Topic 1108 [PEN-L:1322] Sovereign Nations With meisenscher Labor News & Notes 2:33 PM Dec 7, 1998 (at igc.org) ------- Forwarded Message Follows ------- From: "James Michael Craven" Organization: Clark College, Vancouver WA, USA To: president@whitehouse.gov, jcraven@clark.edu Date: Mon, 7 Dec 1998 10:04:36 PST8PDT Subject: Sovereign Nations Within a Nation Priority: normal Dear Mr. President: I am writing to you as a member of the Blackfoot Confederacy to protest and register very strong indignation at the official positions being taken by your State Department at the UN Conference on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in Geneva Switzerland. Your Administration has taken the position that American Indians have only individual rights--those of any other American Citizen--and not collective or Tribal/National Rights of Self-determination. The official position of your Administration: a) Would summarily deny or abrogate existing Treaties with Indian Nations (Nations do not make Treaties with their own individual citizens only with other Sovereign Nations); b) Would summarily violate and deny the core principles of the Vienna Convention the definitive, International Law of Treaties; c) Would summarily do what hundreds of years of infected blankets, alcohol and drugs, stolen lands, the BIA and other forms and instruments of Genocide have been unable to completely finish--the total extermination and extinction of Indian Nations as Nations; d) would violate several Articles of the UN Convention on Genocide (that it took the U.S. over 40 years to sign and still the U.S. remains arrogantly outside of with the Lugar-Helms-Hatch "Sovereignty Amendment of 1988)--specifically, Article II (b) "Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group", (c) "Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part", and (e) "Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group"; and in addition, all of the sub-sections of Article III. This may seem to you to be hyperbole, but the fact is that it is integration with non-Indian American society that has accelerated rather than ameliorated the conditions leading to the destruction/extinction of Indian Nations, Cultures and even individual Indians. What is left of Indian Cultures and Peoples remains only as a result of refusal to integrate or assimilate and collective protection/enforcement of Treaties and collective Rights, and the position of your Administration would arrogantly and summarily define away Sovereign Rights embodied in legitimate Treaties--already broken and betrayed on so many occasions and for narrow interests. We do not beg you to "give" us Collective Rights of Self-Determination and National Sovereignty, we demand and assert them as a matter of the same principles and concepts of International Law and Covenants to which the U.S. Government regularly holds other Nations --and to which we have been held--enforced through bloody projections of U.S. military power. No Nation can remain a Great Nation and engage in arrogance, bullying and summary abrogations of principles of International Law that it demands to be held for itself only. Please reverse this official position immediately and: a) Recognize officially the Right of Indigenous Peoples of the U.S. to the Status and Recognition of all Indigenous Peoples throughout the World; b) Support the International Right of Self-Determination for All Indigenous Peoples; c) Support the Draft UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples as currently written; d) Acknowledge that International Human Rights must embrace both Individual and Collective (National Sovereignty/Survival) Rights; e) Acknowledge and affirm that all Treaties between the U.S. and Indigenous Peoples are binding International Documents subject to interpretation and enforcement by impartial international Tribunals and International Law; Pay the US dues owed to the UN as other Nations have and must pay, and stop the hypocrisy, superpower/imperial arrogance and selective interpretation/enforcement of International Law. Differnetial treatment under the law and differential enforcement of Law--Domestic or International--only facilitates anarchy and Social Darwinism that ultimately destroys even its beneficiaries. Sincerely, James M. Craven Member, Blackfoot Confederacy Professor, Economics Biographical Subject in Marquis "Who's Who in: The World, America, The West, Science and Engineering, Finance and Industry James Craven Dept. of Economics,Clark College 1800 E. McLoughlin Blvd. Vancouver, WA. 98663 jcraven@clark.edu; Tel: (360) 992-2283 Fax: 992-2863 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- -------------------------- "The utmost good faith shall always be observed towards Indians; their land and property shall never be taken from them without their consent." (Northwest Ordinance, 1787, Ratified by Congress 1789) "To speak of atrocious crimes in mild language is treason to virtue." (Edmund Burke) "I am aware that many object to the severity of my language; but is there not cause for severity? I will be as harsh as truth,and as uncompromising as justice. On this subject, I do not wish to think,or speak,or write with moderation. No! No! Tell a man whose house is on fire to give a moderate alarm; tell him to moderately rescue his wife from the hands of the ravisher; tell the mother to gradually extricate her babe from the fire into which it has fallen; but urge me not to use moderation in a cause like the present. I am in ernest-- I will not equivocate--I will not excuse. I will not retreat a single inch--and I will be heard. (William Lloyd Garrison, 1831, Abolitionist Leader) *My Employer has no association with My Private and Protected Opinion* ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------- James Craven Dept. of Economics,Clark College 1800 E. McLoughlin Blvd. Vancouver, WA. 98663 jcraven@clark.edu; Tel: (360) 992-2283 Fax: 992-2863 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- -------------------------- "The utmost good faith shall always be observed towards Indians; their land and property shall never be taken from them without their consent." (Northwest Ordinance, 1787, Ratified by Congress 1789) "To speak of atrocious crimes in mild language is treason to virtue." (Edmund Burke) "I am aware that many object to the severity of my language; but is there not cause for severity? I will be as harsh as truth,and as uncompromising as justice. On this subject, I do not wish to think,or speak,or write with moderation. No! No! Tell a man whose house is on fire to give a moderate alarm; tell him to moderately rescue his wife from the hands of the ravisher; tell the mother to gradually extricate her babe from the fire into which it has fallen; but urge me not to use moderation in a cause like the present. I am in ernest-- I will not equivocate--I will not excuse. I will not retreat a single inch--and I will be heard. (William Lloyd Garrison, 1831, Abolitionist Leader) *My Employer has no association with My Private and Protected Opinion* ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------- Conf?