cree coordinator or spokesperson for a very very interesting organization called the league of indigenous sovereign nations of the western hemisphere and goodly good leave his his angle prize beleaguered indigenous author nations of the western hemisphere what it is what the organization is your spokesperson for what is it about and what's going on around the league of indigenous sovereign nations of the western hemisphere was formed in one nine one as a organization to us successfully lobby the possible two hundred million indigenous peoples of the western hemisphere to form one great alliance of indian nations  in order for us to politically empower ourselves and within the world in reno you know you know right to two hundred million there it's estimated a possible two hundred million hundred eighty to two hundred million indigenous people and if i'm not mistaken there's been some halting efforts or something on the part maybe you can fill me in on this what exactly is going on but over at the un at least in the general assembly and it's some or less than general assembly even were they able to muster in a certain sense there was a movement of the world's indigenous people that was attempting to be recognized the importance of understanding the rights of indigenous people in a generic sense around the world who have been colonized by by other  address the problems of the indigenous peoples of the world we would have as far as the indigenous peoples of this hemisphere we would have a voting seat within the united nations we are at this time the only indigenous nations of the world the only peoples of the world who do not have a representative in the united nations and this is what we are lobbying for and when you say well you're talking about the indigent people of the western hemisphere who were here before the european invasion of this new world right and that in a certain sense is probably the largest group of people who could in a certain sense be seen at indigenous people whose human rights have been so so massively and over quite a few tons and oriel and all kinds of mineral wealth after having been exploited by all the land that was taken from us currently what we face is the continue continually against indian people enable short they will stop short of nothing short of total annihilation of the indian people in order to get this these natural resources and one of them being spiritual senses of just which is part of us and we see this as being our strength right now and as far as the listen movement goes unifying unifying factor in this movement others that came to the northern hemisphere into what was it was not the united states that brought with them institutions from europe and they brought with them what was the death of nation of those cultures that were  it lacked the feeling but they were come up in the recent experience of ecology or feeling for the environment of the great spirit that was part of the culture of the people that were here particularly i think perhaps i'm not sure particularly in north amount that there was this feeling of what we now try to call ecology but a feeling of the connectedness of all of life forms that was in princeton to the peoples who were aboriginal here and was rough rough shod run over by the european well it was their early ignored legacy getting back to the where they lost the ideal of humanity was backing off the fourteen ninety ninety two there was a hemisphere other other points that the united nations as we see it is that where everybody is touting the united nations as being such a great nippert and power and a great idea over the years we've we've seen that through like the indian reorganization act the indian allotment act all these little acts of congress were whittling away at the rights of indigenous peoples little by little well come the ninety's we got in the the eighty's we started getting hip to what they were doing and started to effectively lobby certain governors and things of that nature to put a halt to this well once they found out that we were hip to this  they had to change their tactics so they laid low a little bit and they came up with this great idea that now they can use the united nations as a front instead of the army of the cavalry going in and killing the indian people iran and kuwait this is george bush's new world order of head thumping united nations army peacekeeping force in the name of the you know in the name of the united nations now so now with this army this is this effective army that has been put together and we've seen it in in kuwait and we've seen it in somalia we see this all over the happening all of the all over the world now we see this also as if the united nations  has this army and we are effective in uniting our forces here in the western hemisphere this army can go into any small nation el salvador nicaragua honduras any of these nations who are unified with us custer didn't really die at wounded knee i mean little big horn is alive and well and he's living in south america right now they're facing the same problems the same genocide there that we faced here two hundred years ago  so it is within our duty to present this to the world to the world community as a whole and let them know what is going on in the name of the united nations you know and that's why you were able to put together in a world community that we are not going to take it anymore we're not going to stand by and i really watch as our lands are being decimated as our people are being killed the continual rape of the mother earth the genocide that's being practiced against the indigenous people of this country and this hemisphere yeah by the powers and by by the powers that be the world the world court the world try to trilateral commission the world courts yeah and that there are many peoples in the world we were speaking with earlier earlier people there many of you in the world this there are many people in the around in the islamic world many people in the arabic world who feel as though we went in the death and made it iraq and rails maybe a quarter of a million people very people alive we don't want to be one of our of this tremendous technological capability but many of the people themselves in the street and the masses of the people who are not part of complying governments that are willing to kiss the hem of american or western european powers or something of that sort are really very much around the world much less than we might understand from our own establishment media there's beginning to be stirrings among the masses against the overweening power the powers that be and one of the major movements in that term might be the indigenous peoples of the americas themselves rights we realize that there are several other indigenous nations of the world however through the  what listen itself is doing in this hemisphere we have as one of our long range goals creating a global agenda once we get ourselves and our acts together here in this continent or in this  africa i mean this is where we all first evolved and there were my great courting according to some thought according to you most of the scientific thought now that would except that you know the author looked at the scene in houma bilis and you know the whole get paid paley into logical record and so forth like in the americas there's no there's no what was the one third of the world which is the americas it was there's no evidence of any what would have been called protocol man there was no ospital put the scene or any of throws look for if they can get us to to get people the major majority of people to believe this then they can justify that in their own minds and justified to the rest of the general public who just eat this stuff up that we don't have any right to be here either no i don't think that's that necessarily follows i mean i don't think there's any question of that i mean i don't think they've ever found any evidence the first people to come into you know into the new world were fully developed homosapien there were no  human noids to be found in this new world the people came in maybe forty thousand years ago thirty thousand to go to like i said again this is according to history if you break as far as the is that as far as the current history in america in the americas but they have found they have radio carbon dated and found other things that you won't hear in  the general in the major media but this is like the whole thing where they if they do let you know this then people are going to start wondering what else is it that they're not telling you what else what other truths there are well i mean there are there are things there were and they had to have been carbon dated successfully more than more than forty thousand years ago in the united states in the southwest that there are that are related to human or they're related to human people although that would be interesting evidence for me to find i have and i've got this normally got good notion plenty then you know you could do this i don't know how far back to go but the point is there were these people that were here and all these people in the world and  that that was eastern most extension of mankind if we began in africa and strangely we were able to transfer cross the pacific expanse right into this new world but the then the atlantic block until the european renaissance and columbus i mean an ongoing way and that was the so so the people the indigenous peoples of the world in the americas they have a very very  the stamp of these europeans who came into a completely different culture decimated brought diseases brought a whole different view of the world never has there been such a flash in the history of the world between between peoples that had been dammed up for such a long time is sturrock really is that clash between the europeans as they came out of the renaissance and clashed with the indigenous peoples of the americas and established this new pattern that many would seem to say revokable because there's been so many that have come you know what this is this is again this is cool the evidence of the european mindset alcohol of the native indigenous peoples of this kind of this world the western hemisphere here feel that they europeans have lost them their spiritual self so far back that they are the only ones who will go out and essentially search out something that is missing within them to forces them to go out and and to explore are to go because to go other places simply because of the fact you know happy where they are indigenous people here are happy where they are we have we were searching around the world  times before this and the last one just being a flood yeah one of the new you can get it out and it's all the esoterics of it all the different stories the creation stories and we're not you know saying that this is the way it  searching themselves and when they found them what they could essentially call them their spiritual selves or the spiritual brothers on this continent they didn't like what they saw and they realized that while we have to we have to stop here and because if anybody else finds out about but they did they had like in mexico i think they were fifteen million perhaps or so and within about six decades it was down to under a million right had been killed to me just ruthlessly put out there were cases where they actually in north america introduced they've grown back to the numbers that they were at the time of christopher columbus is no i wouldn't go that far we are making a great there's a great comeback however when you have when you start out with several million several hundred million people and by the turn of the century we were down to two hundred thirty nine thousand work here in the united states if that's not genocide yeah absolutely yeah what is yeah right right it was it was the worst genocide i don't know if the worst examples of that that we can draw upon that have been going on every treaty just about was violated then with the pay out of them out of the three hundred seventy one treaties that the united states has signed with the indigenous nations of the united states they have yet to honor one treaty now this and they will not recognize us as nations and in order to make treaties to treat with other countries you have to be a nation and you have to be accepted as on a nation caretakers and throughout the years you've seen time after time of how they have taken these little laws and little acts of congress to effectively strip the indian peoples of all of their of but you saw what happened over there now and the same thing is happening in all over the world and now it's just got a new face this terrorism is going under the face of the united nations all right and then what you're doing with your in is ation and with the organization of the great numbers you have some thousands of people over there at the u n there you are demonstrating the fact and with good discipline and so that there is the effectiveness of these people who aren't going to take it anymore the way they  have to do terribly terrible terrible conditions of poverty to rule out ill health other kinds of conditions that have allowed to go on throughout this period of time they've been terribly ill treated and you're beginning to get yourself one step as in the unification of the indigenous peoples of this hemisphere right what we are talking about is forming the formation of warrior societies where we can take actual control of our lands and seventy five thousand people in el salvador we have fifty thousand or thirty thousand people in guatemala all these people are british inning to join the league of indigenous sovereign nations of western hemisphere very interesting you've got all the people in peru indigenous people how can any army in the world stand up to that you know well look at it a movement that is really important should be understood siren going talking for about sixteen hours you know easily about this and so forth but listen thank you i'm sorry getting worse what is that you asian so far as the indigenous peoples of these western hemisphere from your perspective as we think now and early february one thousand nine hundred three well i believe that the situation with indigenous peoples through the executive branch and through the legislative branches and basically what you have is you've got the united states government working on behalf of the multinational corporation interest on indian lands and when i say that the conditions for indigenous peoples is deteriorating what i basically mean as the whole question of this so called status of sovereignty and self determination for native peoples which was supposed to have been established with deterioration process starts on native lands with the need of the united states government working on behalf of corporations to seize the resources that exist on indian land yeah and we're talking about places like in the black hills we're about policies that are basically enacted in the interest of the wealthy those who control the corporations and that basically means is that the united states government has found it necessary to maintain its whole industrial military complex at the expense in the lives of indigenous peoples as they have from the beginning as they have from the very beginning now this question of sovereignty you talk about sovereignty sovereignty is a people who have the right to rule over their own situation  threat of being imprisoned or and or killed now you're talking about historically and i'm talking historically but i'm saying that even now as we talk right now there are many nations throughout the western hemisphere there are many nations in north america that have a st r status that we have maintain as a sovereign people meaning that we have a large land mass media that we have the ability to define our own economic basis we want the total victims of the scorched earth policies to where we couldn't control our own economy we have the ability to produce enough material for our own survival's we have our own form of self governing we have just the northeastern quarter of the united states and in parts of canada we have in the course confederation we  have the great law the great law is going federal see the great law was one of the most ingenious political systems ever devised by man by human beings and this was done in the thirteenth century by a prophet and a visionary a political statesman by the name of begun a we do and the united states government the so called founding fathers of the american revolution thought that this does form a political system a true democratic process a two thirds majority vote  bird the separations of the legislative powers of the judicial powers of the executive powers all these concepts that eventually became written into the to the to the congress and into the constitution introduced the right to control our own economies the right to govern ourselves the right to practice own spiritual beliefs and maintain our culture we haven't really wished that where excuse me where it has been relinquishes one of people by throughout various forms of missionary tack ex which is always been the it's always been the kind of collaboration it's always existed between the church and the state they sent the church in right to try to missionize the so called  christian thinking people so they would send the christians in to tell the indigenous peoples lay down your arms yeah and pray to god or read it is jesus you know and as you're laying down your arms ok then that before people start to buy what lands there's a lot of indian peoples throughout the western hemisphere there's eighty million plus if we were out to him is there all the whole western hemisphere and the question of sovereignty a lot of people you know that's a lot of people and the question of the league of indigenous sovereign nations it's we're not promoting an aggressive posture by any sense what we are promoting though is the need of indigenous people indian people throughout the whole western hemisphere unique culture with a unique culture was a land base a national identity find territories have their own languages have their own culture govern em selves and they're not imposed by neo colonial forms of governing  called tribal council systems or bang council systems in canada or the various military oligarchy is their control and some from south america indigenous peoples on their own lands or every move them through processes of relocation in the name of some state power system that is overriding which is really whatever has state power is more like a corporate power and it was directed by the board of directors of the corporations they have the interest on in the alliance but what our ideal is and what we feel that it's necessary for us to do in the league and in the league is to come from a defensive posture to unite ourselves into a confederation of all sovereign nations to move to every single indigenous nation that maintains  instance the nation which you know as the the navajo and your audience knows of the navajo people there are three hundred fifty thousand and eight people living on millions of acres of land the about the same size as the state of maine now that's three hundred fifty thousand people ok they enjoy with the amount of numbers they enjoy a certain limited form of sovereignty even though they are basically there's a dichotomy that exist on different indian nations we don't like to use the word reservations ok because we're independent nations but  nations a dichotomy this split that basically exists is that you have you have those who are tribal the elected tribal council systems doing the dirty work for the government aid need to betting that the interest of corporations and the government again you've got within within the american system like the the rest of it and this is the plan is to go down between yourselves as zend and there's this conflict here and i would say that the overriding representation within indigenous nations is the traditional people except at the traditional people excuse me find it very hard to defend themselves against an armed government with an armed police force called the b i police standing armies and it's right to back them up all the way whenever a conflict of interest of the lay in the interest of the government is is leaning toward some kind of internal insurgency a with all the weight of the state and power of the state behind it so these public systems to some upper regimes have all of that power and that backing of the traditional people of the ones that end up being in houses that are broken down they don't have any windows they got cardboard boxes you know over their windows and sleep on mud floors yeah they're probably the most disadvantaged people in our society and it was said in the one that that one hundred acres of land in the black black hills is minerals the richest mineral resources and you rein him in gold in silver and orioles it is the richest one hundred acres of one hundred mile track of land in the world billions of dollars of resources of minerals would come out of there but the blood go to people at the dakota people are starving to death  and they're dying from every kind of form of malnutrition from all kinds of diseases imposed by the civilization yeah of euro centric mentalities and economic would you've been imposed upon them from the very beginning and left in seen as pariahs they've seen them as pariahs and the suffered this terrible kind of situation which which brings us to the reason why we need to unite and confederate because we have to take a posture of defense against the ongoing rape of our land made to the people who people who if they did have one of the value systems that was so ruthlessly overturned in this you know the onslaught of all the european settlers of war they came here was that those people study and everything became a scientific fact and if enough if it didn't exist beyond that everything was outside yourself and so everything that you could develop on a material level that became your whole thrust your god became the matter and now you can exploit that matter and how you can make life easy for yourself and screw the rest of the world is the complete opposite of the underlying philosophy that was part of the aboriginal people were here and so you see what getting back to the big mountain issue as as as a case in point  yeah the united states government passed a bill in ninety three days five thirty one which called for the forced relocation of fifteen thousand and eight people at big mountain this was an eight hundred seventy four this was one nine hundred seventy four  dig up all these horrors they dig up all this coal they get all the sulfur poisoning and the aqua fares the people drink the water united states government says well we've got to get rid of these these traditional people that can barely speak english now what we've got to get rid of these them let's get a name to go on indian land those forced b m to reduce and slaughter ninety percent of all of the sheep belonging to the families granny i'm telling is getting in the water and people are dying from different forms of diseases and all babies are coming out with no brains can you imagine that on how many indian peoples how many indian women's up being systematically sterilized by this contamination of radiation on native lands you know you you ought to be able to make in a certain sense from the roots of your own spiritual and cultural traditions you were tuned to this kind of thing more than w that euro centric or european culture that was imposed upon you and it seems to me from the core of the spirit of what is intrinsic to this is to dish in the sense of things make common cause in a certain sense with people of an ec logical mind as far as this world organizational situation as we see the thrust of civilized western society raping the world there's a great deal of opposition to that is beginning in kuwait level or even to the increasingly you know articulated level people who would be able to make common cause with the traditional roots of the philosophy and spiritual values that were held by the people who navigate this land before the europeans came well i would ask the environmental movement i mean very very very specifically what and whoever that is specifically i would ask the environmental movement wiring they have yet to take a stand against the united states government trying to get contracts with the government through the e p a the department of energy why are they trying to take this ukrainian out of our lands where is the environmental people there to stop these corporations from get these ta into our water then i would ask the environmental people why haven't they been moved or assisted us to stop the united states government from taking this nuclear waste and trying to sell it back to was try to take some if i may try and get some lessons from  you in the values that you have in order to teach more widely the world about the importance of there being a sense of reverence for the land which is an intrinsic value that you had of an advent all along and it was ignored laughed at and made fun of and so forth over the long history of a you know since since the beginning of the european entry year i'm trying to think the root of the philosophical basis and sense of connectedness to the land can be found among you people more than it can be among the european overlord and the reality of that that understanding is it's a spiritual relationship it's a knowledge of suspense of oneness with the land in creation absolutely and you see european people and those who have been assimilated by european thought  good to to look at the traditional people absolutely see how the tradition of people live in a sense of oneness and more than anything else moved to was system moved to assist us to defend what we the next couple years is going to be very trying traumatically trying for indigenous peoples who have resources on their land corporations are going to escalate their interest beyond belief domestic resources and minerals and those domestic resources have already been shown to us that what they have cited through the bureau of land management sort of partly terrier from clooney ministration james what's sacrifice areas of course if these are national sacrifice areas for the corporations that we must be a national sacrifice people which is true it is a long right you're talking about the united states but that sense also exists without your it were against the thrust of an overweening out of control ecologically inappropriate technologically mad raping the environmental kind of thrust of western civilization now it might come right of destruction right now and if we look to where we can learn from is from the people that we so open handedly derided for so long cast doubt call uncivilized told to becomes a lie told them to become like us of greed allegiance fostered among indigenous people of greed allegiance fostered amongst all progressive thinking people there must be an allegiance for survival the survival of the planet the survival of the people the worst tyrants have yet to raise their heads make hitler look like a child in comparison you really sense that is i who is going to be this is not coming it's here you know his lurking the international monetary fund and the world bank and those that control them agencies within the so called united nations structures i mean it's a holocaust that's been perpetuated in central and south america these debts for natures countries like colombia costa rica honduras getting all these countries to alleviate just the are being subject to massive relocations and i'm the millions along the whole eastern coastline of central and south american you know there have these other countries that are serving the u s interest yeah they will have them do the dirty work a relocating for all and therefore street for all of that oil for all that natural gas for all that gold for all that you really what makes us wonder when time when we need to have a new thinking a new empathetic understanding of things and it is in a certain sense a poetic justice in a certain sense that the places to which we would go in order to find those lessons in the most pristine form are those few of you who have been able to hold against all of the forces of assimilation against all the forces that would put you down hold to those traditional values so that you can teach us justice thing that it has been able to do that now what do you do you are organizing the league and we are to let people know how we can get in touch with you and i saw that they were talking crack in terms of people who are in the audience would be able to get in touch with you some organizing up here in new york city yes so you're getting yourselves together this really thing how long it we've only got about a minute left how long have you all been getting that together this league as an institute or as an orleans and so far we have been we have brought this  into concept and as we had the first draft of the constitution and two years ago only two years yes it is an assumption all wise and for the last five years yeah right but within two years we have a number of nations that have already very much indeed and all the best to you thank you good night we'll see you next week the universal declaration of human rights adopted by the united nations forty years ago may not be a legally binding document it is rather a promise made by all the members of the united nations to the people of the world we at amnesty international believe that the governments who have adopted the declaration have a moral responsibility to keep that promise right amnesty international post office box three seven one three seven washington d c two double zero one three this may be the best kept secret in the world the universal declaration of human rights forty years ago the united nations wrote and adopted every single member country promise to support it every single one they also promised to teach publicized and displayed have you ever heard of it the universal declaration of human rights to get your copyright amnesty international p r box three seven one three seven washington d c two double zero one three