International Tribune of Indigenous Peoples and Oppressed Nations in The USA - USA On Trial (1992)

Speaker 1: 500 years of greed and hate, you've got nothing to celebrate! 500 years of greed and hate, you've got nothing to celebrate! 500 years of greed and hate, you've got nothing to celebrate! On the calendar, October 12th is not but gone. The truth we're told, it marks the start of death, destruction and lies from the heart. Don't take part in this false celebration, 'cause it represents the total devastation of our people, our culture and our civilization. 'Cause we're told white man gave death and disease. Yet we don't want to celebrate, 'cause no one sees there's no difference between the red and the Jews. Said if the Holocaust was celebrated, people would refuse to—

Speaker 2: The notion of crime against humanity was put into the Nuremberg Charter. To deal with Hitler's attempt to exterminate the Jewish people. And in our opinion, the defendant has perpetrated the exact same offense against Native peoples, African people, Puerto Rican people and the Mexican people here in the United States. There is no legal difference. It is guilty of crimes against humanity. And let me quote you this definition of a crime against humanity: murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation and other inhumane acts committed against any civilian population, or persecutions on political racial or religious grounds, etc. Now, one point that might concern you is the fact that the Nuremberg Charter was promulgated in 1945. How can we use this law to examine practices by the United States government going back to 1787? First, it is our position that these offenses are still continuing today against Native peoples, people of color here in North America. These are ongoing offenses that have a long history, in some cases going back 500 years. And this needs to stop. We are not talking about the past.

Speaker 3: Since time immemorial, Western archaeologists say, for at least 2,000 years, our ancestors founded our nation in the Mid-Pacific Islands. That was before there was an England, and, of course, long before there was a United States.

Speaker 4: Thank you.

Speaker 3: At the time of the illegal armed invasion of our homeland and theft of our nation, our population had fallen from almost a million to 40,000. That is over 95% eradication of our people, genocide and holocaust. Thank you. By any definition. And at that time, in 1893, we were already outnumbered by 50,000 foreigners. We numbered just 40,000. Already we were outnumbered by 50,000 foreigners, 20,000 whites and 30,000 Asian indentured immigrant laborers to work on the plantations of the white men. Indeed. So the occupation, illegal occupation, by our nation, by the United States, has persisted in worsening our health, social, economic, as well as political conditions.

Speaker 1: Yes.

Speaker 3: So, in our homeland today, we Kanaka Maoli constitute only 20% of the total population. Out of a total population of about 1 million, we number now only 200,000. We suffer the worst health profile of all ethnic peoples in our homeland, the shortest life expectancy, the highest rates of death for the major mortality diseases and chronic illnesses. But we also have the worst educational academic records. Less than 50% of us have high school diplomas.

Speaker 5: Well, I think that we have to understand that the United States government, which continues to wage genocide against African people, viewed not only African people, but people of color as less than human beings, and that there's a thing in the cultural mindset of Europe that prepared Europe for the game of genocide against people of color all over the world, including African people.

Speaker 6: Historically, Africans in America have been denied the necessary medical care, starting from a perspective of prevention. One knows that in order to maintain health, There are certain predictors. And first of all, you look for preventive health. And that includes education. It includes health maintenance. It includes periodic health examinations and things of that nature. Poverty is— results in not only lack of healthcare, but also in social deprivation, homelessness, helplessness. And drug addiction. It leads to the increased trafficking of drugs in the community, because individuals are trying to find ways to make money. It leads to the increased homicide rate. Poverty is associated with increased infant mortality and low birth weight. Poverty is associated with increased cancer risk and decreased cancer survival among African Americans. It's associated with The increased risk of cardiovascular disease and stroke secondary to stress. All of these things have been documented in the literature. And so poverty is a predictive variable that you will see associated with almost any medical problem, mental problem that can be found in the— among African Americans.

Speaker 7: So, County Hospital of Los Angeles was forcing undocumented women to write certain consents, that in order to receive medical attention, they had to write a consent to be sterilized.

Speaker 4: This is correct. And in other cases, the women, when they were in labor, they were presented with a form, and the doctors over them. They didn't know what was coming.

Speaker 8: We don't—

Speaker 4: men don't know what it is to give birth. But the Mexicana women were in labor, and they're presented with a document. Well, if you want medical attention, you've got to sign this form. Many times they didn't know what they were signing. They signed it so they could get the medical attention. And then later on down the road, they'd come back and say, well, we're not procreating anymore. We're not having any more children. What happened? And it was at that point that they were told, well, you signed away— you know, you were sterilized, and you said— you agreed to it. And that is a case of genocide. Now, as a result of this aerial spraying of farmworkers, to your knowledge, have you heard about any campaign or any incidents of birth defects or anything similar to that?

Speaker 7: There have been many.

Speaker 3: Yes.

Speaker 7: Many defects, children that are being born without brains, children that are being born without arms, children that are being born without legs, parents having cancer. And there's a number of health problems because of these defects and a number of farmworkers that are dying. Because of these pesticides. Genocide is used in different ways. The not caring about the health and welfare of people, such as when we are in our workplaces, the concern that what will happen to people while they're in the workplaces, when we understand that these poisons will kill us.

Speaker 3: Yes.

Speaker 7: And we continue using them, then it is a form of genocide.

Speaker 9: Despite the fact that the United States is using Puerto Rico as a laboratory for the development of research on birth control, Puerto Rican women themselves have very little access to information about how to control reproduction in our own bodies. 42% A Puerto Rican woman of childbearing age had been sterilized under the auspices of the government of the United States. That's not just a human rights violation; that is a clear case of genocide.

Speaker 10: The high amount of sterilizations, such as 40% of the Puerto Rican women, 25% of the Puerto Rican men, and not only sterilization, but the experimentation on Puerto Rican women for such things as the Dalkon Shield was developed in Puerto Rico. We all know what happened with the Dalkon Shield. OK. Not only that, but as we say, cultural genocide, as our brothers and sisters, the Mexicans who are here, were talking about, about the enforcement of not being able to speak or not be able to teach in classes in our own language, which is Spanish, as we were a colony of Spain for 400 years. That is our language. And for many years, from the invasion of Puerto Rico in 1898 until Until 1948, Puerto Rican teachers were forbidden to teach in Spanish. They were made to teach in English, which they did not know that well. And it is a measure of the resistance of the Puerto Rican people that 60% of the people in Puerto Rico still don't speak English and have no desire to learn English. It's pretty amazing.

Speaker 11: They imposed the United States citizenship as a way to kill our personality and impose Like changing our name, like they did to the African people, changing their name from Akinsiyu and Karamoko and Assata Shakur to Ed Johnson, to John Smith and all. They did that to the Puerto Rican people, taking our citizenship away and calling us American, you know, changing in 1917. That's a way to kill someone's identity. Of course, I'm not American. They don't have no power to change me from being a Puerto Rican. I smell like a Puerto Rican. I talk like a Puerto Rican. I love like a Puerto Rican. I fight like a Puerto Rican.

Speaker 9: I was educated mostly through public schools in terms of where you get your quote-unquote fine teaching, and that's where I learned a lot of the lies about my own people, how we don't exist anymore, how we were either exterminated by disease or by slaughter. I didn't know until I was an adult that very close to me, my own father was— his parents were alive, and he was sent away to boarding school because it was, quote-unquote, best for the Native people to be brought up They take away your religion. They cut your hair off. They wash your mouth out with soap. They beat you, and that's how they show you that they love you, and that is what is right. That is what is best for you, best for the community. So basically, you're not considered human. You know, that's happening now. That's not in the 1700s, 1800s. It's still going on.

Speaker 3: The missionaries who came in 1820 attacked our traditional educational system, which was one of learning by doing from our kuhuna, elders, our experts. So they replaced that system with the New England church schooling system, with themselves as the teachers and transformed our language to meet their desires, which of course was coercive assimilation. So we were compelled by their education to think and behave like them, and that continues Today, when the Americans officially took over in 1898, they banned our language, having already destroyed or attempted to destroy our religion. And they have purposefully perpetuated a system of miseducation and disinformation So that most of our people, even today, are not even aware of the facts that have been presented to you here today.

Speaker 10: The Christian missionaries were allowed to ride for free on the railroads to go to the Indian communities and bring their religion. Furthermore, they could take Indian children On the railroads, again for free.

Speaker 9: There was only one condition about taking Indian children on the railroads, and that was that you'd be taking them away from home. And again, thousands of brokenhearted families had their children virtually kidnapped and taken away. Some of these children left when they were 5 years old. Their families didn't see them again if they didn't They didn't see them again until they were 18 years old.

Speaker 10: Our experience reflects our Hawaiian relatives, that our religious traditions were forbidden, our traditional languages and customs were forbidden, and we were to live according to the ways of the white people.

Speaker 4: In the '50s and '60s, the school districts would wash out young Mexicanitos' mouths of their native language. For speaking Spanish. Now, we see that as an attempt at genocide, trying to inflict psychological terror on young Mexicanitos and Mexicanitas who would speak their own language. Clearly, that would have an impact and an effect on them in terms of their ability to continue on in school.

Speaker 12: In the course of your education in American schools, did you ever receive any instruction in the—

Speaker 5: in Spanish?

Speaker 3: In history of Puerto Rico, of your own country?

Speaker 13: I am going back more than 55 years, since I am 64 years old now. And I do remember, going— as I go back into time, that there were more than one time that not just I, but other children, would ask the teachers about our history, did we have any heroes where we came from in Puerto Rico? And there was nothing. There, except to say maybe that Puerto Rico is a nice place. We learned very early of racism in this country, because I do remember, as a child, having to go to school along with other children dressed in a white shirt, a red tie and blue trousers, the American flag. We were told we were Americans. We also learned how to recite a Pledge of Allegiance. Land of liberty and justice for all and all that stuff, which, when we went out into that world, we knew it was all a lie. But as children, we had no recourse.

Speaker 5: The educational system, which is a system that was not democratically established in this country— it was established through foundations who funded it, foundations whose money came from the major corporations of this country— the educational system of America based on the Dewey model, set up and based on the German system, which is based on a Hegel system of social control, a system in which blacks are taught to worship Europe, to worship Greece, to worship Rome, and to despise Africa. It's a form of genocide that Dr. Bobby Wright, one of our late leading thinkers, calls menticide, when you destroy The minds of a people, then you don't have to worry about their bodies.

Speaker 12: The school, the particular class, all the children were Chicano except one, an Anglo-American child. Everywhere the children went, the teacher would say, Johnny, to the Anglo-American child, take the children to recess, take them to lunch, take them here, take them there, take them everywhere. At the end of the 2-week period, the teacher was asked by the monitor, who Why? Why do you always point out Johnny? And she said, well, it's very basic. She said, all these children are migrant farmworkers. They will grow up to be migrant farmworkers. Johnny's parents own the farm. If Johnny's going to be a successful farmer, he will have to learn how to handle his Mexicans when he grows up. To destroy the way that we look at the world is to destroy us Also, and it is perhaps even more painful to be psychologically, culturally, linguistically destroyed and walk upon this earth as shadowy, fearful people than perhaps it would be to die. Yo prefiero que me maten que vivir como una sombra. I was born to thrive. I was born to. I will celebrate like all of us were. I will not be shadowy. And yet, this system continues trying madly, Hitlerianly, to eradicate us.

Speaker 14: The Europeans who came to the Western Hemisphere have tried to defeat, confine, poison, starve, subjugate, evangelize.

Speaker 12: Disperse.

Speaker 14: Disperse, remove, reeducate, and finally, in a word, annihilate nations of people in the Western Hemisphere. We continue to have our lands stolen, our cultures threatened, and our basic human rights trampled upon. Yes, our history is one of militant resistance, and we pride ourselves today in following in the footsteps of our ancestors. As long as the United States government continues to follow a policy of genocide against tribal nations, so, too, will we continue to resist.

Speaker 15: On May 5th, there was— el Cinco de Mayo— there was a demonstration of over 400 students, multiracial. We were a demonstration of Latinos, Africans, Asians and Native Americans that were protesting the university for their lack of programs in the Latino community, as far as curriculum, faculty, funds, so on and so forth. While we were in the administration building, the university, instead of dialoguing with us, sent—

Speaker 1: Police.

Speaker 15: 5 police units to force us out of the building.

Speaker 5: If you fail to comply, the officers will use force to remove you.

Speaker 1: I can't hear you back there.

Speaker 5: If you physically resist, the officers will increase the amount of force that they use until your resistance is overcome. Any escalation of resistance on your part will increase your discomfort and the risk of injury to you. Your level of compliance will govern the amount of force which the officers use.

Speaker 16: The more effective you are, the harder they come at you. The more threatening you are, the more likely they will be to go to extraordinary lengths to neutralize you, either as an individual or as a movement.

Speaker 17: I think if we begin to look back through the history of African people in this country, we'll You'll see that every step of the way, we fought. If we look back through major slave rebellions, such as Gabriel Prosser, we look at Denmark Vesey, who was in fact inspired by the Haitian Revolution. Many times people talk about a riot, but we need to be clear that ours is a rebellion. Anytime that you have our people that are spontaneously taking to the street, they're fighting back against that kind of repression and that oppression that exists there. The rebellions that have taken place, not only from the 1960s, but we can look at 1908 and the early 1900s, 1920s, what they call the Red Summers, when blood flowed in the streets, when we had new African soldiers returning back to the community that met racist attacks against them. All these rebellions have been something that have— the African masses, from time to time, just couldn't take it anymore and have struck out and have rise up, Risen up in order to try to take their destiny in their own hand. The rebellions of the 1960s through the 1990s are nothing more than our aspirations to control our destiny, our aspirations for self-determination of the African captive nation inside of this country, be it conscious or unconsciously.

Speaker 10: Geronimo is being prosecuted because he did what many individuals have He did what so many of us have done during our sojourn here in this country, and that is to simply to stand up and to take a stand in defense of his people and fighting for liberation and self-determination. He used his talents and his skills as a veteran, as a Vietnam veteran. He was bold enough to use those skills to teach self-defense.

Speaker 8: When you see the amount of Their sentencing, you understand clearly why the United States is doing this, because, for example, when you have Carmen Valentin, a woman that comes from the same community where I live, who struggled for a better education for our children, for our people, get close to 98 years in prison for her belief, and we, on the other hand, see Richard Nixon—

Speaker 4: Yes.

Speaker 8: Getting away with what he did, Oliver North getting away with what he did, then we really understand who is this— what kind of system we have. We really understand that they are full of contradiction.

Speaker 14: The United States Department of Justice is used by the state to legitimize the suppression of our struggles.

Speaker 17: And people don't realize this happens right here inside the United States. They think it only happens Someplace else in the world. But I'm here to tell you that it happens right here today. I was not charged with a thing, do not have a felony, but I have 14 months that I have to serve inside of a prison that was designed for people that had committed crimes. And that was the United States government that put you there? That was the United States government, the one that we've been talking about all evening, in fact, all weekend, the same one that this tribunal has to find guilty of genocide, has to find guilty of all the charges that have been brought against it.

Speaker 1: Yes.

Speaker 12: We shall win, ultimately.

Speaker 6: Yes.

Speaker 12: Humanity, our sense of our sacred, wonderful, mutual humanity— and I mean mutual, across the board— will be with us. And this pernicious, monstrous government predicated on profits will topple, will fall apart. Our human spirit demands it. We will not quiebrar. They cannot break us that easily.

Speaker 2: The beginning of the end of the American empire starts here and today and is in your hands.

Speaker 11: We won't die. We're going to keep on fighting. And we swear, in the name of my grandchildren, that we're going to beat the heck out of the United States government.

Speaker 3: Thank you, folks.

Speaker 1: Ah! Ah! Ah! At times they were kind, they were polite in their sophistication, smiling but never too loudly, acting in civilized manner, an illusion of gentleness, always fighting to get their way. While the people see, the people know, the people wait, the people say, the closing of your Your doors will never shut us out. The closing of your doors can only shut you in.

Speaker 4: We know the predator.

Speaker 1: We see them feed on us. We are aware to starve the beast is our destiny. The times they were kind, they were polite, but never honest.

Speaker 8: Sangre del indio taíno, sangre de la raza negra. Sangre de razas antiguas que nos dejaron su herencia, que llegaron a mi tierra de distintas procedencias, que llegaron a mi tierra de distintas procedencias.

Speaker 18: We have a relationship to this, to this land, to the Mother Earth, that goes beyond the legal definitions as defined by by the The United States courts, the legal system.

Speaker 11: The United States troops, military troops, invade my country militarily. In 1898, we are still a militarily occupied country.

Speaker 14: The state of Hawaii is no more than a limited liability third-party corporation, which is dealing with extortion, piracy, racketeering, One of our major concerns is the multinational corporations' work around creating nuclear dump sites of tribal lands in this country.

Speaker 4: And people are beginning and saying, well, block by block, community by community, we will obtain our self-determination.

Speaker 8: Well, fundamentally, what we're talking about is about self-determination. It's the question of self-determination, on the first hand, but on the second hand, the right to land, that self-determination implies that people have a right to build their own institutions, have their own government, and build their own state apparatus, which can only be done on the question of land.

Speaker 2: We are asking you to recognize that the sovereignty, international legal sovereignty, over the lands inhabited By Native peoples, Mexicanos, the new African black people and the Puerto Rican people resides in the hands of the people themselves and not in the hands of the federal government, which is a criminal organization.

Speaker 10: Speaking specifically about militarization, since the invasion and occupation, Since 1898, by the United States of Puerto Rico, there has been many instances of using the land of Puerto Rico for experiments, for bombing practices. And I will just give you some very brief examples. While 14% of the territory of Puerto Rico is taken up by the military base By U.S. military bases. For example, in the island of Vieques, which is one of the islands belonging to Puerto Rico, 73% of the island's territory has been taken over by the U.S. Navy. This began in World War II and has continued to the present day. It is used for storing of nuclear weapons. It is used for military training, not only for the United States—

Speaker 1: Puerto Rico.

Speaker 10: But also for forces of other countries, where it is leased to other countries for their military bombing practices. Vieques was used for practicing for the invasion of Grenada, among other things. The use of the island of Vieques has led to the deforestation and to the desertification of the island of Vieques, for with the destruction of the forest and the propagation —of more desert-like plants, it has changed the pattern of rains. It is now much less rainy there. Also, the bombing and the other destruction of the natural environment and the corals around the area have led to a great diminution in the fish and sea life, which has caused grave problems, economic problems, for the people of Vieques, who lived by agriculture and by fishing. Thank you. There is a deliberate attempt on the part of the U.S. Navy to take over the entire island of Vieques. The people of Vieques now live on about 27% of the island, and they are trying to take over the rest of it by making it impossible for the people of Vieques to live.

Speaker 1: ¡La Marina que se vaya! ¡La Marina que se vaya! ¡La Marina que se vaya! ¡La Marina que se vaya! ¡Vete, papa, de Venezuela! ¡Mucha pobreza! ¡Mucha pobreza! ¡Vete, papa, de Venezuela!

Speaker 10: To give you an idea of the kind of toxic waste that are being deposited in Puerto Rico, if you look at all of the United States, according to the Environmental Protection Agency, there are some 7,000 Illegal sites for the dumping of toxic waste. Puerto Rico has 12% of those 7,000. Puerto Rico is an island 100 miles long by 35 miles wide.

Speaker 18: A lot of private waste industry companies approached Indian land with very lucrative, tempting proposals. We call it economic blackmail, promising our tribal governments lots of money, millions of dollars of money and potential jobs, to— for permission to come onto our indigenous territories to build hazardous waste facilities, toxic waste facilities, municipal garbage waste facilities, nuclear waste facilities. And some of the reasons that these companies want to come on Indian land Indigenous land is that a lot of our indigenous territories do not have environmental infrastructures in place. They do not have the environmental administration, the environmental tribal codes, regulatory standards.

Speaker 14: Beginning in early 1970s, some 27 multinational corporations, including Union Carbide, Tennessee Valley Authority, Yes. The Atomic Energy Authority, a U.S. government-owned corporation, Mobil, Kermagui, Westinghouse, Homestake and Exxon began acquiring claims to the Black Hills in order to exploit its uranium, coal and oil reserves. Various plans for this energy development indicate much of the area would become an arid, radioactive wasteland for hundreds of generations.

Speaker 16: It was the view of the FBI that an insurgency was occurring on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota in the context that Bob Robidoux described. They were setting out quite explicitly to counter the insurgency. In effect, they were conducting a counterinsurgency campaign. Counterinsurgency campaign is not a police doctrine. It's not a law enforcement doctrine. It's a military doctrine. It is a military doctrine. It is taught at the Special Warfare School at Fort Bragg, North Carolina.

Speaker 17: There's no question that there is a state of war. We understand that that state of war existed from the first time that Africa was actually snatched or kidnapped from the shores of Africa. That war has been undeclared war, but it has been a war. We look back through our history, and we'll see that at every step of the way that we've actually We've fought, and we've resisted our oppression. We've resisted the torture that has taken place. We look at our history, and we'll see that our war is undeclared war, but at the same time, it takes many different levels. It has been physical. It's been what was called a low-intensity warfare. But it's been war, yet and the same. We have war casualties. We have political prisoners. And we have prisoners of war as a result of that.

Speaker 10: I am a Puerto Rican prisoner of war.

Speaker 1: I am serving a 68-year sentence for the unconceivable crime of seditious conspiracy, fighting for the independence of my homeland, Puerto Rico.

Speaker 8: Luis Rosa, for example, he's serving altogether 105 years; Ricardo Jiménez, 98 years; Elizalde Escobar, 68 years; Carmen Valentín, 98 years; Carlos Alberto Torres, 78 years; Dilcia Pagán, 63 years. Adolfo Matos, 78 years. Alicia Rodríguez, 85 years. Hidalgo Rodríguez, 83 years. Oscar López Rivera, 70 years. Alejandrina Torres, 35 years. Edwin Cortés, 35 years. Alberto Rodríguez, 35 years.

Speaker 16: COINTELPRO was a secret operation. It was secret because it was unlawful. It represented a confluence between the FBI's Internal Security Section And other sections devoted to counterintelligence against foreign agents. The rubric of operation directed lawfully, in the opinion of the United States, against foreign agents was not lawfully directed against the domestic population of the United States. The object of COINTELPRO was to utilize foreign agent neutralization methodologies to neutralize political activists, expression of political thought and so on inside the United States, this could not be done openly. It was therefore done in a clandestine fashion until it was revealed in 1971.

Speaker 8: The effort was to destroy and discredit the Black Panther Party by any means necessary. They were more concerned about our organizing young people, not as much as they were concerned about us being able to outgun them, but the fact that we were projecting new ideals And new concepts. And young people were beginning to listen to us and the things that we were talking about in relationship to the government itself. And we were beginning to develop institutions within the community. So therefore, we became a threat to the internal security of the United States. If you would recall, there was Jesse Unruh, who was the treasurer of the state of California —who mentioned that the Black Panther Party was feeding more hungry children than the United States government.

Speaker 4: In the 1950s, when the COINTELPRO program was begun, at that time, they created a border coverage program called the BOCOV, the Border Coverage, and that this program maintained offices in both the occupied territories and Independent capitalist Republic of Mexico, that it maintained offices in the major cities throughout the Southwest, throughout our homeland, as a way to keep tabs on the Mexicano community, on the Mexicano people.

Speaker 3: Actually, the biggest headquarters of the CIA is not in USA, it's in Mexico City.

Speaker 4: Why do you suppose that is?

Speaker 3: We must understand that the Mexican and USA have 23,000 miles of kilometers. We have 23,000 miles of border with Mexico. There are 12 million Mexicans in this country, and there are thousands and thousands of people of color, Chicanos, Asians or blacks, that they know that Mexico, when we start a revolution in Mexico, won't stop in the Rio Grande, that we'll jump in this country.

Speaker 15: The Border Patrol came about in 1924, and before that date, The vigilante groups that patrolled the border was the Texas Rangers. There were variations, the Texas Rangers and the California Rangers, but pretty much they were used to kill the Mexicans that were coming over since the imposed border after the North American invasion into Mexico. So, in 1924, Before the Border Patrol was established, and they recruited heavily from the Texas Rangers that put a lot of— I guess, fractured a lot of human rights violations against the Mexicans that were crossing that border, in killing them, in just going around raids, not just to the Mexicans that were crossing the border, but to the Mexicans that were granted citizenship on the northern occupied part of the border.

Speaker 11: Right.

Speaker 15: So, the Border Patrol, to this day, well, at least has that legacy of racism and human rights violations against specifically the Mexicano people.

Speaker 1: ¡Raza sí, libre no! ¡Raza sí, libre no! ¡Raza sí, libre no!

Speaker 4: The Mexicano people have always continued to organize against the presence of the INS. The main demand, the main issue, is the abolition of the border. And that's why people are being called upon to come to the border to demonstrate their opposition to the forced division of a nation.

Speaker 1: Make a change for the future. Make a change for our communities. Make a change for our children. Make a change that we may take over the institutions that belong to us. Remember and keep in mind that that border symbolizes the division and the Nuestra gente, as individuals. So every time you march forward towards that border, remind yourself, remind yourself of who you are and the land that you're walking upon. Let us break those borders, and let us unite nuestra gente hasta la vida. ¡Que viva la raza!

Speaker 15: One of the things that is going on is with this hype of the drug war. The border right now, it's a deconstitutionalized zone. Everything goes. So the officers feel that they could get away with doing those illegal searches and, in fact, also raping women in the detention centers or before they take them to the detention centers.

Speaker 17: Clearly. We understand the United States government's war on drugs is a sham. The New Afrikan Nation and the New Afrikan population, particularly our youth, have no boats, no planes. We do not bring drugs into our communities. We do not It's been used as a guise to round up the most progressive elements in our community. It has been used as a guise to begin to incarcerate our youth, particularly our young male youth, in large numbers, and put them— you know, put them inside of prison, which gives them— doesn't give them a chance to have any kind of full development.

Speaker 5: To this date in America, there has not been one white person There is not a single person who has been electrocuted, hung or in any way legally condemned to death for the murder of African people. In fact, they are walking around today and in many parts of this country treated as heroes. One example, the murder of the 3 civil rights workers in Mississippi. Those murderers, those that are still alive, are living, and they're living happily.

Speaker 7: We see that the penal system The prison system is used within a society that is really a society that protects rich, is a capitalist society that will protect their interest.

Speaker 3: Imprisonment of our people for political reasons.

Speaker 1: No!

Speaker 3: For asserting our own inherent sovereignty, in our own way, on our own hands, on our own lands, means that we go to jail. But that is part of our program, to occupy our lands, to vitalize, revitalize our culture, and to provide for our livelihood. And if it means we go to jail, we go to jail. The people at Anahola, Kauai did just that, and the state, with the assistance of the attorney general and the county state troopers, arrested them, demolished their homes. In Sand Island in 1980, our own people living off the land and fishing had their homes destroyed and burned, and they were put in jail.

Speaker 16: The residents wanted to create a cultural village in a small portion of the park to pass on their knowledge of the ocean and shoreline to younger generations. But their efforts to resist eviction failed.

Speaker 1: What I want to tell you guys, all you haole, is you guys remind me of about 1898. So you guys, haole kauli, yahoi. And you got a new Hawaiian? Haole kauli. Haole kauli, a bilki.

Speaker 11: That's what I tell you guys.

Speaker 1: Bunch of intruders. That's all.

Speaker 12: Dogs in our own country.

Speaker 1: This is how you treat Hawaiians, ladies and gentlemen. Put them in jail, knock down their homes, kill their culture and eliminate the Hawaiian race.

Speaker 5: There could not be a United States government without the extermination of Native people, the ripping off of their land and the extermination and enslavement of African people. All the measures taken after the end of slavery were measures taken by Southern governments with the full support of the federal government. —to return blacks to a new form of slavery, through a system of segregation, through a system that denied blacks the right to vote, through a system that would keep blacks as slaves on the land to use them as cheap labor.

Speaker 1: 40 acres and a mule.

Speaker 5: 40 acres and a mule, which was the idea that was conceived by a black preacher, who was asked, what do blacks want? He said, 40 acres and a mule.

Speaker 9: They say they tried to help our people, but all of the laws, even when some small cases are won, they're overturned by the corporations in the end. We get jailed for taking fish in our own land. We're not allowed to fish in our own waters. To live by freedom of access to public lands is in favor of the commercial fishermen, as opposed to the native, traditional people fishing for their own livelihood.

Speaker 1: You know, the government you're working for has no interest in the people of the You've never given us any written documents as far as the Western Shoshone land transfer. I want to know where. And I want— I want the records of the land transfer from Western Shoshone to the United States. I want it, and I want it in my hands now. If you don't— if you can't produce it to me, then it's illegal for you to go up there and gather my livestock.

Speaker 9: Thank you.

Speaker 1: My rights were denied to me, and you know it. Everybody in your department knows it. All you people want to do today is come in here and steal my cows, as you're stealing my land today. You didn't take it in 1872. You're taking it now.

Speaker 10: And—

Speaker 1: They're making my life miserable, too. And it's the only way I can protect myself. I got to protect my livelihood. They talk about the Constitution. There's no Constitution, as far as I can see. It doesn't protect me. It doesn't protect people of my color. It doesn't protect—

Speaker 3: Yeah, but I think that it needs to be taken up in court.

Speaker 1: They stopped the court system. They stopped the court system when it was going through courts. We were arguing on the title question of the Western Shoshone people. The Secretary of the Interior stopped the court system by acting as my trustee, as accepting that money, and then says payment has been made. I can tell you right now— Who's it been paid to? It's been paid to the United States of America. I don't want money. My land's never been for sale. It's not for sale now, or is it going to be not for sale tomorrow, either? Mr. Jones, that's the way it is. We look at this land from the basic point of not in individual ownership, but on the basis of that this land is mother to all things. And so, it has a very significant meaning to us. And we can't, in no way, accept money for this land, because it's— as our grandmother told us a long time ago, it's— this land is like a woman, a female.

Speaker 16: Mm-hmm.

Speaker 1: It provides for us all the necessities of life, from birth to up to the time we die and we go back to this land.

Speaker 18: When the European people have come here, is that they look at land as property. And if you ever look at a larger spectrum, as far as third-world countries, people of color, they look at us as property also. So, if someone wants to really address some of the issues I talk about, maybe they have to go to school and learn about property rights, because that's usually sometimes the way that they view us.

Speaker 1: Yes.

Speaker 18: As property. They view women as property, the same way that they view Mother Earth as property. So there's that connection. There's that connection. Before we can really understand what's happening with the environment, we have to also reevaluate our relationship to the earth, what is female, and the way that we treat our womenfolk throughout the world. It's a power and control issue. So we need to go deeper in our understanding.

Speaker 7: And if we don't change this kind of relationship, we will be bringing up another generation of people who will be used to having hierarchies in society, who will be used to having domination over certain segments of society. And we don't like that, because domination in All aspects of life works against social change.

Speaker 11: Sometimes people talk about violence, but they only say about violence of the people, oppressed people defending themselves. Somehow they don't criticize the violence of the power. See, the power who commit violence against the people, against Panamanian people, Nicaraguan— against Nicaraguan people, against Haitian people, killing off by the thousands. But people kind of close their eyes, shut their eyes, and even send their children to that kind of violence, to kill for the Rockefellers and the J.P. Morgans and the Roonecklys. See, I had the right to be a soldier of my country.

Speaker 9: I think that we need to, again, unite the struggles to change the material base Of a people, of a country, with radical cultural changes, changing people's attitudes, the values that we have, the priorities that we hold dear to our hearts, that somehow work against us. The indigenous peoples of the Western Hemisphere have had to live with the codification and criminalization The rigid definition of sexual behavior imposed upon us by Western culture, Western social mores and Western laws.

Speaker 10: All of us pledge to continue our resistance to the crimes outlined by today's speakers and commit ourselves to continue our work until there is a world where everyone can have true justice and freedom.

Speaker 16: Represent an excellent educational tool, a political organizing tool, a means to go about developing the political consciousness among the general citizenry of this country so that they can can take charge of the government, can fulfill their obligations and their responsibilities as citizens, and take this outlaw government of the United States and put it into another posture—one either of. Conformity with law, conformity with standards of human decency, or a posture of nonexistence.

Speaker 1: I can't believe it. There will come a point, and there must come a point, when truth prevails, when truth can no longer be hidden. And there are people who will say, well, the truth is not absolute. That's true. But when you have built so many lies, That you have turned those lies into a truth. We have to unveil those lies to be able to reveal the hidden truths. It can't be the same. There's a little thing that you and I have to understand. It can't be the same.