[MCP] Combating White Racism Against Indigenous Peoples

[Thomas Dahlheimer]

By Thomas Ivan Dahlheimer

Author and International Forum On Globalization (IFG)
founder, Jerry Mander, whose organization (IFC)
represents 60 organizations in 25 countries, wrote, in
his article The Absents Of The Sacred: "Our assumption
of superiority does not come to us by accident. We
have been trained in it. It is soaked into the fabric
of every Western religion, economic system, and
technology. Judeo-Christian religions are a model of
hierarchical structure: one God above all, certain
humans above other humans, and humans over nature.
Political and economic systems are similarly arranged:
organized along rigid hierarchical lines, all of
nature's resources [including 'other humans'] are
regarded only in terms of how they serve the one god —
the god of growth and expansion. In this way, all of
these systems are *missionary*; they embrace
dominance. 

And Gary R. Howard, the Founder and President of the
REACH Center for Multicultural Education - who has
developed collections of curriculum materials which
are being used internationally and who is frequently
asked to deliver keynote addresses at regional and
national conferences - wrote: "Most of our work in
race relations and workforce diversity in the United
States has emphasized the particular cultural
experiences and perspectives of black, Asian, Hispanic
and American Indian groups. These, after all, are the
people who have been marginalized by the weight of
European American dominance. With the shifting tide of
population in the United States, however, there is now
a need to take a closer look at the unique and
changing role of white Americans. Attention to whites'
role in multicultural education is very recent, and
the focus on white identity development in
multicultural education signals a shift away from
equity pedagogy."

Professor Christine Sleeter, a multicultural educator,
who lectures nationally and internationally, and who
won the National Association for Multicultural
Education Research Award, is quoted as saying: "The
importance of multicultural education is a struggle
against white racism, rather than multiculturalism as
a way to appreciate diversity. Both historically and
in contemporary society, the relationships between
racial and ethnic groups in this country are framed
within a context of unequal power. People of European
descent generally assume the power to claim the land,
claim the resources, claim the language. They even
claim the right to frame the culture and identity of
who we are as Americans. That has been the case ever
since Columbus landed on the North American
continent."

The International Indian Treaty Council (IITC) is
combating white racism, and on this topic it teaches: 

(1.) "In spite of the first two World Conferences to
Combat Racism and their calls that Indigenous Peoples
have a right to their lands and natural resources that
must be protected, Indigenous Peoples continue to lose
their lands at an alarming rate, seemingly a
continuation of the 'Conquest' of the Americas. 
(2.) Ever since Pope Alexander VI's 1493 Papal Bull
"Inter Caetera", calling for the subjugation of the
Americas' "barbarous nations" and their lands, first
colonial and then successor States have forcibly and
violently destroyed Indigenous Peoples. To this day,
the racial discrimination and cultural denigration
established by Pope Alexander VI are engraved in the
mentality of the Americas and continue to underlie the
rational for racial discrimination against Indigenous
Peoples. The religious imperatives of conversion and
annihilation have been replaced by assimilation and
"development " as the most desirable end for
Indigenous Peoples. The State, economic elites and
trans-national corporations have replaced the Spanish
and Portuguese kings and Colonists as the
beneficiaries of Indigenous lands and resources.
Reference:
http://www.treatycouncil.org/section_211414.htm 

An IFG - Indigenous Peoples and Globalization Project
- statement declares: This project aims to examine and
publicize the multiple impacts of the globalization
process on the most marginalized of all populations,
native peoples. Today, millions of native people still
live traditional lifestyles, each with a distinct
culture, language, knowledge base, identity, and view
of the cosmos. The impact of globalization is
strongest on these populations perhaps more than any
other because these communities have no voice and are
therefore easily swept aside by the invisible hand of
the market and its proponents. Globalization not only
discounts native peoples, it is driving them closer
and more rapidly toward extinction.

National and international leaders of multicultural
education, the International Forum On Globalization,
and the International Indian Treaty Council seem to be
on the same wave length, in respect to their
worldviews against white-racism teachings.

In addition to my local, national, and international
Catholic social/politic activist campaign to replace
twenty two of Minnesota's white racist geographic
place names that are offensive to the Indigenous
Peoples of the Americas, I am also promoting my own -
similar to the teachings of internationally renown
multicultural educators, IFG's Jerry Mander and the
International Indian Treaty Council - Catholic
teaching ministry.
My Web site is located at: http://www.towahkon.org 
 
Steve Russell (Cherokee) - a Texas state judge, twice
past President of the Texas Indian Bar Association,
Associate Professor of Criminal Justice, Indiana
University, wrote, when referring to my campaign:
"This campaign is a valuable history lesson!" And Tom
Wisner, a singer and song writer who is known
nationally for his song "Chesapeake Born" - and who
has received national, state, and local awards for
excellence in teaching, sent me an e-mail in response
to the news of Rep. Mike Jaros' offer to help with the
"important legislation" to change MN's geographic
place names that are offensive to the Indigenous
peoples of the Americas. In the e-mail Mr. Wisner
mentioned that it is "conceivable to hire good
education song writers" to promote legislative
projects to show due respect for Indigenous peoples'
languages and traditional cultures. And he also
mentioned that he "could develop a proposal if he (DFL
Rep. Mike Jaros) is interested". 

Apparently, white racists used the evil name of the
Devil to name twelve of Minnesota's geographic place
names. Linda Godfrey, a best-selling author and award
winning journalist wrote:

"Racial hatred was why many geographic places were
given the name Devil. Place names evoking the Devil
reflect a dominant attitude on the part of
Euro-American settlers towards the New World during
the migration into the wild West. The history of place
names is based in mistranslation, deliberate insult
and slur..., as well as a Christian notion of the
wilderness as the domain of the Devil."

"The origination of many of the Devils across
Wisconsin probably has more to do with racial hatred
than anything else. Early white settlers were mostly
Christian and viewed Native Americans with their
different spiritual practices as heathens (at best) or
savages and devil-worshipers (most likely). It's a
long-standing tradition across time to demonize your
foes prior to taking everything they have – including
their lives – to assuage any possible feelings of
guilt."

"Native Americans saw spirits in many shapes and forms
and though there was sometimes a Supreme Being,
goodness or badness or tricks flowed from a variety of
sources. In the simplistic Either/Or view of the early
settlers, this mind-set of multiple spiritual sources
was tantamount to practicing deviltry, and so settlers
tended to put a malevolent spin on the landscape when
interpreting native names for the surrounding
landscape."

"...in the native cosmogony there is no single evil
spirit comparable to the devil. In the mind of the
settlers though, all this "heathen" spirituality had
to be the work or the sign of the devil. So the name
Devil was given often to native areas known formerly
by names meaning Sacred or Spirit or Mystery."

"For example, Devil's Lake in Wisconsin's Sauk County
is the white settlers' interpretation of the Ho-Chunk
name Day-wa-kun-chunk, meaning "Sacred Lake."

In the Encyclopedia of North American Indians there is
an article titled: Place names. The following excerpt
was take from the article. "Manitou and Wakanda are
common names on the map as Algonquian and Siouan terms
for the Great Spirit. Whites often changed these names
to Devil, and so we have Devil's Lake in Michigan,
North Dakota, Wisconsin, and elsewhere." 

In Minnesota we have Devil Track Lake and Devil Track
River, in these cases the Ojibwe name for the Great
Spirit (Manitou) was mistranslated Devil. And in
Minnesota we also have Rum River and West Branch Rum
River. In these cases the sacred Mdewakanton Dakota
name Wakan, translated as (Great) Spirit was
mistranslated as the "demon spirit" Rum, which brought
misery and ruin to many of the natives.

Lets replace these white racists names, lets not let
these evil racist names adorn our geographic places
and maps.

The first Pope (Peter) was a Jew, but all of the Popes
since Peter have been white European men. The reason
why a Catholic indigenous man of the Americas, who is
participating in his people's culture - within his
people's traditional homeland, can not become the Pope
as well as why no other colored indigenous Catholic
man, who is participating in his people's culture -
within his people's traditional homeland, can become
the Pope is because the Catholic Church believes in
and practices extreme white racism in the context of
radical institutional racism. Reference: statistics
revealing institutional racism
http://www.towahkon.org/racism.html 

Many white people of European descent are
psychologically addicted to a type of racism where in
they need to dominate the world. They need their white
European Pope sitting on the throne of Peter
exercising great influence over the world. 

A recent United Nation's World Conference Against
Racism document proclaims that a 15th century Papal
Bull "declared war against all non-Christians
throughout the world, and specifically sanctioned and
promoted the conquest, colonization, and exploitation
of non-Christian nations and their territories." This
Papal Bull, written by Pope Nicholas V, instructed
Columbus and other slave traders to "capture,
vanquish, and subdue the pagans, and other enemies of
Christ," to "put them into perpetual slavery," and "to
take all their possessions and property". And in Pope
Alexander VI's papal bull of 1493 (Inter Caetera), he
stated his desire that the "discovered" people be
"subjugated and brought to the faith itself." By this
means, said the pope, the "Christian Empire" would be
propagated. Consequently, Columbus wrote, after
discovering the homelands of the indigenous peoples of
the Americas, "Let us in the name of the Holy Trinity
go on sending all the slaves that can be sold."
Reference: http://www.un.org/WCAR/e-kit/indigenous.htm

And Bishop Bartolome de Las Casas, the first European
historian in the Americas wrote, when referring to the
Europeans' first forty years of genocidal behavior in
the Americas: "
.for they are still acting like
ravening beasts, killing, terrorizing, afflicting,
torturing, and destroying the native peoples, doing
all this with the strangest and most varied new
methods of cruelty, never seen or heard of before, and
to such a degree that this Island of Hispaniola once
so populous (having a population that I estimated to
be more than three million), has now a population of
barely two hundred persons."
 
Pope Nicholas V and Pope Alexander VI were white
racist genocidal madmen who are primarily responsible
for 100,000,000 Indigenous Peoples of the Americas
elimination in the course of Europe's ongoing
genocidal "civilization" of the Western hemisphere.
Both the present Pope as well as our nation's white
Catholic Bishops are still pursuing Pope Nicholas V
and Pope Alexander VI's white racist genocidal agenda.
Reference:
http://bullsburning.itgo.com/essays/Appeal.htm 

The Indigenous Peoples of the Americas sacred
homelands were stolen from them, they were enslaved
and killed by diseases, wars and alcohol. And those
who survived this Catholic Church promoted genocide
were forced onto reservations (concentration camps)
where they are now being assimilated. And on these
reservations they are dying from alcohol abuse, hard
drug abuse, tobacco abuse, poor diets etc.. And white
Christian leaders do not even care enough to do
anything about this terrible situation. It's like when
the Jews in white European Catholic nations were
forced into slums where they were dying of
malnutrition and diseases until Hitler decided not to
prolong the genocide and exterminated them in his gas
chambers.

By indulging in extreme white racism the Catholic
Church continues to be an ambassador of a health and
earth destroying culture as it expands throughout the
world in its white supremacist world domination
mission. And the reason why this is occurring is
because the Catholic Church is so radically white
racist that it has not been able to refract
Christianity through - as Cardinal Danielou wrote -
"the many facets of human civilization. Christianity
has been refracted through the Greek and Roman worlds,
but it will have to be refracted through the Hindu
facet and the Indigenous Peoples of the Americas facet
in order to attain its fulfillment. There are many
aspects of Christianity that shall not be discover
until Christianity has been refracted through every
facet of the prism of human civilization." The
Catholic Church is so extremely white racist that it
can not believe that there are enough spiritual
treasures in colored peoples' cultures and religions
to make it worth while refracting Christianity though
them in order to incorporate the spiritual treasures
that are in them, hence the Catholic Church continues
to lead the whole human race to its destruction.

James Engel, a past staff writer for a Minnesota
Catholic diocesan newspaper, wrote: "Christianity came
to the Americas nearly five centuries ago.
Spirituality had been here long before that, and while
Christians often disregard the principles of
Christianity, nowhere has it done more damage than to
the people native to the Americas. Traditionally,
Native Americans recognized the presence of the
Creator in all of His Creation...living and inert.
Dating back centuries Native Americans are credited
with respecting this creation: The lakes, which today
are poisoned or have died. The earth, now cursed with
pesticides and dotted with overcrowded landfills. The
sky, today sporting holes in its unseen ozone and
sporting too, thick layers of visible smog."

"European setters denied Native Americans their
rights...to land, to life, to religion. Much was lost.
And while there is little effort to retrieve that
which was lost, something can be learned from it, even
today."

"When Pope John Paul II toured the southern and
western United States in the fall of 1987 he
addressed, and was addressed by, a conference of
Native Americans."

A Native American (Alfretta Antone) spoke at that
conference and Engel quoted him: "Upon initial contact
with Europeans, we shared the land given us by our
Creator and taught others how to survive here.
History, however, stands as a witness to the use and
abuse we have experienced in our homelands."

"Today little remains of the gifts and richness which
our Creator has shared with us, the original peoples
of these lands."

Engle also wrote: "Antone implored the Pope to help
secure a dozen rights for Native Americans. Several
dealt with fair treatment by the government, others
dealt with much needed economic gains, others dealt
with successful incorporation of Native American
culture into American culture. But one stood out as
important in its meaning, and its insight: That our
sacred ways and prayers be respected."

"Many Native Americans espouse some Christian
religion, and while the Native American population in
Minnesota might be higher than in some regions of the
country, there is precious little Native American
culture or spirituality in the ways and lives of
central Minnesota Catholics. And, most probably,
precious little respect for that spirituality."

"A 1977 pastoral letter on Native Americans, written
by the bishops spoke of justice, the American
experience, and the role of the Church. It spoke of
faith and culture: the Catholic faith, the American
culture. It virtually ignored the gifts, the talents,
the spirituality that Native Americans bring to the
Church."

And it is because of this exclusive white racist
mentality of the Roman Catholic Church's hierarchy
that the Catholic Church continues on in the way that
leads to the destruction of the whole human race as
well as for all life on earth. It is so extremely
white racist that it can not do what it should do, and
that is, refract Christianity through the Indigenous
Peoples of the Americas facet of the prism of human
civilization - and in doing so, incorporate the
ecological awareness of the Indigenous Peoples of the
Americas into the Church, and by doing so, get the
Church going in the direction of ecological salvation
for the whole human race as well as for all other good
life forms. 

Hopefully, both, my local, national and international
movement to replace Minnesota's geographic place names
that are offensive to the Indigenous Peoples of the
Americas as well as my - combating white racism
against indigenous peoples - Catholic teaching
ministry will get the Catholic Church going in the
right direction.




 
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