Indigenous Person vs banks: Straightgoods.com
 
Date: Wed, 8 Feb 2006 12:45:59 -0600 (CST)

from: http://www.straightgoods.ca/ViewFeature6.cfm?REF=84
CIBC and me, take three

In which Stewart explains the Indian Act to collection agencies.

Dateline: Monday, February 06, 2006

by Stewart Steinhauer

This morning I received three phone calls in a row from Toronto. If I 
didn't know better, I would almost think that they were coordinated. The 
third caller, a nice man named Jason Holland, calling on behalf of Collect 
Corp, wanted to know if I intended to repay the $29,975.45 debt that his 
company must have purchased from CIBC. As with the other two earlier 
callers, I warned him that our conversation was probably being recorded by 
my dear friend Cease, from CSIS, and perhaps some other more secretive 
friends wink wink nod nod.

We had a lively discussion. In the middle part, where I was trying to 
explain to him my concern for CIBC's, and all other Canadian corporations' 
illegal operating position, operating as they do under combinations of 
federal and provincial authorities which in turn are based on Canada's 
illegal occupation of indigenous lands, and Canada's illegal removal of 
resource, and illegal claim to property rights the subject of Canada's 
Indian Act came up. Jason wanted to know how the Indian Act had anything to 
do with my little native protest. So I asked him if he knew what the Indian 
Act says. No, he didn't know anything about the Indian Act, subsequently 
referring to it as the native act or whatever.

I then asked him if he was a Canadian, to which he responded "Yes". Then I 
asked him why, if he was a Canadian, he didn't know anything about Canada's 
Indian Act.

It must have been irritating to him because he said that if I had issues 
with how Canada does business, then I should move. His statement and 
attitude reminded me of the letter published in the Grand Prairie Daily 
Herald Tribune, by P Watts, the whole of which is somewhere else on my 
indigenius.biz website, but from which I'll quote these lines:

"(name protected), who is a chief in Manitoba, is appealing to the UN to 
see that natives get their rights. I say, give them the right to get the 
hell out of Canada and live with the Europeans whom I'm sure would end all 
their BS once and for all."

I was in Europe, in April 2005, by special invitation from a group of 
universities there studying Canada. In the course of my travels around 
Poland, I chanced to meet quite a few grassroots people (funny how they 
seem to be all over the planet). In one humble home, invited to share food, 
speaking through a translator, a 60-something man asked me if there were 
any indigenous Peoples still living in their traditional way of life, 
inside of Canada.

No, I replied, lightly, we were pushed into euro-lifestyles over one 
hundred years ago, where I live. I was shocked by his response, which 
wasn't verbal. He literally crumbled right before my eyes. I could see 
intense pain in his eyes as he stared at me. I started to feel embarrassed, 
like, "Hey man, get over it, we have." It was sort of like the feeling I 
got when a visiting Maori woman started to push me about our water 
situation, here at Saddle Lake. "You've got to do something! You can't just 
sit there and take it!" My initial response was to want her to shut up. 
What can we do?

That was my third trip to Europe, and nowhere did I hear support for the 
attitude expressed by P Watts, above, or Jason Holland during our lively 
discussion. No, on the contrary, the Europeans I met consider that a grave 
crime has been committed by nations like Canada, crimes against humanity, 
up to and including genocide....

whole article at: http://www.straightgoods.ca/ViewFeature6.cfm?REF=84

Penney Kome, author and journalist
http://penneykome.ca
Editor, Straight Goods, http://straightgoods.com