CULTURE

Tony Black Feather: The most controversial statement of our time?

By Brenda Norrell

Stronghold Table, South Dakota, Oct. 1-- Lakota elder Tony Black Feather told the United Nations that the American flag represents a racist nation that violates natural and spiritual laws, dishonors treaties and engages in a game plan of corporate greed.

In his statement delivered to the United Nations and distributed here on Stronghold Table, Black Feather pressed for disarmament and peace as President Bush pressed for war in Iraq.

Urging America to “come clean in the eyes of the world,” Black Feather said people often ask him about the red, white, and blue of the American flag

“I tell them that the aboriginal Lakota people of this country look at this flag as a piece of red, white and blue cloth that stands for the foreign racist system that has oppressed indigenous peoples for centuries.

“For traditional Lakota people, that piece of red, white, and blue cloth stands for a system and a country that does not honor it’s own word.”

Black Feather, in his statement to the Working Group on Indigenous Populations, said the flag represents a nation of dishonor.

“If it stood for honor and truth, it would remember our treaties and give them the appropriate place under international law. But it doesn’t. It dishonors its own word and violates its treaties, that piece of red, white and blue cloth.”

On the Stronghold, Black Feather distributed his written statement, which was delivered to the United Nations in July, as he challenged the National Park Service in the Badlands. Ignoring demands from the tribe, the Park Service plans to excavate fossils in the burial grounds of the Ghost Dancers massacred here after they survived the massacre of Wounded Knee.

“America is a world problem,” Black Feather told National Park Service officials leading a tour in the Badlands of the proposed excavation site on Oglala Sioux tribal land.

Lakota gathered here say the bones of the Ghost Dancers, who danced here to bring back the buffalo and the old ways, are revealing themselves at this time for a reason.

With a message for humanity and calling for disarmament around the world, Black Feather chastised the Park Service for entering sacred grounds in the Badlands with armed park rangers.

At the resistance camp the Tokala Warrior Society, the traditional Grey Eagle Society, Russell Means and others chastised National Park Service officials.

Pointing out violations of federal laws, Lakota said the arrogance and racism is indicative of federal Indian policy and a nation that is spiritually bankrupt.

Black Feather’s comments on deception and the flag are representative of the situation here.

Black Feather said of the American flag, “This colorful cloth represents imperialism with the professed Christian duty to destroy many races of peoples throughout the world, to illegally confiscate their possessions, property and even their lives when US interests need to be served.

“It is their intention to establish one world government, based solely on the American system of corporate greed.

“The cloth represents a political language that is designated to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable. This piece of red, white, and blue cloth represents a political system that is contrary to the principles of Natural Law and the moral principles that govern a diversified humanity.

“This piece of cloth misrepresents the human race. “

As Lakota people, we engage in different actions to remember the Natural Law and to assert our rights.”

Black Feather said the takeover of the Oglala Sioux Tribal Council offices and the current resistance on Stronghold Table asserts the rights of the Lakota people.

“As the aboriginal people of this land, we must understand and assert that it is under our care. The continents of the world belong to its aboriginal peoples.

“Someday somebody will have to account for these violations of the Natural Law and violations against Creation that the piece of cloth has been responsible for.

“The United States needs to come clean to cleanse its conscience in the eyes of the world. Only then will we have justice and balance in this world.”

Black Feather’s statement was among those of the Tetuwan Oyate Teton Sioux Nation Treaty Council, delivered to the XXth Session of the Working Group on Indigenous Populations in July and on Stronghold Table in August.

Source: CounterPunch

A knowing voice on Iraq

By Mumia Abu-Jamal

In this day and time, when it seems like the US media is a virtual echo chamber urging US citizens into war (once again) it may be quite difficult to find someone willing to provide an opposing yet informed view on the looming threat of war.

Former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter is that someone. New York-based publisher Context Books is putting out a timely instant book featuring an indepth interview with the conservative ex-Marine that explodes many of the popular and misleading myths supporting the war. The book is entitled, War on Iraq: What Team Bush Doesn’t Want You to Know, by William Rivers Pitt, with Scott Ritter. For many Americans, the book features a short but informative history of Modern Iraq. Check this out: Does the US really want “democracy” in Iraq? Most folks will say, “yeah, sure.” But do they know that the vast majority of Iraqis, some 60%, are followers of Shi’a Islamic faith, like Iran? What about weapons of mass destruction (WPM) of a chemical, biological or nuclear nature?

Let me quote from William Pitt’s War on Iraq on that:

The case for war against Iraq has not been made. This is a fact. It is doubtful in the extreme that Saddam Hussein has retained any functional aspect of the chemical, nuclear, and biological weapons programs so thoroughly dismantled by the United Nations weapons inspectors who worked tirelessly in Iraq for seven years. This is also a fact. The idea that Hussein has connections to fundamentalist Islamic terrorists is laughable — he is a secular leader who has worked for years to crush fundamentalist Islam within Iraq, and if he were to give weapons of any kind to al-Qaida, “they would use those weapons on him first.” Think about this the next time you hear media reports about Iraq working with al-Qaida. They know that the ruling clique in Iraq is rooted in the socialist Ba’ath party, and they hate him and his cronies almost as much as they hate the Americans. Further, as the administration strains to justify their Iraq adventure, with a cowed Congress and a complicit media, it will be harder and harder for such voices as these to be heard, or found. Pray that the prediction in the Pitt/Ritter book doesn’t come true:

An attack on Iraq could bring about a wider world war America cannot afford, and that a vast majority of Americans do not desire. At less than 100 pages War on Iraq is an easy read. Before Armageddon is unleashed, it’s hoped that many Americans study this issue soon.

Beauty is in the film festival

By Damian Keber (AGR) -- This week Asheville, NC will mark the launch of the Eye of the Beholder Film Festival — an ambitious celebration of independent motion pictures. This ten-day event is replete with premium material from a spectrum of genres and formats encompassing evocative horizons and vertices of the artform.

The principal organizers, Sara Legatski and Elijah Brasch, solicited submissions from movie makers of all descriptions. “Send us your work!” they shouted into the void. The response, delightful and copious, rained upon them — representing thousands of hours of effort by individuals from all over the globe. Legatski and Brasch selected from this torrent 46 motion pictures of superior quality and true originality to screen during the festival.

The work is thematically diverse: including, but not limited to, everything between the soberingly pragmatic and the frivolously absurd. The pictures address subjects of race and gender, patriotism and nationalism, the beauty of nature and the problems of globalization. They document the strangest and most mundane of activities and many that defy description. Down diverse avenues these vehicles explore new ways of establishing relationships with the world.

As other film festival’s executives and lawyers crowd and dilute themselves with concerns of the marketplace, the quality of their material suffers. So it is well that independent endeavors like Eye of the Beholder flourish. They strengthen the artform and revive the muse. With an inclusive atmosphere and affordable tickets (no screening costs more than $5) this event will provide many a glimpse of groundbreaking work unavailable anywhere else at any price.

Cinema weaves together many branches of knowledge and wields unquestionable power to surprise, educate, perplex, and edify. The Eye of the Beholder embraces this power and the sum of its parts is a mystifying, intangible and engrossing spectacle. Mark your calendars: see as many of these movies as you can. The Eye of the Beholder Film Festival runs from Oct. 21-31 with screenings at the YMI Cultural Center, Vincent’s Ear, Gallery 31, The Big Idea, and the Be-Be Theater. It culminates with an awards ceremony at the Orange Peel. Find more information in the festival programs available at these locations and others around Asheville. Also take a look at www.eyefilmfestival.com.

Arms and the cameraman

By Joshua Rothkopf

Readers of these pages need no introduction to Michael Moore, nor will they require any acrobatics on my part to go see Bowling for Columbine, which is (brace yourselves) pretty terrific.

That’s not to say we’re an uncritical bunch — we can be plenty toxic toward our own kind — but Moore’s latest, about America’s fatal obsession with guns, has few genuine weaknesses. They’re there, to be sure: a whiff of self-congratulatory end-zone dancing here, the occasional flat-footed irony elsewhere. But so too is a ferocious (and ferociously funny) indictment of good-old American fear-mongering — the kind that’s spooked us into suspending gradeschoolers for ominously waving a loaded chicken finger in the cafeteria, and led us right up to the brink of war.

What really must be discussed here are tactics: Moore will never be called a subtle documentarian, but this is why his critics consider him a dangerous man. There he is, strutting out of his Michigan bank branch hoisting a rifle (free with each new checking account), and you can tell he’s pleased with himself. Bowling for Columbine revs up almost immediately on a raft of potent absurdities — too many for any reviewer to possibly spoil — least of all a certificate of membership to the National Rifle Association, proudly signed by the filmmaker himself, a lifetime member. If that comes as a surprise to you, wait until you see the adorable hunting dog with guns strapped to its back (the master was hospitalized), or the Lockheed-Martin employee gravely pondering the roots of school violence from the weapons factory floor in Littleton; a giant missile looms behind him.

This last bit propels Moore onto more speculative ground, a welcome development despite the clear entertainment value of militia yahoos and ammo-selling barbershops. We cut from the missile man to a montage of covert CIA interventions — from Pinochet to Saddam to Osama — and those burning towers at the end make it a little hard to bear, especially in the mocking musical context of Louis Armstrong’s “What a Wonderful World.” (This is a movie that also shows us surveillance camera footage from the Columbine massacre — not set to music, thankfully.) Considering that Bowling will shortly be playing in malls across the country, the provocation seems close to heroic.

So it’s interesting to watch Moore back off from that argument as he returns again to the question of guns. America does have a blood-soaked history, he concedes, but is it any worse than the imperial spillings of Britain or Japan? (Both countries have annual gun casualties in the mere dozens, this to our thousands.) Nor should we point the finger at victimized rocker Marilyn Manson, who pulls off the greatest shock of his career by revealing himself to be an uncommonly thoughtful social critic. You might as well blame bowling, Moore suggests, another pastime the Columbine killers engaged in — and the very thing they did before heading off to school that April morning.

No, Moore’s chosen culprit — and it’s a good one — is the incessant burble of dread pouring from the nightly news and tabloids, scaring us literally to death. It’s here that Bowling begins to resemble a grade-Z horror film, as the media madness comes in a flood: Y2K doomsday scenarios, killer “Africanized” bees, superhungry sharks, even the quiet threat of escalators (“Stairway to Danger,” screams a special report).

The producer of the smash show Cops balks at Moore’s suggestion that they go after corporate criminals, stating with brutal honesty that they could never get white-collar perps to take their shirts off. So much easier for TV to sell the roving crackhead, the black rapist, the madman dictator — and Moore never lets us forget that killings are being made, by burglar-alarm installers, gun manufacturers and Lockheed-Martin.

Compare it all to Canada’s broadcasts, where politicians drone on about boring things like international diplomacy and health care, and Moore seems to have a point. How else to explain the sole gun death that occurred last year in the city of Windsor, while right across the water sits America’s murder capital, Detroit? Canadians love their guns, but they don’t appear to want to kill each other. They don’t even lock their front doors, a rumor Moore gets great mileage out of proving, bursting unannounced into several Toronto homes.

The last house on his list belongs to God: To watch Charlton Heston blame the violence on our “mixed ethnicity” is to hear a terrible moan rise from the audience — it’s Moore’s greatest triumph. Source: In These Times