see the United States was planning to put the Germans and Turks on trial for war crimes during World War One, and somebody said, well just a minute, what you guys have done to Indians and African Americans is every bit as bad as what the Germans and Turks did, you’re gonna get put on trial yourself. And so the answer was, in 1924, was to summarily declare Indians American citizens without their consent so that they would be removed –they thought anyway—from the protections of international law. That’s the second reason. The third reason is, which America? Where is there a place, you know, for Indian people in America? You see. What, I mean, America has never been a place for Indians. Even the founding documents of the United States refer to Indians as savages. Uh, Thomas Jefferson, that rapist and that hypocrite, in letters, in a letter to, uh, William Henry Harrison, February 24th, 1803, said that his, his policy would be to forcibly … extirpate –either assimilate or extirpate—these savages. The, the small pox infections were celebrated by the Pilgrims as God’s wrath against the savages --as a good thing that would prevent their births in the future … So, from the founding of the Republic to the very present day, there is no place in America for Indian people. And they still to this day do to Indian people what they wouldn’t dare do to any other group of people. Uh, we don’t have a Bureau of Caucasian Affairs; we don’t have a Caucasian Act. We, you know, we don’t have a football team called the Washington White Trash or the New York Niggers. Because they wouldn’t dare do something like that. But the Washington Redskins? No problem. So we get to see, you know, an ugly, disgusting word. If people only knew the origins of that word. You know, sometime play Reverend Goat Carsons’ song the “Red Skins” for the audience, so they can see where that name really came from. It’s like calling an alligator a purse. Like having a team called the Auschwitz lampshades. Because that’s where it came from, when Indians were skinned for trophies, which European tourists called Redskins. Breasts were turned into tobacco pouches. Testicles were turned into tobacco pouches. Women’s vaginas were turned into hat bands. That’s where the term came from. So, what, what America is there exactly? You know, what –so that’s another reason why I absolutely refuse that term. And I even, the term Indian I sometimes have a hard time with, but I use it generically. But when people ask me for example oh are you Indian, I say “I’m Blackfoot. I’m from a separate nation of people with our own laws and our own traditions and our own ways.” You see. And that’s another thing,we still have, to this day, by any test of international law, these are native nations, Indian nations. By any test. And what we need to do is we need to take it back. We need to assert our nationhood.

TIOKASIN: That’s right.

Prof. JAMES CRAVEN: Cause the same criteria, the same international law that allows the United states to say “we’re a nation,” or Canada to say “this is a nation,” the same ones say there is a Lakota Nation, there’s a Blackfoot Nation, there’s a Makaw Nation. Some of them are almost on the verge of, of total extermination. But, that’s one of the reasons --I, I’m a traditionalist. And some people say to me: “Well, you wanna go back 200 years.” No, no. If we go to our traditional ways we’re 200 years ahead of where the white man is now. Because, in our traditional ways we didn’t throw away our elders. We, our children didn’t disrespect elders. We didn’t have AIDS and all sorts of stuff. We didn’t’ have alcoholism and drug addiction. We didn’t have any of these things in our traditional ways. So when people say “you wanna go back 200 years,” I say, “No, no, our traditional ways are 200 years ahead of where America is today.”

TIOKASIN: Jim Craven, we are, we are –time has flown here this morning. 10:55 here on WBAI. And, uh, I’m must gonna throw in a word there, uh. Lately we’ve been seeing a lot about the word “Indian --NDN” the letters N-D-N. And I, my acronym for that is “natives defending nature” or you could say “natives defending natives.” So I am in that sense, if you call me an Indian, I’m going to understand it as NDN.

Prof.. JAMES CRAVEN: Right.

TIOKASIN: And, and that’s the new way of going through Native America’s NDN –N-D-N. And, um, is there any last words here –we have to leave here soon and any last words, any thoughts that you would like to loan to the people or lend to the people out there?

Prof. JAMES CRAVEN: Well, just please remember what this day really means. And please remember that we are all linked together in bonds of common humanity. And where there’s oppression, there’s going to be resistance, and where there’s oppression, oppression is everyone’s business –not just native, you know, NDN people’s, but it’s everybody’s business. And also, I would urge people, that coming up there will be demonstrations. I will be coming out for them. We are going to organize demonstrations against Skull & Bones, right outside there, their sick twisted tomb at Yale, and I would urge people to keep their eyes open on the internet and so on, and to join us at New Haven to demonstrate against the Skull & Bones and to demand the return of, of Geronimo’s remains and all other native artifacts that are being held illegally by the Skull & Bones. And, and it’s not just a matter of artifacts, because this shows, you know, these guys are at the highest levels of power in the American government, this shows their racism and their arrogance. It should be of concern to everybody that, at the highest level of the American government we have members of a secret, sick, twisted satanic cult helping to run this country. And, so I hope that people will keep their eyes open and will join us in New Haven to demonstrate, and to make the connection between the Pilgrims, 1619, and America 2003. Because the genocide continues and the descendants of the original genocidal maniacs are still doing genocide, still doing eugenics and racism, still occupying positions of power, and they need to be removed. And they need to be exposed.

TIOKASIN: Ya, James do you have –well first of all I want to say Kudos to that because there will be, I am predicting, if not thousands of people showing up in New Haven for that. Because that’s the root of everything that’s happening here. It’s not Wall Street. It could be the secondary thing is Wall Street, but it starts there, in uh, New Haven. And that is, uh, a spiritual front that hasn’t been contended with and we as native people are very qualified to take that on.

Prof. JAMES CRAVEN: Exactly right.

TIOKASIN: Is there any contact like maybe a website or an email that you would like to give out?

Prof. JAMES CRAVEN: Well people could write me at jcraven@clark.edu, and just write me on the internet if you have it, If you don’t you can call area code: 360-992-2283. And again, it’s not only for Indian people. But we ask non-Indian people to please join us, because we’re the Canary in the mine. Today it’s us, tomorrow it’s you. It’s everyone’s business. And it’s not just as simple…. And I believe we’re on our way to full blown fascism in this country and I think we have out last chance to stand up and expose it. This is one of many contributions along these lines. But we also consider the remains of that great warrior Geronimo being held like this an absolute desecration and insult to all Indian people, and this is everybody’s business.

TIOKASIN gives numbers again, and notes that listeners can also email firstvoices@WBAI.org.

Prof. JAMES CRAVEN urges all to get book: Fleshing out Skull and Bones: Investigations into America’s Most Powerful Secret Society, edited by Chris Millegan.

TIOKASIN thanks guest…

Ongoing Legal Case in Alberta (most recent to past) Blackfoot vs Canadian Government: National Sovereignty/Existence vs Genocide

Dear Mr. Sandstrom and Brooks:

Here are two documents with some arguments and legal authorities that we plan to introduce at trial. As I have noted, most of our arguments, and citations for legal authority/precedent, are embodied in the documents already in your possession: Blackfoot Indictment of U.S. and Canadian Governments For Genocide (already accepted into the Court record); previous submissions of specific arguments to be advanced at trial; endorsement of proposed arguments by the National Lawyer's Guild; facsimiles of newspaper articles on sterilization and medical experimentation on First Nations persons.

I have asked Bella to make copies of any Tribal documents or personal family documents and get them to Mr. Brooks immediately and I hope that they have been delivered. The bulk of our submissions will be through expert testimonies of the witnesses that we gave notice would be called to testify.

Finally, as it is our Way, even when in Courts that operate on principles not consistent with our Ways, we welcome full and open debate of all the relevant issues; we do not believe in using procedure or contrived scopes of direct examination to limit or contrive possible scopes and content of rebuttal and if you do need more time to deal with the Treaty 7 arguments, and ask for further continuance beyond the two days allotted for this phase of the trial, we will accommodate whatever is required to ensure that the Crown has ample time to properly answer any and all submissions and arguments by us to your satisfaction. We only ask that you keep in mind the costs for me to travel to Alberta and that Bella is being represented--through no fault of her own or mine and not for financial reasons--by someone who is not a lawyer and not familiar with some of the procedures etc.

Thank you for your consideration.
James M. Craven
Unpaid agent for the pro se defense of Bella Yellow Horn


THE HONORABLE JUDGE RONALD A. JACOBSON

The Provincial Court of Alberta

December 10, 2003

Kurt Sandstrom
Barrister and Solicitor
Alberta Justice Oboriginal [sic?] Law Team
9th Floor, Peace Hills Trust Tower
10011- 109 Street
Edmonton, Alberta
T5J 3S8

RE: R. v. Bella Yellowhorn-Trial set for January 22nd and 23rd, 2004

Your letter of December 4, 2003 is acknowledged. Together with this reply it will be attached to the Clerk's file.

Mr. Craven's proposed intention to challenge the constitutionality of Treaty 7 creates an entirely new issue. Subject to submissions, it would appear that either a supplementary or entirely revised constitutional notice must be prepared and properly served on all concerned--including the Government of Canada.

When that is done, should we even attempt to have the trial proceed on January 22 and 23, 2004?Or should there be another pre-trial conference to determine what adequate time is required in order to properly complete the trial of all issues at a later date? Split trials should be avoided whenever reasonably proper!

This matter can be discussed in a telephone conference call. Either Assistant Chief Judge J.A. Wood, or myself, or both, can participate.

This matter should not be delayed.

Yours truly,

R.A. Jacobson (signed)

RAJ/bjs

cc: James M. Craven, Clark College
Eric Brooks, Crown Prosecutor

Mr. Craven,
This will acknowledge your email of November 16, 2003, which I received on that date. Thank you for providing additional information concerning your case.

I was unable to discuss this with Mr. Brooks until today. We will not be contacting your witnesses, but we do appreciate the invitation to do so by conference call. I can also advise that I noticed your potential challenge to Treaty 7 in your email on October 12. As this was the first time I understood you to be challenging Treaty 7, I immediately contacted our expert on treaty documents and was advised by him on October 14, 2003 that he would be unavailable to testify on January 22 and 23. He will be able to testify in April, May or June however. Therefore, I am going to write the Court and advise that if credible evidence concerning the validity of Treaty 7 is advanced at trial, I will need to request an adjournment. I will send you a copy of that correspondence.

In the meantime, I renew my request for you to send documents to me which you intend to file in evidence. I understand that you are working on that. It will greatly simplify our task on January 22 and 23.

Thank you.
Kurt Sandstrom
Barrister and Solicitor
Alberta Justice
Constitutional and Aboriginal Law
9th Floor, Peace Hills Trust Tower,
10011-109 Street
Edmonton, Alberta, Canada T5J 3S8
Tel: (780) 422-4160
Fax: (780) 427-1230

Dear Mr. Sandstrom,

This is to acknowledge receipt of and to respond to your most recent email and letter to Judge Jacobson dated December 4, 2003.

This may be the first time you understood that we would be challenging the validity and applicability of Treaty 7, but it is most certainly not the first time we made clear our intent to advance this dimsension of our overall argument. Attached is our whole file on this case from the earliest letter to the Court by me onward. For example, from my letter of Feb. 10, 2003 to the Court and also sent to you and others involved in this case:

a)That there is indeed a real and viable Blackfoot Nation still in existence despite past and present attempts at its extermination or elimination and that Bella Yellowhorn is indeed a member of that Nation;
b)That the existence or non-existence of any nation is not in any way dependent upon recognition or non-recognition by other recognized nations (particularly those such as Canada or the U.S. that have acquired and built material interests in denying the existence and legitimacy-and derivative rights of independence, self-determination and sovereignty-of First Nations and/or other nations); the existence, legitimacy-and derivative rights-of all nations are a matter of "facts on the ground" and international law as were it not so, any nation could summarily extinguish another nation (genocide) through simple non-recognition and applied power disparities;
d)Although some Blackfoot deny that Treaty 7 was actually signed by the principal chiefs of the Blackfoot, the Government of Canada does assert Treaty 7 to be binding and has built a whole system of supposed property rights and material interests upon that and other Treaties. According to the 1969 Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, recognized by both the U.S. and Canadian Supreme Courts as the "definitive international law on treaties and treaty relations", only sovereign nations can sign treaties and in doing so, each party explicitly and tacitly recognizes the other treating party as a co-equal and legitimate representative of a whole People being bound by that Treaty. In recognizing the legitimacy of a treating party, each party is also tacitly, if not explicitly, recognizing-or not calling into question-the legitimacy of the mechanisms and institutions through which the representatives and government of the treating parties were selected and the traditional Blackfoot mechanisms and institutions through which the alleged Blackfoot Chiefs and signatories of Treaty 7 were selected remain in force among traditional Blackfoot despite any impositions of alternative political forms (Tribal Councils) under the Indian Act;

And from my letter of April 12, 2003 to the Court and sent to you and other parties involved in this case:

3) Any purported obligations of Blackfoot under Treaty 7 that serve to denationalize or cause Blackfoot to surrender to all laws and authority of the Crown are contradictory and in violation of international law and those aspects of the Canadian Constitution dealing with genocide. Only sovereign nations may sign treaties and according to the Vienna Convention on Treaties, which the U.S. and Canadian Supreme Courts have recognized as definitive international law on treaties, each treating partner recognizes--or at least does not call into question--the authority, co-equal status and systems for determining government/leadership of the other. The cited language of Treaty 7, dealing with Blackfoot allegedly agreeing to become loyal subjects of Her Majesty the Queen and all of her laws, if accepted, would mean that Blackfoot, as a sovereign nation, would be signing a treaty whose terms and language served to extinguish the very sovereign nation that had the authority and standing to sign--and continue--such a treaty; no nation, especially Blackfoot, would ever sign such a treaty that would be illegal and non-binding under international law and basic contract law. These asserted obligations under Treaty 7, along with Treaty 7 itself, are simply not valid under even Canadian Law. Further, Treaty 7 was not fully and finally ratified by the Crown in London as required prior to 1947. Further, according to the notes of Father Constantine Scullen, representative of the Crown to attest to the signatures of the Blackfoot Chiefs on Treaty 7, none of the Chiefs would make a mark with their own hand nor would they even touch the pen used to make the mark and therefore Treaty 7 and any purported allegiances or obligations of Indigenous Peoples under Treaty 7 would not exist, eventhough the Government of Canada has asserted Treaty 7 to be binding and has built a whole system of "private" property, interests and purported property rights under its provisions.

and from my letter to Mr. Lambrecht of Sept. 10, 2003 (also forwarded to you):

Further, we argue that Treaty 7 was never signed and/or never a full and binding Treaty and thus any purported obligations of Blackfoot under Treaty 7 to become "loyal subjects" of the Crown and bound by all Canadian laws do not exist as a matter of international law;
Further, we argue that although Canada claims that Treaty 7 was properly signed and valid, although we dispute this claim with historical evidence, Canada has nonetheless built up whole system of material interests and purported property rights based upon the assumption of the validity of Treaty 7; under international law, specifically the Vienna Convention on Treaties, only nations sign, continue and enforce treaties and each treating partner when signing a treaty, recognizes the co-equal status and systems of government (producing the leadership having the standing and authority to sign a treaty and bind a whole population to its terms) of the other treating partner(s) and thus there is ample legal authority for the continued existence of the Blackfoot Nation with its own right to independence, self-determination, sovereignty and traditional government and mechanisms for selecting the composition of that government. Thus, Bella Yellow Horn, a member of a sovereign Blackfoot Nation, and all members of the Blackfoot Nation, may travel throughout Canadian lands with the same status and obligations (vis-a-vis licensing and insurance) as any other motorist from another sovereign nation.

We have made it clear that although we believe that Treaty 7 was never signed by the Blackfoot Chiefs (according to the diary of Fr. Scullen charged with being a witness to the signatures of the Blackfoot Chiefs), was never ratified by the Crown, was put to the Blackfoot Chiefs with coercive and unconscionable force and has been violated over and over by the Canadian Government, our central argument is that Treaty 7 is self-impeaching and internally self-negating as its central terms call for dissolution of one of the sovereign nations that must remain in existence and sovereign to have the standing, authority and capabilities to sign and keep the terms of such a Treaty. We have advanced this argument over and over clearly.

I am therefore at a loss to understand why any further delays would be necessary.

I have asked Bella to quickly put together any documents we may use to advance our case (She is in possession of some family and other documents) to send them to you. And I reiterate that if you choose to depose our potential witnesses, whose names, telephone numbers and likely testimonies and arguments have been given, I would only ask that I be allowed to stand or listen in and participate if necessary.

I would also ask that you forward to us the names, telephone numbers, likely testimonies, backgrounds of any potential witnesses along with any documents that you might plan to introduce. Also, I must ask again that we get the name of the person who filed the complaint with the Lethbridge Police that led to Bella Yellow Horn being stopped and subsequently charged (as was promised) and the chain of custody and present whereabouts of her van that was seized.

Thank you for your assistance and patience. Would you please forward this to Judge Jacobson whose email address I do not have?

James Craven
(Omahkohkiaayo i'poyi)


cc. Judge Jacobson

Mr. Craven:
This will acknowledge your communication below my email of October 12, 2003. By copy of this email, I am forwarding your communication to Eric Brooks and Kirk Lambrecht.

I appreciate your advice as to your proposed witnesses. I also understand that you are still working on which documents you wish to produce at the trial of January 22 and 23. Unless you can provide me a clear indication of what the substance of your proposed Elder testimony will be, the best way to deal with this will be to have the Elders proceed with their testimony, and then adjourn in order to have these historical facts, and the documents relied on by you, examined by an expert for the Crown.

You should forward to me the documents upon which you will be seeking to file in evidence before the Court. I can then advise you whether the Crown will consent to the filing of these documents, or whether you must prove them in the normal way. This may entail getting certified copies, or producing a witness who has knowledge about these documents. If I know what the document is and know it is authentic, I will in most likelihood consent to its admission and can save you these steps. Even though you may have provided some of these documents to the Crown and the Court, please send me a complete bundle with each document labeled (either under a tab number, or a document number on the first page of the document). I will then review each document and advise you which can go into evidence by consent, and which you will have to prove.

I will leave it to Mr. Brooks to determine whether it would be appropriate to communicate any of your comments to the court. You are certainly free to communicate with the Court directly, I would only ask that you send me a copy of that communication.

Yours truly,

Kurt Sandstrom
Barrister and Solicitor
Alberta Justice
Constitutional and Aboriginal Law
9th Floor, Peace Hills Trust Tower,
10011-109 Street
Edmonton, Alberta, Canada T5J 3S8
Tel: (780) 422-4160
Fax: (780) 427-1230

Dear Mr. Sandstrom:

Thanks for your response and helping with outlining the procedures involved in submissions of documentary evidence and proposed lines of argument. In this regard, below is an example of some of the evidence on the genocidal nature of the Indian Act and the right/survival imperative of First Nations Peoples not to recognize or obey it. For the record, this applies specifically to Bella Yellow Horn in particular as she was slated to be sterilized under the color of the Indian Act and Alberta Sterilization Act and was only saved from sterilization with some last-minute legal intervention. Had she recognized and--complied with--her obligations under these Acts, which were in violation of Article II (d) of the 1948 UN Convention on Genocide to which Canada is a signatory, her present children would simply not exist and the Blackfoot Nation would have ben deprived of some of its citizens. Further, Bella and other members of her family were used for medical experimentation in the Indian Residential Schools, again under the color of "law" and supposed "obligations" under--and to comply with--the Indian Act which were in violation of Articles II (a), (b), (c),(d) and (e) of the 1948 UN Convention on Genocide (see below).

We are attempting to comply with all your discovery and other rights prior to trial. We do not have the resources available to us that the Crown has and therefore our responses might not be all that you are used to. In any case, we have made good-faith attempts to comply with all our pre-trial obligations and ask that our constraints are understood. Those potential witnesses to be called all have specialized and personal knowledge/experiences with the genocidal nature and consequences of the Indian Act and/or Treaty 7 "obligations" past and present and will show that any First Nations person recognizing/obeying the Indian Act would be aiding and abetting their own extermination and that of their own People, would themselves be complicit in genocide, and in violation of several articles of the 1948 UN Convention on Genocide; and those who refuse to recognize or comply with the Indian Act are objectively acting as agents of the higher or "supreme law" of Canada.

Thank you for your assistance.

James M. Craven
(Omahkohkiaayo i' poyi)

Alberta sterilization victims also used as guinea pigs Revelation comes as 40 victims win $4M settlement

Marina Jimenez National Post
10/28/98

As many as 100 of the children at the centre of the Alberta sterilization scandal of the late 1960s and early 1970s were also used as guinea pigs in drug trials, the National Post has learned. The children lived at the Provincial Training School in Red Deer. Some were wards of the province and others were placed in the school by their parents, who did not consent to the sterilization or medical experimentation, which included the administration of powerful steroids and anti-psychotic drugs. Experts say one of the drugs used, the anabolic steroid norbolethone, is illegal today. The anti-psychotic tranquilizer haloperidol was also used. Its effect on children is said to be akin to hitting them over the head with a sledge hammer.

Yesterday, 40 people who were sterilized against their will reached a settlement totalling $4-million with the government of Alberta. This brings to 540 the number of people who have settled with the province for being sterilized under the now-defunct Alberta Sterilization Act, which was in effect from 1928 to 1972. The operations were ordered by Alberta's eugenics board to prevent the mentally disabled from passing on their defects to offspring. Lawyers say they want more money from the government for victims who had to endure being tested with powerful drugs in addition to being sterilized. "Invading people's rights in the form of unauthorized research and taking advantage of people who couldn't look after themselves is the kind of thing that courts award punitive damages for," said Jon Faulds, an Edmonton lawyer representing 109 sterilization victims still negotiating settlements.

Allan Garber, another Edmonton lawyer acting for the former training school residents, said they were treated like cattle. "The experimental drug treatment only compounds the evil that was done to our clients." Dr. Leonard J. LeVann, medical superintendent from 1949 to 1974 at the Red Deer school, published the results of his drug experiments in scholarly journals, which were recently turned over to lawyers for the victims. The articles show that Dr. LeVann, who is dead, gave 100 undersized children the anabolic steroid norbolethone over a 12-month period in 1971. The drug -- now illegal in Canada -- made the children gain weight. But it also produced some side effects: the genitals of two boys increased in size and one girl's voice deepened."The treatment of retarded growth in children with anabolic agents is controversial," he wrote in the September 1971 edition of the International Journal of Clinical Pharmacology, Therapy and Toxicology. Nonetheless, he called the drug study "entirely satisfactory."

Norbolethone is illegal today because of its powerful side effects - damage to the liver and negative psychological symptoms. Anabolic steroids can also increase aggressive sexual behaviour in men and cause secondary sexual characteristics, for example, facial hair in girls. Dr. LeVann also gave 100 children haloperidol, an anti-psychotic tranquilizer, over a period of 40 days in the late 1960s to counter hyperactivity and excitability. Dr. Louis Pagliaro, a professor of educational psychology and the associate director of the substance abusology research unit at the University of Alberta, says haloperidol "would essentially knock(children) out. (It) generally decreases people's ability to learn and adversely affects memory and behaviour." Dr. LeVann's studies are "full of half-truths, assumptions and by today's standards, lack proper research methodology," says Dr. Pagliaro.

About 2,800 people were sterilized in Alberta before the Sexual Sterilization Act was finally repealed. Documents now show that many of the people sterilized were not mentally disabled.

In 1996, the Alberta Court of Queen's Bench ordered the provincial government to pay Leilani Muirer $740,000 for being wrongfully confined in the Red Deer school and sterilized. Her landmark victory opened a floodgate of litigation. In June, 1998, the government agreed to pay 500 more sterilization claimants up to $100,000. Many continue to live in the Red Deer facility, known today as the Michener Centre. The province has spent $54 million on settlements to date. The compensation deal for the sterilizaiton victims announced yesterday, much the same as those announced last June, gives claimants $75,000 now and another $25,000 after three years, if they are then living outside institutions.


The Globe and Mail, Wednesday, April 26, 2000 Native children deprived of care Preventive dentistry banned during study

By Michael Valpy

Federal-government doctors withheld specialized dental care for children in eight aboriginal residential schools in the 1940s and 1950s to see what the effect would be on their teeth and overall health. The specialized dental care was withheld as part of a five-year study of aboriginal children's nutrition. The study's director, Dr. L. B. Pett, the retired chief of the nutrition division of the Department of National Health and Welfare, said parental consent was not obtained for the study. Instead, the government obtained permission from the school principals.

A letter dated Oct. 3, 1949, from Dr. H. K. Brown, chief of the department's dental health division, said: "It is important that during the period of this study, no specialized, over-all type of dental service should be provided, such as the use of sodium fluoride, dental prophylaxis [professional cleaning] or even urea compounds [used in treatment of decay].

"In this study dental caries [decay] and gingivitis [gum disease] are both important factors in assessing nutritional status. The caries index could be upset by such specialized dental measures as those referred to above.

The letter -- referring specifically to the United Church school in Port Alberni, B.C. -- also said that preventive dental treatment would make the study of "questionable value" in measuring vitamin C deficiency.

Fillings and extractions were to continue.

Professor Gary Accursi of the University of Toronto's Faculty of Dentistry said yesterday that a dental-ethics committee would be unlikely to approve such a trial today. He said he did not know whether it would have passed the ethical standards of the time.

A Toronto medical expert on clinical trials, who asked not to be identified, said the letter, on its face, implied clearly that the Canadian government was prepared to let aboriginal children suffer the effects of poor nutrition without intervention so long as its study was not adulterated.

Dr. Pett, in an interview yesterday, put the study, which he said was conducted at eight schools, in a different context. It was carried out, he said, to improve nutrition for aboriginal children and provide information on good nutrition for their parents.

Fluoride treatment, now considered one of history's greatest public-health advances, was then in its infancy. The first fluoride trials in Canada, in Stratford and Brantford, were being carried out at the time of the study. The only thing that bothered Dr. Pett about the study from an ethical point of view, he said, was the absence of parental consent. "Parental consent was always an issue," he said. "It was hard to contact them. So many were in the bush."

So the study went ahead, he said, with the consent of the school principals, who were given more-or-less legal status as in loco parentis (in the place of a parent).

The records of the nutritional study were found in Ottawa's National Archives by freelance writer David Napier, commissioned by the Anglican Journal, the newspaper of the Anglican Church of Canada, to inquire into aboriginal residential schools. The Journal will publish his article, the result of eight months research, later this month.

The schools were operated by churches in a contractual relationship with the federal government for more than a century.

Children as young as five were taken away from their families and placed in the schools. They were ordered not to use their mother tongue and to set aside their cultural values and practices.
The Roman Catholic, Anglican and United Churches, along with the federal government, face hundreds of millions of dollars in lawsuits from nearly 6,000 former students.

Copyright 2000 The Globe and Mail

4160
Fax: (780) 427-1230

Mr. Craven,

I understand from the Prosecutors' Office that he continuation date for this trial has been set for January 22 and 23, 2004 in front of Judge Jacobson. I have been asked to ensure you are informed of this date. We have Canada's letter dated September 23, 2003 to you indicating they will not intervene in the trial at this stage. It would help me prepare if you could, by the end of November, or earlier, advise me of the following information: 1. Will you be calling witnesses, or do you intend on just making the arguments you outline in your correspondence to the Court, Canada, or us? 2. If you are calling witnesses, who will they be? 3. What is the brief substance of their testimony? 4. Will you be filing any documents (there are strict rules on how this is done for some documents)? If you want to file documents, it would help me to know which ones you intend to file. I can help you on the proper procedure for filing these documents.

If you have any questions, please let me know.

Kurt Sandstrom
Barrister and Solicitor
Alberta Justice
Constitutional and Aboriginal Law
9th Floor, Peace Hills Trust Tower,
10011-109 Street
Edmonton, Alberta, Canada T5J 3S8
Tel: (780) 422-4160
Fax: (780) 427-1230

Dear Mr. Sandstom,

Thanks for the note and I apologize for the delay in writing back as I am totally swamped with work and did not want to reply in a cursory or superficial way.

First of all, I did get notice from Mr. Lambrecht that the Canadian Federal Government would not be intervening at this stage but did want to be notified in the event of an appeal and perhaps would step in at that stage. I do also need to contact Mr. Lambrecht and perhaps this note to you will suffice for his purposes as well so please feel free to share this with him and whomever else is concerned with this matter including Judge Jacobson, Mr. Falconer, Mr. Brooks and any others.

As you know our defense involves several dimensions. I do apologize for any delays caused by our not having had full documentation available, but, as our resources are meager relative to those of the Canadian Federal and Alberta Governments, and as I am forced to rely on others to take care of some matters inside Alberta, and as I am assisting a pro se defense without legal assistance in Alberta, such problems are likely and unintended. For the record, we Blackfoot do not have or practice any of the concepts and practices so typical of the adversarial eurocentric court systems that have been routinely used to facilitate and give legal cover to genocide and genocide cover-up in Canada: excessive ritual and protocol; jury/judge/venue shopping; contrived and shaped scopes/content of direct examinations in order to limit and shape possible scopes/content of redirect examinations; not asking questions to which we do not already have an answer; attempting to magnify the exculpatory and minimize the inculpatory in our own case while attempting to minimize the exculpatory and maximize the inculpatory of the opponent's case; obstruction of discovery and use of discovery to cause prohibitive legal costs and obstruct justice; paid--dueling--"expert witnesses" whose formal credentials give their opinions "probative value" and the status of "evidence"; etc.

As you probably noted, not only did we give notice of intent to raise Constitutional issues (I am still exploring getting documentation that notice was indeed sent from the Peigan Band Reserch Department on April 22 as was represented to me to have been done) but we gave notice of the specific content of those arguments. These are indeed the arguments we will be raising. Further, we provided a letter of endorsement from the National Lawyer's Guild, composed of Canadian as well as U.S. lawyers and many of them considered experts in international law, that was intended to show that the arguments that we proposed to advance were not frivolous or a frivolous use of the Court's time--in terms of available supporting evidence, reasoning and international law. We asked the NLG only to support our contention that our arguments were not frivolous without necessarily adopting or endorsing them, but the NLG came back, to our surprise, actually endorsing and adopting those arguments.

First, I will be calling Bella Yellow Horn back to the stand to clear up some issues from the previous phase and to set up the next phase of the trial. Specifically, we will be exploring her state of mind at the time she was stopped in Lethbridge and her reasons for asserting the existence and sovereignty of the Blackfoot Nation and not being bound by the Indian Act or any asserted obligations under Treaty 7. We will also explore how she was supposed to document what papers she did or didn't have in her possession at the time of being stopped, and what insurance she did or did not have (as a matter of personal choice), when her van was taken to a place she was not made aware of and summarily sold without her knowledge and before her even being convicted, to a party still unknown to her.

Next, we will call the following witnesses: Mr. John Chief Moon (Thunder Pipe Carrier and principal spiritual leader of the Kainai Blackfoot); Mr. George Yellow Horn (one of the Hereditary Chiefs of the Apatohsipiikani Blackfoot); Elizabeth Yellow horn (principle Beaver Bundle Holder and spiritual leader of the Apatohsipiikani Blackfoot) and Mr. Floyd Many Fingers (respected Elder of the Kainai Blackfoot). These witnesses, in addition to being descendants some of the Chiefs who allegedly signed Treaty 7 and recognized carriers of the oral histories of the events surrounding the alleged signing of Treaty 7, are also very "expert" on the conditions of life on the Blackfoot Reserves. We believe that their testimonies will materially add to our arguments that: a) the scope and content of the Indian Act and alleged obligations under Treaty 7 are genocidal per se and,in addition, have produced conditions of life that amount to genocide as defined in Article II of the 1948 UN Convention on Genocide ratified by Canada in 1953 and thus part of the supreme law of Canada; b) these genocidal conditions flow inexorably (and foreseeably for anyone with an IQ over that of a tomato and a semblance of a heart and a conscience) from the content and applications of the Indian Act and Treaty 7; c) the Canadian and Alberta Governments have been well aware (and have been repeatedly made well aware)of these genocidal conditions and their effects and continue to refuse to ameliorate them and continue to attempt to cover them up; d)in the context of extreme poverty, isolated reserves, no public transport and meager incomes given under the Indian Act, any Blackfoot obeying the requirement to possess highly expensive insurance as a condition of driving is in essence aiding and abetting his/her own extermination and that of his/her People; e) by any test or criteria under international law that defines a nation, the same tests and criteria defining Canada as a nation, there survives and remains a Blackfoot Nation that has, as fundamental rights flowing from its status and reality as a nation, the rights to independence, sovereignty, self-determination, recognition and not to be exterminated or forcibly assimilated into another nation; f) although we argue that Treaty 7 was never signed, and has been broken over and over by the Canadian and Alberta governments, nevertheless, the Canadian and Alberta governments have built up a whole system of property and purported property rights predicated on Treaty 7 and in doing so were bound to recognize not only the authority and standing of the Chiefs who allegedly signed Treaty 7, but also the traditional Blackfoot Ways and systems of government that selected these Chiefs as well as the existence and sovereignty of the Blackfoot Nation as only sovereign nations form and sign treaties and in doing so recognize treating partners and co-equals at least in terms of authority and standing to form and keep treaties; g) Blackfoot may choose to become or recognized as Canadian citizens but no Blackfoot may be forced to assimilate or forced to take Canadian citizenship and undertake the obligations of Canadian citizenship as this amounts to forced assimilation, a form and tactic of genocide; h) Blackfoot are rountinely subject to "racial targeting and profiling" by Lethbridge police and routinely have their vehicles seized and sold without due process such that they are deprived of mobility from--and are indeed locked into--conditions on Reserves that can only be properly described as genocidal.

In addition to the paper by Tai Helton that I passed on to you, and in addition to the documents already submitted to the Court, we will be submitting copies of the diaries of Father Constantine Scullen, charged by The Crown with witnessing the signatures of the Blackfoot Chiefs who supposedly signed Treaty 7, in which he stated that none of the Chiefs would sign or even touch the pen used to sign; we will also be submitting some statistics, from Canadian Government sources, that document some of the genocidal conditions, realities and trends on the Blackfoot Reserves today.

That is as much as I can give you at this moment. In the next couple of weeks I will be able to give you further elaboration on our proposed arguments and witnesses. If you wish further elaboration on some of our arguments, you can go to http://www.chgs.umn.edu/ and under the section "Histories, Narratives and Documents" you will find some Blackfoot documents that will give you some of the types of arguments and supporting evidence we plan to introduce.

I will also be asking about possible incomplete transcripts from previous Court sessions. For example, at the May 20th session, at which I was not in attendance, Bella represented to me that the Judge formally inquired of the police officers present where her van was and asked those police to advise her where the van was and its status. That discussion is not on the official transcript I have of that session. I am interested in that issue particularly in view of the testimony of the arresting officer that he could only "guess" that her van had been sold and that he had never explicitly told Bella that it had indeed been sold. Further, I was promised by Mr. Brooks, in a conversation with Bella present, when Bella asked the name of the person who had made the phone call that led to her being stopped, Mr. Brooks said that I must request that name and I have formally requested it previously and am now formally requesting it again.

Further, I may have to call Mr. Scott as he was present in his office when that officer stated that the van had indeed been sold and made no mention of "guessing" that it had been sold. And yes, any assistance that you can give us in the spirit of being an "Officer of the Court" and in the interest of justice would be welcomed.

I hope that this answers at least some of your questions. If you require any further elaboration please do not hestitate to contact me. For the record, although Blackfoot are generally poor, we are communalists and come to the assistance of each other as a matter of our Ways. If we could have found a lawyer to take this case we would have put out an appeal for money and would have gotten sufficent funds to hire a lwayer. We are not trying to do this "on the cheap." We do not practice, as is celebrated and taught in Canadian capitalism and society, rat-race individualism, dog-eat-dog competition, selfishness, etc. We approached lawyers who agreed that our constitutional arguments were compelling as a matter of evidence, reasoning and law but were afraid to advance them in a Canadian Court out of fear of retribution in future cases and legal practice in Alberta. Others feared they might be labelled "radicals" for any association with this case (the word "radical" as you know comes from the Latin root "radix" or root and we regard a radical as someone seeking to get to the "root" of the issues at hand).

And finally, and please pass this on to Judge Jacobson, he can instruct us and make rulings that we will obey, although we may make "exceptions" for the Court record, without resorting to abusive levels and tones of speech and continual references to supposed "incompetence" on my part. It is out of respect to the honorable actions and rulings on his part that I do not challenge his continuing to sit on this case for cause of demonstrated animus and disrespect in the last session. I am proud to be an "unpaid agent" of exposing genocide and genocide cover-up rather than a paid--and perhaps very "competent"--agent of genocide and its cover-up as some lawyers and judges have demonstrated themselves to be historically and in the present in Canada [and this is not necessarily an implied or covert reference to His Honor].

Thanks for your consideration, patience and any assistance in the interest of justice.

Sincerely,

James M. Craven
Blackfoot name: Omahkohkiaayo i' poyi
Acting as unpaid agent in the pro se defense of Balla Yellow Horn
Cc.
Judge Jacobson
Mr. Falconer
Mr. Brooks
Mr. Lambrecht
Mr. Scott



Department of Justice
Canada
Ministère de la Justice
Canada

Edmonton Regional Office
211 Bank of Montreal Bldg
10199 - 101 Street
Edmonton, Alberta
T5J 3Y4
Bureau régional d'Edmonton
Edifice de la Banque de Montréal
211 rue 101 - 10199
Edmonton, Alberta
T5J 3Y4
Telephone:
Facsimile:

Internet:
780 495 2968
780 495 5835

kirk.lambrecht@justice.gc.ca


Our File:
Notre dossier:
15-94081


Your File:
Votre dossier:

September 23, 2003

By Fax (360) 992-2863

Clark College
1800 East McLaughlin Blvd.
Vancouver, Washington
98663

Attention: James Craven

Dear Sir:

RE: R. v. Yellowhorn

I wish to advise that the Attorney General of Canada does not intend to intervene at this stage of the proceedings. I would however like to be advised of the decision on that issue and to be served with notice of any appeal that is taken therefrom.

Yours truly,

Kirk N. Lambrecht Q.C.
General Counsel
Civil Litigation and Advisory Services

Cc: Alberta Attorney General (Via Fax 427-0401)
Attention: Kurt Sandstrom

Crown Prosecutor's Office (Via Fax 403-381-5760)
Attention: Gordon Falconer



Mr. Lambrecht
Thank you for your patience and assistance. Part of the problem on our side is that since the Attorney General of Alberta has already stipulated to having received proper notice of intent to raise constitutional issues some time ago (April 8, 2003) and seems to be aware of the specific arguments to be advanced as well as the specific statutes, regulations, acts and treaty to which we take exception, it is difficult for a layperson to understand how and why the federal requirements for "proper notice" would/should be significantly different.

Thank you for your consideration and assistance in the interest of justice for all sides of this case.

James M. Craven (Omahkohkiaayo i'poyi)

Mr. Craven
Thank you.

I am considering the sufficiency of the notice i.e. whether it complies with the obligation to identify a statute or regulation which is alleged to be inoperative, inapplicable or invalid.

Mr. Lambrecht:

May I assume that this notice of receipt is also notice of having received proper service of intent to raise constitutional issues in the case of Bella Yellowhorn?

Thank you again for your assistance and patience.

James Craven (Omahkohkiaayo i'poyi)

Mr. Craven
Thank you. I have received this.
Kirk Lambrecht

Dear Mr. Lambrecht:

Thank you for your acknowledgment and request for further specifics in order that this notice be complete and comply with legal requirements for proper notice.

Specifically we are arguing that the Indian Act is genocidal per se and presently, violates at least Articles II b,c, and e of the 1948 UN Convention on Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide ratified by Canada in 1953 and part of the Supreme Law of Canada; we will argue that any asserted obligations of Blackfoot under the Indian Act, or under Treaty 7, including obligations to obey the licensing and insurance requirements under the Alberta Motor Vehicles Act, amount to demanding that Blackfoot aid and abet ongoing genocide against the Blackfoot Nation collectively as well as against members individually.

Further, we argue that forced assimilation and Canadian citizenship of Blackfoot, and associated forced obligations that go with forced assimilation and Canadian citizenship, are genocidal per se and violate the 1948 UN Convention on Genocide which is part of the Supreme Law of Canada.
Further, we argue that Treaty 7 was never signed and/or never a full and binding Treaty and thus any purported obligations of Blackfoot under Treaty 7 to become "loyal subjects" of the Crown and bound by all Canadian laws do not exist as a matter of international law;
Further, we argue that although Canada claims that Treaty 7 was properly signed and valid, although we dispute this claim with historical evidence, Canada has nonetheless built up whole system of material interests and purported property rights based upon the assumption of the validity of Treaty 7; under international law, specifically the Vienna Convention on Treaties, only nations sign, continue and enforce treaties and each treating partner when signing a treaty, recognizes the co-equal status and systems of government (producing the leadership having the standing and authority to sign a treaty and bind a whole population to its terms) of the other treating partner(s) and thus there is ample legal authority for the continued existence of the Blackfoot Nation with its own right to independence, self-determination, sovereignty and traditional government and mechanisms for selecting the composition of that government. Thus, Bella Yellow Horn, a member of a sovereign Blackfoot Nation, and all members of the Blackfoot Nation, may travel throughout Canadian lands with the same status and obligations (vis-a-vis licensing and insurance) as any other motorist from another sovereign nation.

I hope that meets your requirements for proper notice and specificity in terms of what specific Acts or laws are being challenged; this is also notice of an affirmative defense in terms of an affirmative obligation not to obey Canadian laws that objectively promote de facto genocide against Blackfoot Peoples.

Sincerely,

James M. Craven (Omahkohkiaayo i'poyi)

Mr. Craven
I understand that the attached email is your Constitutional Notice under the Judicature Act of Alberta. I confirm I received it by email.

The notice is required to identify the Act or Regulation which you say is invalid, inoperative or inapplicable. I do not see this here.

I understand from your discussion with me that you intend to argue that those provisions of Treaty 7 and the Indian Act, which confirm an obligation to comply with provincial law, including the Alberta law which requires a person to obtain insurance before operating a motor vehicle, are somehow constitutionally invalid.

I would ask you to confirm that this is, in fact, what you intend to argue.

You will appreciate that the obligation to identify the Act or Regulation which you say is invalid, inoperative or inapplicable is on the litigant asserting the claim, not on the Government.

Thank you.

Kirk Lambrecht
Counsel

Dear Mr. Sandstrom, Mr. Brooks and Judge Jacobsen:

I am sending this notice in care of Mr. Sandstrom to be cc'd also to Mr. Falconer, Mr. Brooks and Judge Jacobsen. I just sent to the web address given for the Attorney General of the Federal Government of Canada: a) my letter dated April 12, 2003 written as official notice of intent to raise constitutional issues in the case of R. v Bella Yellow Horn, Provincial Court of Lethbridge, Alberta, s.71(1)(a) MVA; b) the National Lawyer's Guild Letter of support and endorsement for some of our proposed constitutional arguments; c) a copy of our Blackfoot Indictment of the Governments of Canada and the U.S. for Genocide (all accepted into the Court record in Lethbridge to the best of my knowledge). These were sent with a Return/Read function sent and the above are acknowledgments and receipts that they have been received by the Office of the Attorney General of Canada. When I receive acknowledgments that they have been read (or at least opened) I will send those receipts as well.

Further, I am making inquiries to obtain the telephone records and/or receipts of transmissions from the fax machine at the Research Department of the Peigan Band Office on April 22, 2003 to attempt to document that official notice was indeed sent to the Attorney General of the Canadian Federal Government of intent to raise constitutional issues as was represented to me to have occurred by Bella Yellow Horn.

I must also note that a finding that Bella Yellow Horn was indeed insured at the time she was stopped and subsequently charged with driving without insurance, does not, and should not, make her constitutional and other arguments "moot". We gave notice previously that this case would involve the legal existence and application of Blackfoot National Sovereignty, constitutional issues and applications of the 1948 UN Convention on the Punishment and Prevention of the Crime of Genocide, ratified in 1953 by the Government of Canada and thus part of the Supreme Law of Canada; in a previous Court session on April 8, 2003 we noted that we would not be stipulating on the issue of whether or not Bella Yellow Horn was indeed "insured" as the burden of proof on that issue rests with the Crown. Further, if Bella Yellowhorn represents to me, as she did, that she was indeed "insured" and believed herself to be insured (as a matter of personal choice and not as a matter of any obligations recognized by her under the Indian Act, Treaty 7 or summarily-imposed Canadian Citizenship), I am bound to raise that defense as well since not to do so would involve a form of fraud upon/misuse of the Court stipulating what Bella Yellow Horn considers to be untrue for the purposes of using the Court to raise other issues and defenses.

Further, in a brief conversation with Mr. Brooks, Bella Yellow Horn asked for the name of the person who made the phone call to the Lethbridge Police that led to her being stopped for possible impaired driving. Mr. Brooks indicated that I must request that name and I am hereby formally doing so in this letter.

Next, in the Courts of Canada every day, attorneys with law degrees and considerable trial experience suffer sustained or overruled objections, and Judges are often reversed on appeal; this indicates that possession of a law degree and admission to the Alberta Bar is no guarantee that no mistakes are made by those trained in law. In a pro se defense, Judges can easily give guidance and make their rulings without shouting, anger and clearly abusive tones and content of speech--and without compromising the right of the Crown to a fair trial. Further, when I indicated to His Honor that we had tried to secure Counsel in Alberta and were unable to do so, as we were told by some attorneys that they feared being labeled "radicals" and being compromised to practice in future cases and/or were unwilling to raise Constitutional arguments, His Honor made the comment to the effect that to secure an attorney that attorney must be paid. We found this comment to be deeply offensive and troubling as well as beneath the obvious considerable learning and preparation of His Honor. Further, His Honor accused me of intentionally attempting to "cherry pick" favorable evidence and arguments while attempting to hide the unfavorable to our case. Although this is exactly what the Eurocentric Courts are all about--magnifying the positives while minimizing or hiding the negatives of one's own case while doing the reverse to the opposition or magnifying their negatives while hiding or suppressing their positives of their case (which I might add Mr. Brooks and Mr. Sandstrom did not attempt to do as they acted very honorably during the trial)--in Blackfoot terms this is a charge of acting dishonorably and deceptively and His Honor was purporting to be inside my head and "knowing" my subjective intentions. I should note that every single Blackfoot Elder present in Court was of the opinion that His Honor was intentionally trying to provoke me into getting a contempt citation that would result in my going to jail and/or being dropped for cause as the unpaid agent for Bella Yellow Horn's pro se defense; I noted to them that they cannot purport to "know" or even reasonably "infer" His Honor's subjective intentions without considerably more evidence. Indeed, His Honor acted properly and honorably when he asked that Bella Yellow Horn's Blackfoot Nation Identification, presented to the police officer at the time she was stopped, be entered as evidence; and His Honor acted honorably in allowing us to finally and fully document service of notice of intent to raise Constitutional issues to the Office of the Attorney General of Canada when we represented that we had come to Court believing that such had been done but without our having--as we should have--the requisite documentation.
As Blackfoot, we have every reason to disrespect and distrust the Courts of Canada. It was not long ago, that in and through the Courts of Canada and Alberta, judges, with flowing robes, called "Your Honor", and attorneys with law degrees and the title "Queen's Counsel", gave legal authority and cover to, and/or helped to cover-up, the sterilizing of Native children, using Native children for medical experimentation and the kidnapping of Native children to be taken to Indian Residential Schools where they were subject to forced "de-Indianization", assimilation and other monstrous crimes. Yet we came and respected the decorum and procedures of the Lethbridge Court as well as the authority and rulings of His Honor. We ask only that we receive the same level of respect and not suffer abusive anger and tones of speech that frankly caused me to get thrown off in some of my direct and cross-examinations and worry about a possible contempt citation.

I ask Mr. Sandstrom, as a Queen's Counsel and Officer of the Court, in the interest of justice and as I do not have the email addresses of the others, that you please forward this letter to the Presiding Judge, Mr. Falconer, Mr. Brooks and other concerned parties you deem necessary and give notice of intent to have this memorandum entered as part of the official record of the trial.
We invite rebuttal of any and all points of view and issues raised in this letter and stipulate that any rebuttals should accompany this memorandum for the court record. This is not being sent to the Attorney General of Alberta as that office has already stipulated to having been given proper notice of intent to raise constitutional issues but this could be sent to that office as well.

Thank you for your consideration and assistance.

Sincerely,

James M. Craven (Blackfoot Name: Omahkohkiaayo i'poyi)
(signed: call (360) 992-2283 if verification of source/signature is needed) Acting as Unpaid Agent for the Pro Se Defense of Bella Yellow Horn

April 12, 2003

Minister of Justice, Canada
Attorney General of Canada
Department of Justice, Canada
Edmonton Regional Office
211 Bank of Montreal Bldg.
10199 101 Street,
Edmonton, Alberta
T5J 3Y4
Attorney General of Alberta
208 Legislature Building
10800 9th Avenue
Edmonton, Alberta
T5K 2B6

Dear Sir or Madame:

I am writing as a Court-accepted unpaid agent of the pro se defense of Bella Yellow Horn in the case of Her Majesty the Queen versus Bella Yellow Horn in the Provincial Court of Alberta, Lethbridge, Alberta, R. v Yellow Horn, Bella s.71 (1)(a) MVA, Trial 03, 04, 08; 2:00 #1 pursuant to provisions of the Judicature Act, RSA. 2000, c. J-2, Section 24(1). This is not a notice of claim of no jurisdiction of the Provincial Court of Alberta, but rather notice of intent to raise constitutional issues in this case. Indeed, Bella Yellow Horn gave full and specific notice of the types of arguments to be raised in her case as can be seen from the attached letters and materials to the Presiding Magistrate of the Court (received by Mr Scott and Mr. Sandstrom well in advance of the case). Further, a letter of endorsement of our proposed arguments from the National Lawyer's Guild (see attached) was sent to the Presiding Magistrate to assure his honor that not only did we respect the jurisdiction of the Provincial Court, that also, we did not plan to advance arguments that were frivolous per se. The cited act being violated is the Alberta Motor Vehicles Act--driving without insurance.

First of all, in writing this letter and giving this notice, we do not stipulate in any way that indeed proper notice under the Judicature Act has not been given. Further, since we gave specific arguments that we plan to advance in the Provincial Court at Lethbridge, none of which explicitly challenged the jurisdiction of that Court, how then can we be seen to be challenging the jurisdiction of that Provincial Court? Further, I refer you to the attached submission made by Bella Yellow Horn, dated December 5, 2002 which reads as follows:

Bella Yellow Horn
P.O. Box 37
Brocket, Alberta
TOK 0H0
Telephone: 403-965-3175
December 5, 2002
Attorney General of Canada Attorney General of Alberta
284 Wellington Street 208 Legislature Building
Ottawa, Ontario 10800 97 Avenue
K1A 0H8 Edmonton, Alberta
T5K 2B6

Dear Attorney General of Canada and Attorney General of Alberta:

My arguments are enclosed with this letter.

Yours truly,

Bella Yellow Horn
(signature of Bella Yellow Horn)
Enclosure

ARGUMENTS

Under the International Bill of Human Rights and Freedoms, "No nation shall interfere in the internal affairs of another nation."

I am a member of the Blackfoot Nation recognized by the United Nations and the International Bill of Human Rights and Freedoms (world laws).

I claim aboriginal title to my Homeland--Blackfoot Nation.

Canadians are immigrants. I am NOT a Canadian.

Freedom and liberty of expression is my reason to have my own license plate on my property.

Canadian and Canada is a falsehood.

Indian act is illegal and unfair.

Constitutional and Declaration claim of sovereign nation, land, identity and property.

Come clean, immigrants respect aboriginal nations.

I have identified and claimed my Blackfoot Nation Sovereignty to the Canadian immigrants.

I want compensation of $5 million for what has been done in damages to me and my van and my Blackfoot license plate.

Other aboriginal nations have their own license plates, so the Blackfoot Nation can have their own too.

Attached photocopies of fax numbers to which this was sent (1-780-422-6621 on Dec. 5, 2002 at 12:29 pm; 1-613-954-0811 on Dec. 5, 2002 at 12:31 pm) attest that this was sent to and received by the proper authorities. Although this refers primarily to another charge, driving with an unauthorized license plate, for which Bella has already been convicted in absentia according to the Crown Prosecutor Mr. Scott in an ex parte conversation on April 7, 2003 (for failure to show up in court although Bella claims that she did and the courtroom was locked) this charge refers to driving without proper registration and insurance, it is clear, however, from this submission, that these arguments, and possibly others, having constitutional implications, would be advanced even if the charges were somehow separated into separate trials. Further, although Bella's submission is not as perhaps precise and "elegant" as some attorneys or Eurocentric types might prefer, Bella is the product of the infamous Canadian Indian Residential School system (virtually stipulated to be genocidal in its nature with the creation of the $350 million "Healing Fund" by the Canadian Government) that left her not only brutalized and poor, but also without the formal "education" or legal preparation to submit the types of formal and esoteric presentations that attorney's might find "consistent" with proper form of submission under the Judicature and other Canadian Acts. Still I would argue that her arguments are elegant and profound despite--or perhaps because of--their apparent simplicity.

Also in his brief on the constitutional issues, which I obtained only on April 7th upon arriving at the Blackfoot Reservation at Brocket (a day before trial on April 8th) Mr. Kurt J.W. Sandstrom noted that: "The Attorney General accepts the letter of February 2, 2003 from James M. Craven on Yellowhorn as notice of a challenge to the Court's jurisdiction under section 24(1) of the Judicature Act. Similarly, the letter of Mr. Many Bears, dated March 28, 2002 is accepted as similar notice. The Attorney General of Alberta will notify Canada to determine whether official notice will be required on these cases, and will provide copies of the aforementioned letters to Canada." Other than the fact that Mr. Sandstrom has mischaracterized Bella Yellow Horn's position with respect to jurisdiction of the Court, this seems to suggest that my letter, acting as an unpaid agent of the pro se defense of Bella Yellow Horn, was accepted as notice of intent to challenge Court jurisdiction, a mischaracterization, yet it also alludes to the specifics of my letter to the Court, plus our attached "Indictment of the U.S. and Canadian Governments for Genocide", giving notice that we would be advancing Constitutional arguments in a Court whose jurisdiction the prosecution has summarily claimed we have challenged or would challenge.

Further, I must note for the record, that in an ex parte conversation with Mr. Sandstrom, during a Court recess, when I asked Mr. Sandstrom if he had read the 1948 UN Convention on Genocide to which Canada became a final signatory in 1953 (and thus it became part of the Supreme Law of Canada) he responded to my question: "some". When I asked if he had read our attached Indictment of the U.S. and Canadian Governments for Genocide, attached with the letter to the Presiding Magistrate in the case, Mr. Sandstrom also responded "some" and indicated he will read all of it and may have to make an amended brief. Yet Mr. Sandstrom came to Court, along with Mr. Scott, with a fully-prepared brief on constitutional issues while arguing that proper notice of potential constitutional issues to be raised was not given. In addition to the prejudicial effects of tying Mr. Many Bears' case with that of Bella Yellow Horn, we also asked that the cases not be tied together as Bella Yellow Horn was not advancing the same types of arguments that Mr. Many Bears appeared to be advancing with respect to jurisdiction of the court. Indeed we can imagine many circumstances in which Canadian courts have jurisdiction over Indigenous or foreign nationals residing in or committing offenses in Canadian territory.

In any case, pursuant to, and out of respect for, the order and jurisdiction of the Provincial Court in Lethbridge, and the time allotted to make this submission, this is to be taken as formal notice of intent to raise constitutional issues in this case of Her Majesty the Queen in Right of Alberta v Bella Yellow Horn, s. 71(1)(a) MVA pursuant to provisions of the Judicature Act, R.S.A. 2000, c. J-2, Section 24(1) and any other required provisions relevant to this case and the advancement of constitutional issues in this case. The specific arguments to be advanced have already been presented and are presented in the attached materials with this letter. Some of the proposed arguments include--but are not limited to:

1) The Indian Act is genocidal per se and causes forced assimilation and other deleterious conditions and relationships that violate the 1948 UN Convention on Genocide and other Covenants and Treaties of International Law to which Canada is a signatory and are thus part of the Supreme Law of Canada under the Canadian Constitution; therefore any purported duties and obligations of Indigenous Peoples under the Indian Act are made illegal by those aspects of the Supreme Law of Canada with which they are in direct violation or contradiction; asking any First Nations person to recognize and submit to the Indian Act in Canada is precisely analogous to asking a Jewish person or persons from other targeted groups to recognize and submit to the infamous 1935 "Nuremberg Laws" of Nazi Germany in the opinion of many recognized scholars on First Nations issues in Canada.

2) Mr. Sandstrom's brief notes that: "The Provincial Court clearly has jurisdiction over the accused. Aboriginal persons, like Canadian citizens, are bound by the laws of Canada. This is the case whether an individual is part of a group that has entered into a treaty with the Crown or not." and: "Aboriginal persons, like others residing in Canada, are entitled to the benefit and protection of Canadian law. They are at the same time expected to obey Canadian law." We know of many cases in which obedience to a lower-level law puts one in conflict with higher law: someone breaking speeding laws in order to stop a murder for example. In this case, we argue that Bella Yellow Horn was objectively acting as an agent and instrument to expose and stop genocide and thus cause obedience to the Supreme Law of Canada prohibiting the acts or cover-up associated with genocide. No person may be compelled to obey laws that are inherently discriminatory, that conflict with higher laws or that objectively promote their own extermination and that of their People;

3) Any purported obligations of Blackfoot under Treaty 7 that serve to denationalize or cause Blackfoot to surrender to all laws and authority of the Crown are contradictory and in violation of international law and those aspects of the Canadian Constitution dealing with genocide. Only sovereign nations may sign treaties and according to the Vienna Convention on Treaties, which the U.S. and Canadian Supreme Courts have recognized as definitive international law on treaties, each treating partner recognizes--or at least does not call into question--the authority, co-equal status and systems for determining government/leadership of the other. The cited language of Treaty 7, dealing with Blackfoot allegedly agreeing to become loyal subjects of Her Majesty the Queen and all of her laws, if accepted, would mean that Blackfoot, as a sovereign nation, would be signing a treaty whose terms and language served to extinguish the very sovereign nation that had the authority and standing to sign--and continue--such a treaty; no nation, especially Blackfoot, would ever sign such a treaty that would be illegal and non-binding under international law and basic contract law. These asserted obligations under Treaty 7, along with Treaty 7 itself, are simply not valid under even Canadian Law. Further, Treaty 7 was not fully and finally ratified by the Crown in London as required prior to 1947. Further, according to the notes of Father Constantine Scullen, representative of the Crown to attest to the signatures of the Blackfoot Chiefs on Treaty 7, none of the Chiefs would make a mark with their own hand nor would they even touch the pen used to make the mark and therefore Treaty 7 and any purported allegiances or obligations of Indigenous Peoples under Treaty 7 would not exist, eventhough the Government of Canada has asserted Treaty 7 to be binding and has built a whole system of "private" property, interests and purported property rights under its provisions.

4) The very same laws, including the Indian Act that have brought Blackfoot to conditions of abject poverty (average $229 Canadian per month in income)on wide-open Reserves, with no businesses or mass transportation systems, are also alleged to mandate that Blackfoot carry auto insurance often costing up to $1200 Canadian per year; in this context, carrying auto insurance is prohibitive and not driving means leaving oneself subject to conditions of life that violate Articles II (a),(b), (c), and (e) of the 1948 UN Convention on Genocide--part of the Supreme Law of Canada. Bella Yellow Horn, like many First Nations persons, was therefore forced by Canada's own laws to violate lower-level laws in order to survive and in order to uphold higher laws.

We trust that his shall constitute sufficient notice under the provisions of the Judicature Act as we have made a good-faith attempt to comply with its provisions and the order of the Provincial Court in Lethbridge, Alberta.

Sincerely yours,

James M. Craven (signed by representative)
Blackfoot Name: Omahkohkiaayo i'poyi
Unpaid agent for the pro se defense of Bella Yellow Horn

Bella Yellow Horn

Cc: Presiding Magistrate, Provincial Court of Alberta, Lethbridge, Alberta, case of Bella Yellow Horn
Mr. Gordon K. Falconer, Crown Prosecutor
Mr. Peter Scott, Crown Prosecutor
Mr. Kurt Sandstrom, Crown Prosecutor

James Craven
Blackfoot Name: Omahkohkiaayo-i'poyi
Professor/Consultant,Economics;Business Division Chair
Clark College, 1800 E. McLoughlin Blvd.
Vancouver, WA. USA 98663
Tel: (360) 992-2283; Fax: (360) 992-2863
http://www.home.earthlink.net/~blkfoot5
Employer has no association with private/protected opinion
"Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past." (George Orwell)
"...every anticipation of results which are first to be proved seems disturbing to me...(Karl Marx, "Grundrisse")
FREE LEONARD PELTIER!!




NATIONAL LAWYERS GUILD
Michigan Chapter
Established - 1937
Ford Building, 615 Griswold, Suite 916, Detroit, Michigan 48226
(313) 963-0843
http://www.michigannlg.org/
nlgorganizer@igc.org

March 19, 2003


Presiding Judge
Provincial Court - Criminal Division Court House
320 - 4 St.,
S. Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada B T1J 4C7
Re: Case of Bella Yellowhorn

Dear Hon. Presiding Judge:I am writing on behalf of the National Lawyers Guild - Michigan Chapter in the matter of Bella Yellowhorn and to respectfully urge her acquittal on the charges after an impartial review of the facts in her case.

The National Lawyers Guild is a progressive legal organization working towards the end that "human rights shall be regarded as more sacred than property interests." We are the oldest integrated bar association in the United States and are affiliated with the International Association of Democratic Lawyers. Our chapter is one of the oldest and largest chapters in the United States with over 300 members throughout Michigan.

We have been informed of the facts of Bella Yellowhorn's case and believe that her good-faith beliefs are supported under international law. Specifically, we endorse and adopt the arguments of Professor Jim Craven, a recognized expert concerning the rights of Native Americans, summarized as follows:

a) The Blackfoot Nation is real and viable and still in existence despite past and present attempts at its extermination;
b) Bella Yellowhorn is a member of the Blackfoot Nation;
c) The existence or non-existence of any nation should not be found dependent upon recognition or non-recognition by other nations (particularly those such as Canada or the U.S. who have a long history of genocide and acting in denial of the sovereignty of First Nations);
d) The sovereignty of indigenous people's cannot be legitimately denied;
e) The Government of Canada does assert Treaty 7, signed with Blackfoot chiefs, to be binding and has built a whole system of supposed property rights and material interests upon that and other Treaties.
f) The 1969 Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, recognized by both the U.S. and Canadian Supreme Courts as the "definitive international law on treaties and treaty relations", only sovereign nations can sign treaties and in doing so, each party necessarily recognizes the other treating party as a co-equal and legitimate representative of a whole People being bound by that Treaty.
g) Canada is not only bound by international law governing acceptance and recognition of treating partners as sovereign and co-equal nations, it is also bound by other specifics of the Vienna Convention on Treaties: e.g. Article 27 which stipulates that no nation may invoke provisions of its internal or national laws as a reason-or in order-not to abide by treaty specifics and obligations;
h) Canada is also a signatory to the 1948 UN Convention on Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (ratified in 1953) which, in Article II(e), defines, as one form or instrument of genocide (NOTE: ANY of the five instruments of genocide mentioned in Article II constitute genocide in whole), the forcible transferring of children [or any persons] from one group to another group; this includes any form of forced assimilation including forced citizenship(also recognized as illegal in the Helsinki Accords on Human Rights to which Canada is also a signatory). According to the Constitution of Canada, these Conventions and Accords, having the status of treaties, constitute part of the "Supreme Law" of Canada (which is why the 1948 UN Convention on Genocide supercedes the more narrow law-and more narrow definition of genocide-in the Criminal Code of Canada dealing with genocide);
i) The Government of Canada, through the creation of the so-called "Healing Fund" for compensation of victims of the Canadian Residential Schools (instruments of forced assimilation, forced religious conversion, forced sterilization, deliberate inflicting of serious mental and bodily harm, sexual and physical abuse etc) has already stipulated to the reality and fact of ongoing genocide against First Nations Peoples-including Blackfoot-as defined in Articles II (b), (c), (d) and (e) of the 1948 UN Convention on Genocide; these crimes occurred under and through the Indian Act and the non-Blackfoot political entities (Tribal Councils) imposed upon the Blackfoot by the Government of Canada;
j) Any governmental or judicial decision predicated upon the assumptions of the non-existence of a Blackfoot Nation and the enforced Canadian citizenship (and citizenship obligations) of Blackfoot as mere "national minorities" involves, at least, complicity in genocide and/or cover-up of genocide (which itself is a form of complicity in genocide) and as such is in violation of the 1948 UN Convention on Genocide and the Helsinki Accords and thus is in violation of the "Supreme Law" of Canada;
k) Bella Yellowhorn, in her own mind, with some substantial legal scholarship supporting her beliefs, believed/believes that: a) There still survives a sovereign Blackfoot Nation with its own traditional laws, government and institutions and that she is a member of that Nation; b) Asserting the fact, existence and viability of the Blackfoot Nation-along with asserting the derivative rights of that Nation to sovereignty, independence, self-determination and freedom from extermination-is essential to preventing the total extermination of what is left of the Blackfoot Nation and therefore her intent and actions are consistent with Canada's treaty obligations to prevent and punish the crimes of genocide; c) Her status driving on non-Blackfoot lands, was no different (in international law and in intent) than someone from another nation or state of another nation (e.g. Montana) with non-Alberta license plates and/or non-Alberta insurance driving through Alberta or anywhere in Canada; d) She was fully insured in the only way that anyone is really insured-their honor and integrity; after 9-11 many insurance companies refused to pay-out on obligations such that the nominally "insured"-and any victims in need of compensation as a result of actions by the insured-were never really insured at all (and indeed many victims of the "insured" had more to fear from the insurance companies driven by profit motives than from those individuals whose actions required compensation for the victims); it is for these reasons that Blackfoot regard the integrity and honor of the person causing damages as the only real form of "insurance" one can carry and in that sense, Bella Yellowhorn was fully insured in Blackfoot terms;

Thank you for your consideration of these issues.
Sincerely,


John C. Philo
Chapter President


Dear Sisters and Brothers,
It is the tradition among Blackfoot to send an offering of tobacco, as it is tradition among some Indigenous Nations to send an eagle feather or other sacred items, as a call for all Warriors and People of Conscience to join us in a Just Cause. Our cause is to stop the ongoing extermination of Blackfoot and other Indigenous Peoples as we are at a critical crossroads of our history--literally between our survival and extinction. We do not seek assistance for narrow parochial interests. We stand with and ready to assist, to the best of our ability, any oppressed Peoples anywhere.
We will be going to Court in Alberta on April 8, 2003. The case of Bella Yellowhorn, a member of the Blackfoot Nation and its Traditional Government, involves a charge of driving without Alberta insurance and driving with "Sovereign Blackfoot Nation" license plates on her van (now missing from impound). This case is really about the existence, sovereignty, survival, standing (under international law) and reality of the Blackfoot Nation standing against genocidal onslaughts, attempts at extermination, summary non-recognition (without authority in law) and statistical elimination (through non-Blackfoot impositions of their genocidal criteria of "official status" to determine who and what is a First Nations person as well as which are and which are not "recognized" First Nations).

Those who have specialized or general expertise in the areas dealt with in the accompanying letter to the Provincial Court of Alberta or the Indictment of the Governments of the U.S. and Canada for Genocide Against Blackfoot Peoples (found at http://www.chgs.umn.edu/ under the section "Histories, Narratives and Documents") are asked to please read both the letter and accompanying indictment, and, if anyone can so honestly attest, that the arguments and allegations contained in those documents are compelling (legally, logically, empirical support, morally etc) or at least serious and not frivolous and thus worthy of full consideration and examination of supporting evidence supporting them, please so attest and send letters to jcraven@clark.edu before April 1, 2003. Please also attach name, titles and positions (past and/or present) as these letters will be introduced in support of our case and Cause in the Alberta Court.

We are headed for the Supreme Court of Canada and eventually to the International Court in the Hague and the U.N. to establish evidence and arguments related to the reality of ongoing genocide against Indigenous Peoples in many places and the reality--and basis in international law--of the existence of fully-sovereign Indigenous Nations and their derivative rights to freedom, independence, self-determination and freedom of extermination.

Thank you all for any assistance. Time is of the essence so any and all submissions are appreciated and needed ASAP. Please also forward this request to others who might be of assistance.

Sincerely,

James Craven
Omahkohkiaayo-i-poyi
Member and Designated Special Prosecutor and Solicitor General, Blackfoot Nation Professor of Economics


Alberta Justice
Criminal Division
10 February 2003
JAMES CRAVEN
C/o CLARK COLLEGE
Professor of Economics
1800 E. McLoughlin Boulevard
VANCOUVER, Washington 98663

Dear Sir:

RE:
R.V. YELLOW HORN, Bella
S. 71(1)(a) MVA
TRIAL 03 04 08: 2:00; #1

Your letter of February 3, 2003 addressed to the Presiding Majistrate was copied and provided by this court to Ms. Yellowhorn and to the Crown Prosecutor's Office. The trial of this matter is now scheduled for 2:00 p.m. on Tuesday, April 8th, 2003 in Courtroom #1 in Lethbridge, Alberta.

From your covering letter, you indicated that you might be willing and able to travel to Lethbridge in order to assist Ms. Yellowhorn if the trial was after March 23rd. The trial date was set with that accomodation in mind. Please understand, hoever, that is is Ms. Yellowhorn, as opposed to the Crown or the Court that is seeking your assistance. Any expenses or costs associated with your travel to or attendance in Court in Lethbridge will not be the responsibility of Alberta Justice or the Provincial court of Alberta.

Yours sincerely,
(signed) Gordon K. Falconer
Crown Prosecutor GKF:vle

This was the letter sent to the Presiding Magistrate:

February 2, 2003

To: The Presiding Magistrate Re: Case of Bella Yellowhorn The
Provincial Court of Alberta Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada

Dear Your Honor:

My name is James Michael Craven. I am a member of the Blackfoot Nation and a Professor of Economics and Chairman of the Business Division at Clark College in Vancouver, Washington, USA. I have been asked to testify by Bella Yellowhorn in her "pro se" defense in her case before your Court. First of all, I must note that Bella Yellowhorn has attempted to secure legal Counsel of her own choosing but has been unable to do so as various inquiries by her to secure legal Counsel have resulted in no one willing to take her case; perhaps they fear being "tainted" in future cases in Alberta as a result of taking her case and/or being associated with her apparent cause.

I am an economist by training, with a focus on international economics, and my training has also involved formal and informal training in international law over some thirty years; I am not, however, an attorney. I have published extensively on issues in international law-particularly with reference to status and rights of Indian nations under international law-in peer-reviewed journals that included positive assessments by recognized professors of international law at various universities. My standing as an economist and educator is possibly reflected in my being invited into--which I never sought -- Marquis "Who's Who in: The World; America; the West; Science and Engineering; Finance and Industry"; I have been a biographical subject in these publications for many years.

The possible probative value of my testimony has to do with the issue of "mens rea" and the mind-set and good-faith-based beliefs upon which Bella Yellowhorn was operating at the time of her alleged offenses. Specifically, Bella Yellowhorn operates-and was likely operating, at the time of her alleged offenses-with the following good-faith-based beliefs for which she has considerable support by recognized scholars of international law:

a)That there is indeed a real and viable Blackfoot Nation still in existence despite past and present attempts at its extermination or elimination and that Bella Yellowhorn is indeed a member of that Nation;
b)That the existence or non-existence of any nation is not in any way dependent upon recognition or non-recognition by other recognized nations (particularly those such as Canada or the U.S. that have acquired and built material interests in denying the existence and legitimacy-and derivative rights of independence, self-determination and sovereignty-of First Nations and/or other nations; the existence, legitimacy-and derivative rights-of all nations are a matter of "facts on the ground" and international law as were it not so, any nation could summarily extinguish another nation (genocide) through simple non-recognition and applied power disparities;
c) Of the 193 nations in the U.N. over 100 have been recognized as nations only since 1945 and out of the dissolution of the former USSR, for example, fifteen new nations have been recognized by Canada and the U.S.; these new nations did not "become" nations since the dissolution of the U.S.S.R , rather they simply became recognized as nations as the essential elements and requisites of their nationhood existed long before their recognition as nations by other nations (prior to their recognition as nations, they were summarily declared to be "national minorities" or "dependent captive quasi-nations" with "quasi-sovereignty" and having the same formal status as First Nations have been summarily declared to have in Canada and the U.S.);
d)Although some Blackfoot deny that Treaty 7 was actually signed by the principal chiefs of the Blackfoot, the Government of Canada does assert Treaty 7 to be binding and has built a whole system of supposed property rights and material interests upon that and other Treaties. According to the 1969 Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, recognized by both the U.S. and Canadian Supreme Courts as the "definitive international law on treaties and treaty relations", only sovereign nations can sign treaties and in doing so, each party explicitly and tacitly recognizes the other treating party as a co-equal and legitimate representative of a whole People being bound by that Treaty. In recognizing the legitimacy of a treating party, each party is also tacitly, if not explicitly, recognizing-or not calling into question-the legitimacy of the mechanisms and institutions through which the representatives and government of the treating parties were selected and the traditional Blackfoot mechanisms and institutions through which the alleged Blackfoot Chiefs and signatories of Treaty 7 were selected remain in force among traditional Blackfoot despite any impositions of alternative political forms (Tribal Councils) under the Indian Act;
e) Canada is not only bound by international law governing acceptance and recognition of treating partners as sovereign and co-equal nations, it is also bound by other specifics of the Vienna Convention on Treaties: e.g. Article 27 which stipulates that no nation may invoke provisions of its internal or national laws as a reason-or in order-not to abide by treaty specifics and obligations;
f) Canada is also a signatory to the 1948 UN Convention on Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (ratified in 1953) which, in Article II(e), defines, as one form or instrument of genocide (NOTE: ANY of the five instruments of genocide mentioned in Article II constitute genocide in whole), the forcible transferring of children [or any persons] from one group to another group; this includes any form of forced assimilation including forced citizenship(also recognized as illegal in the Helsinki Accords on Human Rights to which Canada is also a signatory). According to the Constitution of Canada, these Conventions and Accords, having the status of treaties, constitute part of the "Supreme Law" of Canada (which is why the 1948 UN Convention on Genocide supercedes the more narrow law-and more narrow definition of genocide-in the Criminal Code of Canada dealing with genocide);
g) The Government of Canada, through the creation of the so-called "Healing Fund" for compensation of victims of the Canadian Residential Schools (instruments of forced assimilation, forced religious conversion, forced sterilization, deliberate inflicting of serious mental and bodily harm, sexual and physical abuse etc) has already stipulated to the reality and fact of ongoing genocide against First Nations Peoples-including Blackfoot-as defined in Articles II (b), (c), (d) and (e) of the 1948 UN Convention on Genocide; these crimes occurred under and through the Indian Act and the non-Blackfoot political entities (Tribal Councils) imposed upon the Blackfoot by the Government of Canada;
h) Any governmental or judicial decision predicated upon the assumptions of the non-existence of a Blackfoot Nation and the enforced Canadian citizenship (and citizenship obligations) of Blackfoot as mere "national minorities" involves, at least, complicity in genocide and/or cover-up of genocide (which itself is a form of complicity in genocide) and as such is in violation of the 1948 UN Convention on Genocide and the Helsinki Accords and thus is in violation of the "Supreme Law" of Canada;
i)If there is no Sovereign Blackfoot Nation, with its own traditional mechanisms and institutions for forming a government, determining its own internal affairs and relations with other nations then either: a) There is no binding Treaty 7 as those Blackfoot who ostensibly signed it had no standing or authority to do so; or, b) there was a Blackfoot Nation and traditional government that signed Treaty 7 but it no longer exists (then the Government and certain segments of the population of Canada are guilty of genocide); or, c) There is some kind of Blackfoot Nation sui generis that has limited sovereignty and imposed/non-Blackfoot governmental structures summarily imposed by a Canadian government and private interests having direct material interests-and no legal authority in international law-in doing so;
j) Bella Yellowhorn, in her own mind, with some substantial legal scholarship supporting her beliefs, believed/believes that: a) There still survives a sovereign Blackfoot Nation with its own traditional laws, government and institutions and that she is a member of that Nation; b) Asserting the fact, existence and viability of the Blackfoot Nation-along with asserting the derivative rights of that Nation to sovereignty, independence, self-determination and freedom from extermination-is essential to preventing the total extermination of what is left of the Blackfoot Nation and therefore her intent and actions are consistent with Canada's treaty obligations to prevent and punish the crimes of genocide; c) Her status driving on non-Blackfoot lands, was no different (in international law and in intent) than someone from another nation or state of another nation (e.g. Montana) with non-Alberta license plates and/or non-Alberta insurance driving through Alberta or anywhere in Canada; d) She was fully insured in the only way that anyone is really insured-their honor and integrity; after 9-11 many insurance companies refused to pay-out on obligations such that the nominally "insured"-and any victims in need of compensation as a result of actions by the insured-were never really insured at all (and indeed many victims of the "insured" had more to fear from the insurance companies driven by profit motives than from those individuals whose actions required compensation for the victims); it is for these reasons that Blackfoot regard the integrity and honor of the person causing damages as the only real form of "insurance" one can carry and in that sense, Bella Yellowhorn was fully insured in Blackfoot terms;

These are but some of the arguments that I was asked to advance. I respectfully ask Your Honor to please read the accompanying "Indictment of the U.S. and Canadian Governments for Genocide" for supporting authority in international law for some of the arguments advanced in this letter. As I am a teacher and it is difficult and costly for me to come to Alberta to testify or to assist Bella Yellowhorn in her pro se defense, I would ask that a firm date for trial be given and kept in the interest of justice. I am teaching until March 23 but can get off to travel with sufficient notice and a firm trial date.

Thank you for your consideration of these issues.

Sincerely,
James M. Craven
Omahkohkiaayo-i'poyi
Member,Blackfoot Nation
Professor of Economics and Business Division Chairman
Clark College


Premises in Alberta Court Case

Premise 1: Treaties are covenants between sovereign nations and only sovereign nations can ratify and keep treaty terms (Vienna Convention on Treaties, Articles 27 and 29);

Premise 2: No nation may summarily and legitimately deny to another nation any of the same rights, principles and legal authorities that it asserts for itself to assert, defend and legitimate its own existence and derivative rights to sovereignty, freedom and self-determination (International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights; International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights; UN Charter)

Premise 3: Each treating nation is recognizing--or at least not calling into question--the existence, sovereignty, government, systems of selecting members of government--and authority to bind whole populations to terms of the treaty--of the other treating partner when forming and ratifying a treaty;

Premise 4: No treaty is valid that contains within it, terms effectively abolishing the other treating partner as a sovereign nation--as national sovereignty, freedom, independence and self-determination are requisite to having legal authority and standing to ratify and keep treaties and treaty terms;

Premise 5: No nation may legally or legitimately contrive or invoke domestic laws to circumvent or breach treaty terms once ratified ( international canons of treaty construction on supremacy clauses designed to make treaty terms complied with and binding and not breachable through ruses and contrived domestic laws);

Premise 6: The existence or non-existence of any group of people is strictly determined by facts on the ground and tests under international law and is in no way dependent upon recognition or non-recognition of existence by any other nation or entity; were it not so, one nation could simply abolish or exterminate another through redefinition and non-recognition;

Premise 7: Calculated breaches of treaty terms by one or more treating partners make a given treaty null and void;

Premise 8: No treaty may be considered legitimate without full, free and fully-informed consent on all aspects of the treaty on the part of the treating partners and without all treating partners being free of fraud, duress, unconscionability, threats and calculated deception;

Premise 9: No person may be deprived of nationality without legal cause nor may any person have nationality assigned without voluntary, free and informed consent of the person;

Premise 10: No nation may assert national laws/sovereignty to commit genocide or other breaches international law since domestic actions often have spillover effects on other nations as well as on human beings with fundamental rights under international law; for the same reasons that provincial laws trump municipal laws (to preserve cohesion and integrity of a whole province), and federal laws trump provincial laws (to preserve the cohesion and integrity of a federal union and system), so international law trumps federal law (to preserve the cohesion and integrity of a global community of nations and peoples).

Premise 11: No need to cover-up what is clean only what is dirty; acts of cover-up may be used to legally infer and establish mens rea (criminal intent), existence of conspiracies and awareness of probable or inexorable effects of given policies, common plans and actions; court procedures and protocols may be used and are often used as instruments of genocide and cover-up of genocide;

Premise 12: As court systems and evolving law (statutes, administrative codes, case law and precedents) are often used to set up, carry out and cover-up genocide, they are also used to ratify and legitimate genocide such that they become tautological and abrogate or impeach themselves as legal instruments available to those who set them up and have been charged with genocide; e.g. would a Jew going to a nazi court expect anything else but that nazi laws and precedents had been consciously set up not only to facilitate and cover-up genocide, but to ratify and legitimate it when challenged?

Premise 13: No government or entities set up by an illegal, occupying and genocidal power may ever be taken to be legal and legitimate representatives or legitimate governments of the occupied peoples and victims; for the same reasons under law and reason that the puppet Vichy Government set up by nazi occupation forces in France could have never been considered a legal and legitimate representative of the people of France, the Tribal Councils set up under the Indian Act can never be legally or legitimately taken to be representatives of the Blackfoot People and Nation;

Premise 14: The Indian Act and Treaty 7 are internally contradictory and self-impeaching: they set up supposed special powers for the "protections" of a delinated and special group (Indians) not set up for other groups, yet also set up powers from which this targeted group need protection for their continued existence and survival;

Premise 15: Intentions of persons or groups of persons may be legally inferred and established from the highly probable--or inexorable--and foreseeable effects (by a reasonable and prudent person free of bias, malice or conflict of interest) of given policies, laws and actions without necessary resort to tape recordings, insider documents, informants etc giving actual utterances revealing intentions;

Premise 16: No nation and treating partner may summarily, unilaterally, ex post facto and without the consent of the other treating partner(s), declare a treaty to be sui generis as a means to circumvent their own treaty responsibilities and the rights of the other treating partner and/or in order to inhibit or proscribe the coverage and rights under international law of other treating partner, or the treaty;

Premise 17: No nation may summarily declare members of a nation to be citizens of another nation , or claim that imposed citizenship now renders a given a given group a "national minority" and not governed or protected by international law ; nor may any nation use forced citizenship as a means to claim the offending nation is not subject to international law or international conventions--especially those ratified by the offending nation.

Premise 18: Signing and ratifying a treaty signals intent to keep the terms of the treaty--and thus bind whole populations--into the future; keeping the terms of a treaty into the future, requires the continued existence, legitimacy (de facto and de jure) sovereignty, freedom, self-determination and nationhood of the treating partners and continued recognition--or at least not callling into question--of same by the treating partners;
Jim C.

NOT YOUR AVERAGE LICENSE PLATE...
By Lisa Doerksen
Lethbridge Herald Friday, January 23, 2004
A Piikani reserve woman who believes she is not bound by Canadian law is fighting for the right to drive in the province without registering her vehicle.

Bella Yellowhorn has launched a constitutional challenge of the Indian Act and Treaty 7 in an effort to be recognized as part of a sovereign nation.

"I am a member of the sovereign Blackfoot Nation", said Yellowhorn. "I do not have to abide by the Canadian status laws and all they charge us for."

Yellowhorn claims she is one of a growing number of natives who have rejected their status Indian cards from the government and are using their own Blackfoot Nation cards.

Yellowhorn and her representation--James Craven, a professor at Clark's[sic] College in Washington--will argue their position this morning in Lethbridge provincial court.
Prosecutor Kurt Sandstrom, a specialist in constitutional and aboriginal law, is handling the case for the Crown.

The issue stems back to May 1, 2001 when Yellowhorn was pulled over in Lethbridge for not having proper registration for her vehicle. Yellowhorn had outfitted her van with a homemade Blackfoot Nation license plate.

"This is traditional Blackfoot Nation territory", she said. "This is my homeland and I feel I have the right to use my own license plate in my home country."

If her case is successful, Yellowhorn wants to be able to use her own license plate on all ancestral Blackfoot lands, which encompasses most of southern Alberta, stretching into Montana, Saskatchewan and B.C.

Craven, however, says the issue goes far beyond license plates.

"What this is about is genocide, pure and simple," he said. "It's about the right to be a free nation, free people. We have a right to remain as a nation and not be exterminated."
Craven,, who also goes by his Blackfoot name Omahkohkiaayo-i'poyi, said he plans to shed light on the Indian Act's purpose of forcing assimilation of Indians into Canadian life--what he calls genocide of the Blackfoot culture.

"If a (Blackfoot Indian) chooses also to be a Canadian that's fine but you can't force it on us," he said. "We're forcing Canada to look at itself and what's being done to Indians across the country."

Craven said he'll take the issue to the Supreme Court of Canada or even the International Court in Hague or United Nations if necessary.

LETHBRIDGE HERALD
The Lethbridge Herald
Saturday A, Saturday, January 24, 2004, p.a3
[By Lisa Doerksen Lethbridge Herald

Forcing Blackfoot Nations[sic] Natives to have Canadian insurance on their vehicles is akin to asking foreign travellers to buy Canadian insurance to visit here, says a professor helping]

By Lisa Doerksen
Lethbridge Herald

Forcing Blackfoot Nations[sic] natives to have Canadian insurance on their vehicles is akin to asking foreign travellers to buy Canadian insurance to visit here, says a professor helping a native woman fight a charge of driving a motor vehicle without insurance.

"It's no different than a motorist from Montana driving onto Canadian lands," said James Craven, a professor at Washington's Clark College, on behalf of Bella Yellowhorn Friday at the Lethbridge provincial courthouse. "They're not required to have Canadian insurance as long as they have some kind of insurance."

The issue stems back to May 1, 2001 when Yellowhorn, a Piikani reserve resident, was pulled over in Lethbridge for not having proper registration for her vehicle. Yellowhorn had outfitted her van with a homemade Blackfoot Nation licence plate.

She was later convicted of a charge of not having proper registration and the insurance charge went to trial this week.

Yellowhorn claimed in court she had insurance but could not prove it because she was unable to obtain documents from her van when it was seized and also could not locate the Fort Macleod office she purchased the insurance from.

Prosecutor Eric Brooks, who is handling the criminal prosecution regarding the charge, noted the onus is on the accused to provide proof of insurance and Yellowhorn was allowed several adjournments to give her time to gather the information.

Judge Ron Jacobson will hand down his decision on Feb. 9.

Yellowhorn said if the case is successful, she wants to be able to use her own licence plate on all ancestral Blackfoot lands, which encompasses most of southern Alberta, stretching into Montana, Saskatchewan and B.C.

In addition to fighting the charge, Craven has launched a constitutional challenge of the Indian Act and Treaty 7 in an effort to have the Blackfoot people recognized as a sovereign nation.

Craven told the court Friday the Blackfoot people meet all the tests for a nation under international law, including a stable population, identifiable land and their own identifiable governance.

The Indian Act, he said, is little more than a document designed to force the assimilation of natives into Canadian culture--something he calls genocide of the Blackfoot culture.

"Bella believes that as a matter of her own personal survival she cannot and will not obey any of the (conditions) of the Indian Act," said Craven.

He argued the Indian Act allows activity prohibited under international genocide laws, pointing to issues such as residential schools and the high rate of suicide on the reserve.

However, Crown prosecutor Kurt Sandstrom argued that many of the issues raised by Craven have little to do with the matter before the court--a provincial statute requiring proper insurance to drive in Alberta.

Alberta's provincial court is not the right place to launch arguments based on international law, said Sandstrom, a specialist in constitutional and aboriginal law handling the constitutional challenge. "This court does not have the authority to impose a remedy under the international forum."

Reprinted under the FAIR USE Doctrine for educational purposes only and not to be used for any commercial uses.

Lethbridge Herald, Aug. 23, 2002
Log jam
By JANINE ECKLUND
PORCUPINE HILLS --

The provincial government has ordered Merle Good Eye to quit harvesting trees from West Sharples Creek in the Porcupine Hills west of Claresholm.

He maintains it is his right as a member of the Blackfoot Nation.

And in spite of a stop-work order from Alberta Sustainable Resource Development and notices tacked to fallen logs indicating they are being seized by government, Good Eye says he plans to continue the harvest he started about two weeks ago.

"It is our right to take these logs," Good Eye said Thursday. "I have a permit from the proper authorities to harvest." His permission comes, he says, from the hereditary chiefs of the Blackfoot Nation and from band council.

"I'm being told by my elders and proper authority that this is ours; we can't have foreigners coming onto Blackfoot territory and telling me what to do."

The issue goes deeper than the argument over who can harvest timber on Crown land.It goes to the root of animosity between native people and government -- who determines land and access rights.

James Craven, an economics professor from Clark College in Washington and a Blackfoot, said plans are in place to take legal action against the Canadian and U.S. governments for the commission of international crimes and crimes against Blackfoot law under the 1948 UN Convention on Genocide.

Craven maintains the federal governments and their agents in Canada and the U.S. committed genocide by killing members of the First Nations, causing serious bodily and mental harm through daily assaults and the establishment of residential schools and unlawful sterilization of native people.

"The Blackfoot and other Treaty 7 Nations never surrendered their lands, and the governments and citizens of Canada and Alberta are currently illegally occupying Blackfoot territory," said Craven.

"We are going to stand. We do not seek anyone's permission to exist as a people. This is Blackfoot land and these are Blackfoot ways."Details of the legal action can be found on the Internet at http://www.chgs.umn.edu/ under "Documents, Narratives and Histories".

Good Eye and his employees risk fines and arrest if they continue to harvest timber after the stop-work order was issued.

A spokesman with Sustainable Resource Development says an investigation is underway and if they refuse to stop, police may intervene and remove them from the area.

Susan McManus says the proper process to obtain a logging permit is outlined in the Forest Act."There is an annual timber sale," said McManus. The sale is advertised, and the department contacts directly sawmills and reserves and communities throughout the province.

"They bid on an auction of land with a sealed tender. They also put in a damage deposit which can go up to as high as $2,000 which is returned if there is proper cleanup and reforestation."
Good Eye didn't follow that process. He says he is a skilled logger and plans to clean up and collect cones from the area to grow into saplings for planting next spring

"I've logged just about everywhere," said Good Eye."I've logged at Westcastle and Alison Creek and I've never had problems before."I don't know what the problem is. Maybe these logs are too good, maybe they're saving them for someone else."

Good Eye said he's been logging since he was a child when he worked for his stepfather harvesting logs with horse-drawn equipment. Good Eye said he plans to sell some of the logs and use the others to construct homes on the reserve where as many as five and six families are living together because of insufficient housing.

Lawyer challenges the legitimacy of Canadian law over First Nations
Submitted by eisengrimm on Mon, 04/26/2004 - 23:18. Canada Indigenous

Natives not bound by laws of Canada, lawyer arguesAn Ottawa lawyer is challenging the authority of Canadian governments to apply laws to native people.

Jake Rupert, The Ottawa Citizen, April 25, 2004

A judge has agreed to hear a claim that sovereignty over Canadian lands was never fairly transferred in any of the ways recognized by international law. Jake Rupert reports on Michael Swinwood's effort to change Canadian history.

It's an issue that has been debated for years in native and legal academic circles but hasn't been answered by Canadian courts, say aboriginal law experts.But it looks like the question will have to be answered soon, after lawyer Michael Swinwood, on behalf of two natives in North Bay charged with fraud, filed a constitutional challenge to the Crown's right to apply the Criminal Code, or any other law, to aboriginal people, and a judge agreed to hear it.

Mr. Swinwood says aboriginal people never ceded sovereignty to British or Canadian governments in accordance with recognized international standards such as conquest or purchase.

To have jurisdiction over people who occupied land first, according to law, sovereignty must be properly handed over, Mr. Swinwood says in documents filed in court. It wasn't, so Canadian governments have no right to enforce their laws on natives, the documents say."The federal government lacks proper legislative authority in the territory it is alleged these illegal acts took place," Mr. Swinwood argues.

"No treaty has been entered into ... therefore the federal government has no jurisdiction in the territory where these acts are alleged."

Mr. Swinwood will ask a judge to "nullify the application" of Canadian laws against natives because, he says, according to the current state of the law, Canada's laws have "no force or effect as against these Indian persons or any other Indian person."

Earlier this year in North Bay, Mr. Swinwood convinced Ontario Superior Court Justice J.S. O'Neill, himself an expert in native law, to hear the challenge and order the government to pay for it.Judge O'Neill found Mr. Swinwood raised "important" legal questions that need answering and ordered the provincial government to give Mr. Swinwood $35,000 in order to argue the case properly."

The issues raised ... are of sufficient merit that it would be contrary to the interests of justice for the opportunity to pursue these questions and these issues ... to be forfeited if legal funding is not provided," the judge wrote in his reasons for granting Mr. Swinwood the money."It is to be remembered that the legal community in Canada is only beginning to come to grips with issues involving aboriginal title and rights," Judge O'Neill said.

After getting the funding order in March, Mr. Swinwood hoped to make his case this spring in front of Judge O'Neill, but the Crown appealed the judge's ruling on the funding application, arguing that the judge should not have granted the money because there is no merit to Mr. Swinwood's assertions.No date has been set for the appeal, but Mr. Swinwood has decided to press ahead with the constitutional challenge, which he'll pay for out of his own pocket and with money collected from native organizations.

In other cases involving native clients charged with crimes, Mr. Swinwood tried and failed to have judges agree to hear the constitutional challenge.Now that a judge has agreed to hear it, the matter is just too important to walk away from over money, Mr. Swinwood said."Like Justice O'Neill said, it's been a long time coming, so it feels good that we're finally getting to table some of our issues," he said."The Indians got messed over here in this part of the world pretty badly, and it's time some one should speak for them. On this issue, it just happens to be me."Those who say that Canadian laws are applicable against Indians in this country don't know their history. We're just pointing this out."

If Mr. Swinwood's first argument fails, he has another, darker allegation that he says strips the Crown of its ability to apply its laws to natives.According to his application documents: "The legislature of Canada and Her majesty the Queen deprive themselves of legislative authority by being complicit in the crime of genocide against the Indian Nation ... and have acted and continue to act contrary to their international obligations codified in the convention for the prevention and punishment of the crime of genocide."

At the very least, he's asking the judge to find that a 1704 royal proclamation stating that any disputes between natives and government officials should be adjudicated by an agreed upon third party is still in effect.Mr. Swinwood says after exhaustive research and consultation, he has come to the conclusion that Canada simply has no jurisdiction over natives in this country.

There's no legislation saying so. There's no case law saying so. In fact, the law says the opposite, Mr. Swinwood says."It's an interesting and important question that has not been answered by Canadian courts," said Kent McNeil, a law professor at Osgoode Hall in Toronto who specializes in aboriginal rights.He said there have been some cases in Canadian law, dating back as far as the 1800s, that touched on the issue, but that Mr. Swinwood is the first to take direct aim at the fundamental jurisdiction argument in court.

Brad Morse, a University of Ottawa aboriginal law professor concurs."This really will be the first time that these issues are looked at in court, and I think it will be interesting to see what happens," Mr. Morse said.

At the heart of Mr. Swinwood's argument is the issue of sovereignty. Under international law, sovereignty is generally gained under three conditions. A government can assume jurisdiction over unoccupied land simply by populating it. Sovereignty also can be formally handed from one government to another after a conquest. Or a government can gain the right to enforce its rules when occupiers of land sign a purchase agreement or treaty relinquishing jurisdiction to the newcomers.

Mr. Morse said Mr. Swinwood's challenge is legitimate because the first two conditions don't apply in Canada, and in the annals of history there is very little evidence of Indians surrendering sovereignty to Great Britain. Where there is evidence of jurisdictional surrender, there is much debate over whether native leaders understood what they were doing when they "signed" treaties and purchase agreements.

Although this is the first time Canadian courts will be asked to deal with this issue, courts in other countries already have.In a landmark case, Australia's highest court found the Crown there has sovereignty over aboriginal people and land despite not having any of the three accepted conditions for jurisdictional transfer. The court found that over time control of the land and people simply eroded away from the country's first people into the hands of the newcomers and should remain there for the betterment of all.

Many years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court found differently. Judges there decided that the U.S. government didn't have sovereignty over natives or native land. However, it ruled that basic human law as defined by U.S. statue applied to all people regardless of their heritage.

Some may look at Mr. Swinwood's position as preposterous, but he says without proper government mechanisms in place to address the gross injustices committed upon natives in Canada, he is simply doing the next best thing.He said in a prefect world, government officials would come to the conclusion that they've failed the natives of Canada, and that Canadian laws aren't helping the situation.

They would say they're sorry for messing things up as badly as they have, cede sovereignty over vast tracts of Crown land, and let natives live in accordance with traditional spiritual, moral, and legal codes that were working just fine before the white man arrived."We have the law on our side," he said. "We have history on our side. We have morality on our side. What's happened hasn't worked. It's time to try something else.""The time has come," he said. "The government has had a lot of time to do this themselves, and they haven't, so we're going to try to force them to by using the courts. I see no reason why we should fail in this.

© The Ottawa Citizen 2004