Letter from Leonard Peltier

Many thanks to Tony Castanha for forwarding this:

AUGUST 24, 2008

Greetings my friends and relatives,

First of all, I can't express to you, near as much as I'd like to. The sincere appreciation I have that you would gather together remembering all the political prisoners, hostages and myself the way you have.

Gatherings like this are extremely important because it reminds people of the sacrifices that are made daily through out the world for freedom, justice, and a clean and sane environment for our future generations. The powers that exploit our resources and people will always be there, generation after generation.

And the creator will always call upon people to stand against that exploitation. Even if the creator does not call. Any just man or woman, with any semblance of justice, be it spiritual, social or environmental, He will find cause to take issue with those enemies of humanity and nature.

One of the reasons I am so appreciative is because I want you to know, from where I stand the gatherings that you do mean so very very much to the other political prisoners, other hostages and myself. It is an extreme importance that political prisoners and hostages not be forgotten. Not necessarily for the sake of the prisoners and hostages themselves, but for the sake of future generations. To appreciate and protect and jealously guard the freedoms they possess; that was paid for with someone's life. I think the most difficult times for a political prisoner or hostage, is when people start to forget what their sacrifice was about, when people become complacent because of some economic level they have attained, and forget the sacrifices that were made and the danger of them losing those gains is imminent. And I know from personal experience, the joy I feel when I receive letters of appreciations or visitors and that is second to the joy I feel when I know that my efforts were not in vain. And there are young people taking up the cause and responsibility of regaining our lost freedoms and resources.

I dearly miss the touch of friends, I dearly miss walking through a forest or across a meadow or even through the traffic of a busy street, or feeling the wind blowing against my skin, directly, rather than a window or some chain link fence.

But with all this, I can't express to you how at a great loss I would feel if the reason and cause of the many political prisoners and hostages throughout the world was forgotten. Swept aside, because people become too comfortable with their status quo.

I have been here for 33 years that is more than half of my life. I would give almost anything to go home. But I won't give up,

I would give almost anything to be with my family. But I won't be quiet.

I would give almost anything to say goodbye to this place, but I won't say goodbye to my beliefs and our struggle.

I would give almost anything to walk out this door and never return. But I will never walk away from the love of my people.

When I think of the things that I hear and see in the media, about how many different special interest groups, speak of various subjects, like the right to live, or pro-life, I cant help but think, of the children around the world, who never get a chance to live because of the exploitation of their resources of their country and their people.

All of the destruction that is taking place here and abroad is a direct result of people, special interest groups, whose interest is primarily wealth and taking more than they need.

The religious people or should I say The spiritual people of America, and anywhere else for that matter, should seek to aggressively band together to stop the unjust wars that truly impact primarily the common man, the common man who in his village or farm, city or anywhere else is destroyed, by bombs, from the various governments. Governments; Who in the name of nationalism and patriotism seek to gain political power and control over someone else's resource and political system. They should actively band together and identify the things they have in common rather than dwelling on their differences. Perhaps I am rambling too much in my statement, after 33 years in prison and 63 years upon this earth, much of this time spent thinking, praying, analyzing, and mediating, on the information that I gather from various forms of writings, books and observations, I somehow feel I have a little bit of a right, to say what I think and feel.

I love you all and I am so honored that I would be invited to make a statement to you. And if I could hug each one of you individually, I guarantee you would damn well be hugged!

I have never given up in my struggle for freedom.

Freedom is a natural inclination of all living creatures up on the earth. Even a newborn will struggle when held too tightly.

I deeply regret being in prison I deeply regret losing family members while in here, I deeply regret all the wonderful things in life that I have missed, but I will never regret standing up for my people for as long as I can draw my breath. My heart is with them always, and my heart is with you today.

So long for now; I will remember you in my prayers and until next time.

Keep the faith.

Your relative always

In the spirit of crazy horse,

Leonard Peltier

HTTP://WWW.WHOISLEONARDPELTIER.INFO

Guyana's Indigenous Peoples on the Periphery

An article in The Guyana Review titled, "Guyana's Indigenous Peoples: Still Languishing on the Periphery" (posted May 28, 2008) features an interview with David James, the former head of the Amerindian Peoples' Association (APA).

David James, who is the legal adviser to the APA, outlines some of the shock being suffered by indigenous communities in the face of the invasion by loggers and miners, and foreign corporations:

Those communities that have borne the brunt of the environmental damage are very resentful. They are resentful of the social effects of mining and timber harvesting – especially mining – which include the introduction of large amounts of alcohol, illicit drugs and prostitution camps. These activities take place either within the mining areas or close to the mining areas.

There are cases in which some communities are so resentful of these practices that they have sought legal redress. There are at least three cases that I am aware of where communities have initiated legal action to protect their rights. The success in these cases has been limited primarily because the court process is very slow.

What the communities feel is that their protection is best assured through the granting of full rights including sub—surface rights. This would mean that they would have full ownership of the resources and better control of those resources. Of course access also means that they would benefit from those resources.

James also describes the many ways that the rights of indigenous communities have been severely undermined by natural resource development, and the limited recourse they have under the law, especially as they do not possess rights to that which lies beneath the soil they live on. James calls for a revision of Guyana's Amerindian Act to bring it in line with the government's own endorsement of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples:

There is a need for the Amerindian Act to be amended particularly because in 2007 the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples was approved by the General Assembly. That Declaration ought to be the guide for legislative reform in any country. The Amerindian Act was passed before that Declaration was approved but the approval of that Declaration essentially means that those states that have voted for it are saying that they consent to abide by its very lofty principles. Therefore, the Amerindian Act as it stands now falls far short of many of the rights standards that are contained in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

James ends the interview by describing the overall environment of confrontation between indigenous communities and the state. To the extent that earning foreign exchange to help purchase foreign imports continues to be the dominant developmentalist logic in Guyana, I don't think James is wrong in showing a lack of optimism for the future.

A Short History, and a Call for Contributors

First, let me welcome you to

THE REVIEW OF THE INDIGENOUS CARIBBEAN CENTER

This is a “renewed” blog in terms of site redesign, renaming, and building on its precursor, The CAC Review, which first started in early 2003 on the kacike.org domain.(1)

It is new in some ways as well: over the past few months I have been rethinking, sometimes agonizing, over the slow and diminishing level of academic collaboration that in the end came to mark the 10 year existence of the Caribbean Amerindian Centrelink. One of the main problems was that I was the centre of all web updates and content management, and began to suffer “broker overload” which suffered from additional aggravating problems external to the network. Within the past year, email started to grow to oppressive heights, and in fact there are many messages from as long as 10 months ago that I have yet to answer, and probably never will. Many contributing authors would submit files loaded with problematic code, and then begin to grow increasingly anxious, even upset, when for many months I had not posted their works, and soon the demands became pointed. In the meantime, when communicating with collaborators, I rarely got responses, except from the usual reliable two or three persons. The rest would remain totally silent, as if being listed as an “editor” was all that mattered. In other respects, I felt that I was being pinned down and locked within a narrow niche, that I could not express myself freely, and that I would remain permanently “on call” thanks to my past (and remaining) research on the indigenous peoples of the Caribbean.

That is why I had to create the Watchman blog, and why I have been so busy at Open Anthropology. It has been as if I had a ton of things to get off my chest.

Most of all, however, I also grew increasingly uneasy and unhappy with the centrality of the non-indigenous academic (myself), in an indigenous field. With so many indigenous Caribbean persons actively online, making excellent use of the web, and showing great sophistication and advanced knowledge of web design and coding, there was no real reason why I had to continue to be the broker/overlord through which information passed (and got stuck in a bottleneck).

Simple solutions to simple problems led to some very exciting results. For example, to not have to manually update a HTML directory of researchers (that link will expire soon) each time one wanted a new photo, or to correct an email link, or to alter a single word (or delete a duplicate “the”) I placed the responsibility for updates back with the researchers. That was the first step in creating the Indigenous Caribbean Network, which has now grown to large and dynamic networking proportions, far beyond a mere directory of researchers, and instead becoming a lively site for rich cultural, political, historical, and political discussion, not to mention audio-visual collaboration. I actually try to limit my presence there for fear of being sucked in for too long.

NING offered pages that members could update themselves, and that was the only reason I first chose NING, because I had no other means (i.e., coding knowledge or software) available for those listed on that old “directory of researchers” to update their own entries. I asked them to sign in to NING, roughly a third did, and the rest are “lost.” What really propelled the network was the onrush of indigenous Caribbean persons, and archaeologists, two of the main groups in the network.

All of the above then really got the ball rolling. I realized that one of the problems was the limitations imposed by static HTML pages, administered by me, on domains I owned, using private accounts that I paid for. That worked to ensure that sites such as the Caribbean Amerindian Centrelink, and even KACIKE: The Journal of Caribbean Amerindian History and Anthropology, would remain firmly in my weakening hands, regardless of best intentions. At the same time I began to fool around with content management sites, and soon realized that I could use WORDPRESS to create such a site, and use GOOGLE PAGES to archive KACIKE, so that a new group of contributors could directly access those sites on their own, post as they wished, and nobody owned it.

Hence, slowly but surely, the Caribbean Amerindian Centrelink is mutating into the Indigenous Caribbean Center, while KACIKE is going defunct, at least until new editors wish to take control of it (and when they do, lack of HTML knowledge won’t be an excuse, and the site is free so there are no ownership issues, no "accounts to settle").

The renaming issue stems from exchanges that are too long to summarize here adequately. From 1998 doubts began to be aired about use of the term “Amerindian” (popular in Trinidad, and among a diminishing group in Guyana) that misled me to believe that the term was appropriate. For many instead, it is either too racial, too exclusive of miscegenated groups such as the Garifuna, or sounds too much like “American Indian.” “Aboriginal” sounded derived from Australia to many, despite the fact that it is also in official and common use in Canada. Indigenous was both wide and ambiguous, and now that all of the old efforts are being undone and unwoven, it seemed like an appropriate time to install the renaming.

And why “center” instead of “centre”? Because I am fed up with American readers writing to point out that I “misspelled center.” And what happened to “centrelink”? That is the funniest one: I came up with the name while in Trinidad at the same that the Australian government renamed its welfare agency Centrelink. For years we were getting massive numbers of visitors from Australia, and at one point, even centrelink staff email (how many BBQs were derailed by my silence in neglecting to point out that the intended recipient would never get their email?) When I once boasted that Australia was one of our top three sources of traffic, an Australian Centrelink administrator wrote to tell me that it was because our site sounded like their welfare agency, and had a more memorable URL (centrelink.org). My response was that it was sad to see how many Australians were in dire need of welfare.

I AM REVOLUTION...TAINO SOY! by Axel Garcia

From a poetic exchange on the Indigenous Caribbean Network, reproduced with the permission of the author, Axel Garcia

•••••••

I am revolution.....Being born "Spic" in an alabaster complexion.

My Grandfather couldn't see beyond my green eyes, so it was my skin I grew to despise. But "Papi", hold me, speak to me, tell me about "La Isla" with its swaying palm trees. Tell me bout Don Pedro, sing to me Ramito, dime de los esclavos.

Cause I, Papa, have been searching an eternity of years it seems, to understand the visions in my dreams; of a Taino reaching out his arms, trying to warn me of the harms....That Amerikkka and its democracy, will blind us with its glorious "Land of the free" ....

What price did you pay, Papa, if at my hue, the whiteness of my being, tu rechasa?

I am the victim of "O beautiful with gracious skies", while another of my kind dies! But don't put that on the radio or the TV, there is no room between the weather forecast, the Mets and the Yankees....

You see I am the revolution, as each day I fight, when in the mirror my enemy stares back with might. And yes Papa, I've scarred my skin with my flag tattooed again and again, so when the day comes of the concrete revolution, my "pale" body will lie next to all my fellow Puerto Ricans!!!

And Abuelo, when you see me again, I will be covered in the souls of my Indians....

POR QUE TAINO SOY!!!!