Seminole Evan Haney: Fighting the Right War, Bringing the Resistance Home

United Nations Delegation: Bill Wahpepah, Clyde Bellecourt, Russell Means, Greg Zephier, Joe Lafferty, Evan Haney, Juan Aguilar, in Geneva Switzerland, 1977. (Photo courtesy Evan Haney, shared with permission, Censored News.)

Seminole Evan Haney: Fighting the Right War and Bringing the Resistance Home

By Brenda Norrell, Censored News, Sept. 11, 2024

OKEMAH, Oklahoma -- When Evan Haney, Seminole, was in the military in Vietnam, he suffered a trauma. He found a culture like his own, and found he was fighting the wrong war, Evan said during the Convening of the Four Winds gathering on Sunday.

Evan spent the rest of his life fighting the United States government.

"We're fighting the wrong war," he remembered saying to himself.

"When I got back to the states I was totally against the United States, I found the right war, I found Alcatraz."

Evan dedicated himself to the American Indian Movement and began traveling throughout the country in the struggles.

Then, he went home to Seminole, and as he started to leave again, his dad told him that he had been traveling all over. "Look over your shoulder, and you'll see injustice."

Evan brought his struggle home.

"We didn't give those up, we started doing it in our own backyard."

After he graduated from high school in 1968, injustices were everywhere.

Evan described how the railroads seized the land for 11 railroads through the Seminole Nation.

Evan said the southern Keystone pipeline was completed on tribal lands in Oklahoma because they could always find a tribal council or chief that would make deals underneath the board -- so they were able to sneak permissions through. He pointed out that on the northern border, it required presidential approval because it crossed the international  border.

After millions were awarded Seminoles for land stolen for the railroads, a long struggle was then underway to actually receive the money. "We're the landlords," Evan recalled the people saying, "Pay up."

There was COINTELPRO. "They set up traditionalists for trying to burn up a steel and concrete railroad."

With legal action and rallies for support, the convictions were overturned.

During those years, he said the U.S. government and BIA instilled their own chief, and manipulated elections to keep their chosen chief in power. That's when the U.S. government came up with the idea of "mysterious absentee ballots pulled out of their hats."

"They did everything that the Republicans are doing today," Evan said, describing how the U.S. intimidated and terrorized the people.

As the people rose up, the U.S. government responded with either failing to recognize the real elected leaders, or cutting off U.S. funding.

"Whenever you get up in their face, that's how they do it."

"There were always bogus chiefs, bogus councils, to set up shop as it was before."

This is when the people emerged and chose the name Seminole Nation Treaty People.

"That's the name we have had all these years."

Evan spoke on Palestine and the genocide.

"I have always stood in solidarity with the Palestinian people, and also with the Kurds," he said, adding that there are Indigenous Peoples in Ukraine.

Evan pointed out that the Seminole Nation is the smallest reservation in Oklahoma.

"You could fit three Gaza strips inside the Seminole Nation."

Describing the injustices, Evan pointed out that Oklahoma had even appropriated their tribal flag.

"Thank you for letting me get this off my chest," Evan told the gathering.

Read more in the five-part series from the Convening of the Four Winds gathering at the Phillip Deere Round House in Okemah, Oklahoma, September 7 -- 8, 2024, at Censored News.

Seminole Evan Haney: Fighting the Right War, Bringing the Resistance Home

https://bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2024/09/seminole-evan-haney-fighting-right-war.html

'Bringing the Ancestors Home,' Les Willison, Choctaw

https://bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2024/09/bringing-ancestors-home.html

Convening of the Four Winds, Day 2
https://bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2024/09/listen-live-convening-of-four-winds-at.html

Defending the Ancestors: Voices from the Phillip Deere Round House
https://bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2024/09/defending-ancestors-voices-from-phillip.html

Live from the Phillip Deere Roundhouse: Day 1: Convening of the Four Winds
https://bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2024/09/live-now-from-phillip-deere-roundhouse.html