Canada is in fact a corporation – Mohawk Indian elder
Part II Interview with Mohawk Kahentinetha Horn
When the Europeans first arrived in
the Americas the native people’s welcomed them and allowed them to stay
on their lands. The European invaders soon decided that the only way to
steal the lands and all of their riches was to classify the people that
were living there as non-humans. This precipitated the worst genocide in
the history of the world. Kahentinetha Horn, a Mohawk Indian elder and a
member of the Bear Clan retells the tragic history of the Mohawks and
the rightful inhabitants of Great Turtle Island.
This
is John Robles, I am speaking with Kahentinetha Horn, she’s a Mohawk
Indian and a member of the Bear Clan. She is also the owner and
publisher of the Mohawk News web resource.
(Kahentinetha Horn, Bear Clan, Mohawk Nation, Kahnawake community on Great Turtle Island.)
Robles:
Western democracies were based on Indian law and Indian relationships
between nations and tribes and clans. In Europe they had monarchies,
there was no such concept as democracy.
Horn:
No, they didn’t and they still don’t understand true democracy. They
call it democracy, they call themselves liberal democracies but in fact
the way we see it looking at it, it is very autocratic, it is a very
autocratic hierarchical governing system with somebody at the top and
then everybody else beneath obeying that person at the top. That is
totally opposite to our system.
I mean ours is kind of
like an upside-down pyramid; the people are the ones that make all the
decisions and we have a criteria we have to follow, peace, righteousness
in power, and it all comes from our philosophy. We can’t violate our
philosophy. We have to think about it, we have to enforce it and
basically what it is is that it creates a peace that we want, the
balance between us and let’s say we have adversaries, well, we have to
find a way to balance the peaceful relationship with whoever our
adversaries are. If they don’t want to become peaceful with us and
follow the Great Law, then we have to fight with them.
Robles: What advice would you give to current world leaders to solve all the problems in the world?
Horn:
Well, the Great Law peace is there, that is our philosophy. They can
follow the roots of peace to the source, sit and take shade under the
tree and learn about the Great Law. That is what we do, that is what we
are trying to train and put into the minds of the people all over the
world.
There doesn’t have to be war. War is part of the
way the world is run, you have people that want money and more money,
and more money, and so what they do is they create war and it’s an
ongoing war there is never an end to war and they want money and then
they want resources and the resources they want belong to somebody else,
so they’ve got to go on in there and create a war and start destroying
those people and bringing them into submission and they take the land of
the indigenous people, they take the resources and so on, and then when
the people fight back, you know like here, we, the indigenous people
have been the target of genocide from the day that Europeans arrived
here, that the invaders first set foot here.
They came
to us, and we said well, the only way you can live on Great Turtle
Island is that you have to follow the Two Row Wampum, they said “what is
that?”.
Well the Two Row is the two paths, the two
paths that are parallel and you have to follow your path and we have to
follow ours, and you have to maintain your own ways, your own language
and we will show you how to live here and you can run your own
communities but you can never ever have the land because the land
belongs to the future generations, and we in our canoe, you in your ship
and we in our canoe, we go down that river and we maintain all of the
land, all of the waters, all of the resources, they don’t belong to us,
we belong to it, to the natural world.
So, when we have
that peace, called the Great Peace of Montreal in 1701, all of the
nations of Great Turtle Island came to make this agreement with the
French, French said yes, we said “Ok, if you agree to the Two Row
Wampum, then we will allow you to live here, this will be kind of like
your visa or your passport or whatever. You can stay here but if you
violate that, then you have no right to be here. That means you haven’t
come to one mind with us, you are breaking, you are breaching this
agreement”.
So, then at the same time we went down to
Albany, the British were down there and they said they wanted to have
the same kind of agreement as the one we had in the Great Peace of
Montreal. Now that was signed by 49 of our nations on behalf of all of
the nations of Great Turtle Island, so the British agreed to it and they
wrote it up themselves and they called it the Nanfan Treaty of 1701.
Robles: But then they violated it.
Horn:
Then they breached it as well. So, that was the only treaty that ever
gave the immigrants, or the invaders, any right to live here and they
breached it.
So, they are occupiers, illegal occupiers of Great Turtle Island today, from that time on till today.
On
top of that we never gave up our land and we never gave up our
resources. Nothing, we never gave up any of it because we can’t and so,
the corporation was set up called “The Corporation of the United States”
and “the Corporation of Canada”.
Corporation of
Canada, which has the same shareholders, the old royal families in
Europe are the shareholders of these corporations. Actually their the
bankers, who are the shareholders, they set up this Corporation of
Canada.
And I was speaking at a college and I pulled up
this… I said “look at this number”, and the students looked at it. I
said “Do you know what that number is?”
They said; “No.”
I said “that is the number of the corporation of Canada, you can find it on the Internet”.
It
is incorporated in Washington DC. It is a corporation with shareholders
and it is under the admiralty laws, the laws of the sea. So they have
no right to come to our land and place themselves on our land and set up
these courts and governments and everything else, they have no right to
do that.
That is a complete and total violation of the
Great Peace of Montreal and Two Row Wampum, the basic foundations of
that peace and it also even violates their own laws of the seas.
So,
now, right now what has happened is they have no right to our resources
but Canada has the most resources that are necessary to make war. We
have all the resources that are needed plus, I will tell you what else;
in 1867 the British North-America Act was passed and it supposedly set
up Canada, it was supposedly the constitution, but it was passed by the
British parliament and in it is section 109.
Section
109 says that an account will be set up for the indigenous people and
all of the monies coming from all of the royalties or anything that is
made, of their rents, everything that is made on the resources of
Canada, a portion of it first it shall go into this account, and it is
called the Indian Trust Fund.
So, all the monies went
into that account and immediately upon that happening the corporation of
Canada passed an illegal law, a bylaw, which is all a corporation can
do, and they called it the Indian Act and in it they said that a person
is anybody other than an Indian.
So, we then were
declared as non-person. And so they became the trustees of our money, of
our funds, of the Indian Trust Fund, and now they have been using our
Indian Trust Fund to build Canada.
You were
listening to an interview with Kahentinetha Horn, a Mohawk Indian an a
member of a Bear Clan, and an owner and publisher of the
Mohawknationnews.com.
Visit our website in the near future to listen to the final part of this interview.
Many
of the indigenous peoples of North America called the continent “Great
Turtle Island.” A part of their advanced philosophy and culture included
a complex and extremely developed constitution called the Great Path.
The Mohawk were responsible for maintaining the peace and were the
guardians of the Great Law which was supposed to bring peace not only to
North America but to the entire world. Kahentinetha Horn spoke to John
Robles about the history of the Mohawk, American Indian culture and
beliefs and current issues of important to the indigenous people of
“Great Turtle Island.” Please visit our website in the near future for a
continuation of this very revealing interview.
This
is John Robles, I’m speaking with Kahentinetha Horn she is Mohawk
Indian Elder and a member of the Bear Clan. She is also the owner and
publisher of the Mohawk News web-resource.
Robles: Hello Kahentinetha! How are you this evening?
Kahentinetha:(Speaks
Mohawk: "it is nice to speak with you. we have much to tell you about
what we are doing on great turtle island. our great law of peace is the
path to peace based on our understanding of the great natural power
kasatstensera kowa sa oiera)
Robles: Can you translate that now for us?
Kahentinetha:
Those are my greetings in Mohawk. And I introduced which is the Great
Turtle Island, which is what we call North America; we never call it
that, we call it “Great Turtle Island.”
People who live on Great Turtle Island are the (Speaks Mohawk) which means “the True Natural People of Great Turtle Island.”
And
we follow: we have a developed constitution called which means the “Great Path”. And the Great Path is the great
path to peace. Our philosophy is based on our understanding and our
awareness of the natural world. That’s a little bit about us.
Robles: Okay.
As all North American Indians, the basis of beliefs are: respect for
nature and the Great Spirit. Can you tell us a little bit in particular
about the Mohawk Nation and what you are doing to promote the issues
that are important to the indigenous peoples?
Kahentinetha:
The Mohawk, also known as (Kanien'gehaga), are the “Keepers of the
Eastern Door of Great Turtle Island.” So, we are in the east and we were
placed there by our (Speaks Mohawk) that’s the Great Natural Power.
That’s where we were placed. And we were to watch for people who would
be coming from the east. And so, that’s why we are called the Keepers of
the Eastern Door.
We
traversed throughout the eastern part of Great Turtle Island right from
the north all the way down to the south. We traveled and we met all the
other indigenous peoples, and we got to know each other. And we formed
friendships and alliances that last to this day. There were hundreds and
hundreds of indigenous nations.
The
Mohawk had the responsibility to maintain the peace. We always feel
that we have to do that because the Great Law which is our philosophy
(Speaks Mohawk) we were the first ones to take it, to accept it. And
because we were the first ones to do that, we have always been
responsible for maintaining it and to maintain the peace which is what
the Great Law is all about.
The
Great Law of Peace is to bring peace not just to the Great Turtle
Island but throughout the world. That’s why that law was given to our
people. The Mohawk have this very… you know. We feel it! Right inside
ourselves.
We are the
eagle that sits on top of the Tree of Peace and we look out to see any
danger that is coming towards us. And we give a warning, a loud scream
to the people. That’s how the Mohawk Nation News came into existence.
I was raised as … I only spoke Mohawk until I was about 10 years old.
Robles: Wonderful!
Kahentinetha:
Then, I had to learn to speak English. So, then, in 1990 we were
defending the land. The women are what we call the “Title Holders of the
Land” because we are tired to the land and we are the creators, and we
hold the land for the future generations that are not here yet.
The
women are the ones that have the children, that bear the children and
the men have the duty of protecting the women and the children along
with all their other duties. They imitate the responsibilities of the
Sun; to provide heat, provide warmth, provide protection, help provide
food and to teach the children, all these things to be our diplomats,
our teachers, to travel and meet other native people.
The
women: our responsibilities come from whatever the Earth does, which is
to create the children, to help create the food, to feed the children,
to raise them, to help them to become advocates of the Great Law of
Peace. There is a male and female balance, not male or patriarchal or
matriarchal, there is a balance between the male and the female.
Robles: In most tribes the women chose the leaders because they knew the character of the children. Is that also true with the Mohawks?
Kahentinetha:
Yes. Well the people because each one of us has a “Fire,” we have the
individual fire of ourselves which is what inside of us; it is our
intuition, our minds, our energy, that’s called the “Fire of Life.” And
we have the “Fire of the Family” which is people close to us, then the
extended family and then the community, then the clan and then that
extends into the nation, and that extends to the confederacy that we
formed.
So, all these
relationships are connected, all circular and in the very center is
myself, for example. I’m in the center, all of these other circles
around me, these are all my connections. So, my responsibility is
immediately to my own children.
When
a clan selects somebody to become a leader, or to represent us or to be
a spokesman…we don’t have leaders, there is no such thing as a leader
because we are equal, we are all equal and we all have a voice. So, what
happens is that both the men and the women “the People” have a Fire,
the women’s Fire and the men’s Fire, and the men and the women have a
combined Fire, we come together and we will make a selection of somebody
to speak for us, we don’t call them leaders, we call them spokespeople.
And
so the spokesperson represents us for the day only, just for that day.
And the women will tell the chiefs and they will say: “This is the
person we’ve selected and that is the person that will speak for us for
the day.” So, that’s very different from the kind of situation that you
people have, you now. (laughs)
Robles: Sure!
As I understand Western democracies were based on Indian law and Indian
relationships between nations and tribes, and clans. In Europe they had
monarchies, there was no such concept as democracy.
Kahentinetha: No, they didn’t. And they still don’t understand true democracy.
You
were listening to an interview with Kahentinetha Horn – she is a member
of the Mohawk Nation, the Bear Clan, and the owner and publisher of mohawknationnews.com. Part one of this interview, the Mohawks Keepers of the Eastern Door of Great Turtle Island.
Read more: http://english.ruvr.ru/2013_06_07/Canada-is-in-fact-a-corporation-Mohawk-Indian-elder-7758/
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