A CRISIS OF INDIAN LEADERSHIP
In the matter regarding the disunity and divisions created by male Indian leaders, who should the rank and file Indians follow now that male Indian leaders have been forced, by the actions of Chief Theresa Spence, to either lead, follow or get out of the way. To me the choice is a clear one, follow a true leader in the tradition of the Ancestors.
Chief Spence’s action is what those male chiefs should have done from some fifty years ago until today.
Instead what they have done, at least since the days of our oppressor’s White Paper, is to create road blocks, bottle necks, division and to be part of the problem in Indian efforts toward unity in our common struggle to have the jackboots of white oppression taken off of our throats.
There should be no discussion among sensible and reasonable Indian people as to who to follow. It must be the leader who demonstrated true leadership in taking the action she did and who inspires a great many others to follow her lead.
Due to the extreme contempt displayed by our white oppressors, in their perpetration of genocide upon our people (no more Beothuk, Carib, Saco, Kennebec along with a great many more), our people have been terrorized and traumatized to the point of no resistance to the colonization process that our white oppressors have inflicted and continue to inflict upon our people over the last 500+ years.
It is out of this colonization process that our present-day elected leaders come from. Today this colonization process is so thorough that most of our people are not aware of just how colonized we have become.
The only way that we as a people can ever begin to shed our colonized minds is through awareness. We must first recognize, acknowledge and accept the fact that our people are a completely colonized people where we now think, talk, act and behave exactly like our white oppressors. In our delusional colonized state of mind we have forgotten our Great Creator-given original instructions, our traditional teachings, our spirituality, our languages and our identity as Indians… as human beings.
As to our white oppressor’s most recent Indian legislation, what I call “the Ominous Bill”, it is no different than the very first piece of white legislation ever enacted in Canada which was the Indian Scalp Bounty Act. Any and all white oppressor legislation such as the Indian Reservation Act, the Indian Act, the Indian Women Sterilization Act or the Indian Residential Schools Act, that is forced upon our people are all designed to accomplish one thing and one thing only… The Final Solution to Canada’s Indian Problem.
One thing that all Indian Peoples have to be aware of and always bear in mind is that we have done nothing wrong (except accept the Europeans in the first place) and we are doing nothing wrong in living our Great Creator-given responsibility to defend and protect our Sacred Earth Mother, ourselves, our families, our clans, our communities, our nations, our spirituality, our language, our culture and our identity.
These are the words of a child of the Canadian Holocaust.
Dan Ennis
