America

Canada

A Recent Requiem

Special Contribution
by Kevin D. Annett
Dec. 26, 2011

The Patricia Hotel on East Hastings street

The Patricia Hotel on East Hastings street was swathed in neon lighting and the sounds of night life as Kevin Annett approached it. The time was just before Christmas.

The elevator was dead, like the hall lighting, and Kevin trudged up the four flights of the familiar, century old building. He had been visiting people there for over twenty years, in his work as a street minister.

Several unconscious residents impeded his steps, and a young native girl, barely fifteen and covered in makeup, emerged from a room with an older, well-dressed, embarrassed looking white man whose haunted eyes darted swiftly away from Kevin's.

Eddie’s door was open. Kevin gave it a brief rap. “Hey!” came a voice from within. “It’s Kevin …”

A rumpled native man emerged, garbed in a tee shirt and shorts. “Hey Rev!” the man said happily, the pungency of cheap alcohol on his breath. “Come on in!”

The room was hot, and a clutter of clothes and assorted mess covered the floor. The nose of a dirty mattress poked up from the pile like a drowning rat. “It ain’t much, but it’s mine!” Eddie said, clearing some books off a chair and motioning Kevin to sit.

The white man nodded and looked around as he sat down. “Looks like my old place” he remarked.

Eddie laughed, then handed one of the books he was holding to Kevin. “You gotta read that one”

“Oh yeah?” Kevin replied, scanning the cover. “Dawn of the Gods, eh?”

“You believe in UFO’s?”

“I guess” said Kevin, placing the book down.

Eddie squatted on the floor in front of him, on a pile of soiled laundry. He looked up at Kevin with quiet and determined eyes, and finally said, “I’m not a conspiracy nut or nothing, you gotta understand that”

The white man nodded, as the Indian continued, “You heard a lot of stories from the residential school, I bet … about all the kids going missing and getting whacked” “Yeah, I sure have”

Eddie nodded and fingered a long, braided strand of hair. Then he said, “Nobody ever believes us, but that don’t matter. The whites don’t want to believe it. Neither do a lot of our own people. All of them, they don’t understand what it all came from”

Kevin leaned forward, intrigued. Eddie continued, “I was given the teachings of my people, the secret ones, by my grandfather. That was before the cops caught me and put me in the rez school. I never forget what he taught me, even when they tried beating it outta me every day.”

Kevin was about to ask him something when Eddie stood quickly and stumbled through the clutter to the window, and looked up and pointed at the thin strip of night sky, exclaiming, “You can see all the signs if you look for ‘em, Rev! They been given to all of us, even to your people!”

Eddie turned and stared at his visitor, intoning solemnly, “It’s about how everything ends”

His words chilled Kevin, but he said nothing. Eddie crouched down where he stood, and continued, “Long before you guys ever got here, one of our great medicine men warned us you’d be coming. He called you guys the mu multh nees …”

“Yeah, the ghost people” said Kevin.

“No, no, that’s not the right translation. It really means The Nothing” "The what?” said Kevin.

“Yeah … you’re part of Nothing. I read a lot from your Bible. The Hebrews call the place of the Dead 'Sheol', right?”

“The land of nothing …” said Kevin, transfixed. “Right. People who've lost their One soul, they become Sheol, Nothing. So this Nothing comes to my land and tries making all of my people Nothing, too.”

Kevin laughed nervously and said, “So what … you mean us Europeans, we’re like the Night of the Living Dead zombies, or something?”

Eddie stared back at him. “Well, take a look at your own fucking history, Rev” The man nodded. Outside, a police siren wailed. “Go on” he said.

“You almost killed our People all off. There’s not many of us left who aren’t like you now, people without life. There's only a few real People left, and they're in hiding. It didn't work, the big killing, 'cause ..."

Eddie stared towards the window again, as if he heard something. Then he continued, “The Medicine Man said that after you Nothing people had been here for awhile, then … the End would start”

“What end?”

“The End of everything, Rev” he said matter of factly. The Indian stared at his guest and explained.

"You brought your death here and everything's out of whack. Our world is so filled with your Nothing now, all the lies and murder and corruption that have become so normal, that the whole thing is about to shift back and find a balance. The Nothing gets wiped out and becomes Something again.”

Kevin gestured towards the window, and the outside world, and said, “This all ends?”

Eddie nodded. “When?”

“Soon. Can’t you tell?” Kevin searched his heart, and knew it was true.

Eddie seemed to read his despair, and said to him softly, “It’s not your fault, Kev, any of you. It’s just your nature. Whatever stole your life from you guys has to keep robbing it from everyone and everything around you. Through you."

The Indian opened his hands.

"Those little kids who got killed in the residential school, the ones who keep getting grabbed and killed every day here without nothing being done about it, all those trees you cut down and all the land and the animals and the innocence you keep wrecking: they're all just feeding the Nothing, everything, into its big empty mouth."

Kevin nodded and murmured, “I’ve always felt I was part of some Thing that was trying to swallow me ..."

“Everybody feels it, sometime” replied Eddie. “But they can’t see anything else to be. Their trapped in it. Their minds are controlled by it.”

Kevin looked at the Indian as if for the first time, and the man appeared suddenly different: his very face seemed to alter and become much older. Am I seeing things? he wondered.

Eddie smiled at him, almost reading his thoughts. “You were sent here to learn all this, Kev, so you can help the few of your people who will make the shift” “What shift?”

The Indian said nothing, but reached into his pocket and removed the tooth of some animal, and a small packet. He handed it to Kevin. “That’s bear grease, and a bear tooth. It’s medicine you’ll be needing”

Eddie turned towards the window again and listened for awhile. Then he said sharply, “You got to go now, Rev”

Kevin hesitated, needing to know more.

“You're one of the only white men I trust" said Eddie, his voice lower and calm. “But you gotta go now, for your own safety. Please, Kev".

Kevin stood on the street for awhile after he left the Patricia Hotel. A heavy rain was falling and a hundred pieces of garbage floated by in the street, as buses and cabs splashed the sidewalks.

He felt the bear tooth in his hand, and he watched as the stumbling men and women on the sidewalk gazed at nothing.

Morning seemed very far away.
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Canada

Why do Primates Kill their own Kind? A Christmas Epistle to Anglican Archbishop Fred Hiltz

Special Contribution
By Kevin D. Annett
Dec. 19, 2011

Anglican Archbishop Fred Hiltz

Dear Fred,

You may have heard of Crazy Walter, since he collapsed the pomp and dignity of one of your predecessors on a memorable spring day in 1990, at the Vancouver seminary I attended.

Walt went on to street corner preaching in Toronto and the kind of insane joy so unfamiliar to the Church of England, and Primate What’s His Name undoubtedly is retired by now: but the memory of their brief encounter is forever pristine.

Walt was a bearded wild man who hung around our seminary, and everyone tolerated him with such apparent liberality because we were all too scared to ask him to leave.

He was trying to liven up the place that morning, as was his wont, for the sight of all of us oh-so-serious aspiring clerics tended to piss Walter off. His intense blue eyes jabbed at us unmercifully as he expounded the truth of what the Bible really meant, using waving arms, suggestive hip thrusts and touches of ribaldry that made the novices among us blush and look away.

“I’m here to skewer you ungrateful little fuckers with the Word!” he explained, to the scowls and mutters of those of my erstwhile church colleagues who obviously had never met a real life prophet before.

Walt was on a real roll by then, and my buddy Rich Lang and I were close to breathless exhaustion from the reluctant laughter that spilled from us, when the announcement burst through the door.

Uncovering the remains, Brantford Anglican residential school, November 2011

An excited young woman stepped unsuspectingly into the lounge and declared to us with the bland attempt at enthusiasm of a processed Christian, “The Anglican Primate is here!” Like a pilgrim on the verge of a sacred orgasm, Walter’s eyes sparkled at her words, and he shouted out gleefully, “The fucking Primate?”

The old guy then leaped up and hurried to the doorway, and believe it or not, actually pointed his rear end towards the front hallway of our Vancouver School of Theology and the general direction of His Eminence, and began to quickly rotate and thrust his ass with all the passion of a baboon in heat.

“It’s the Primate!” Walt kept shouting. “The fucking Primate!”

Rich and I were both on the floor by then, screeching and gasping for air, and through tears of laughter I caught Walter jumping up and down in the hallway, his ass still offered to the churchman, as the Anglican Primate’s shocked entourage stood bewildered and embarrassed in front of the guy.

Being Canadians, none of them said anything, but the top Anglo gave Walt a strange sort of look and muttered to his shocked brethren, and then shuffled off with the school Principal to sip coffee and blabber somewhere.

By the time Crazy Walter returned to us in triumph, most of our career-conscious friends had scattered in terror. Walt beamed with avuncular pride at Rich and me for staying, threw his weary buns down on the couch, and announced,

“Sorry guys. It was all that purple that fucker wore. Made me randy as hell!”

I realize now that Walter knew more than he was saying.

Fred, I know the whole topic of anal intercourse must make you nervous, knowing what you know about your own church, but bear with me. Let me try to lubricate (sorry) the topic with a theological reference, to make the impact a bit gentler.

If Jesus ever did walk the earth, I imagine he was a lot like Crazy Walter. According to the Book, JC got executed, don’t forget, for pissing off guys like you, Fred.

After all, his prescription for child rapists was to tie a ten ton grinding stone around their necks and toss them into the nearest ocean, presumedly with loving non-violence. So we know where that leaves you guys, and those you protect: shit out of luck, as Walter would have said.

What is the Anglican church punishment for raping a child, Fred? The Catholics call it a forgivable sin. Canadian law requires only a wrist-slapping one year mandatory sentence in jail for child rape. So it’s not as if you’re under any pressure to go hard on the sickos in your midst, even when they ended up flogging to death their little victims, and then burying them in shallow graves: like at the Brantford Indian residential school.

Besides my sheer delight in recounting a tale about Not so Crazy Walter, what’s causing me to drop you this little note is something you said last month: that you have no power to release documents held by your Bishop Bob Bennett about kids who died at the killing grounds known as the Mohawk Indian residential school in Brantford.

It’s an odd thing for you to say, Fred, because hell: you’re the fucking Primate, boy. You speak on behalf of she whom my Irish nationalist family members like to call “that Bitch in Buckingham Palace”. That means you not only get to wear all sorts of sexy purple outfits, Fred, but you can tell any priest, or a Bishop Bob, precisely what to do.

So your strange remark got me wondering: why would the top Anglican in Canada want to conceal documents from the Mohawk Indian school?

One doesn’t need a Master of Divinity degree to figure that one out, which is frankly what makes you and the whole situation laughable, more than anything: because you all know the score, and yet you pretend not to.

The blood stains from all those little kids are still all over your church, Fred, even after all the official scrubbing and whitewashing. You know that you've sealed away documents that prove your church and the "crown" intended to eradicate the Mohawk nation. You know about the bones we’ve uncovered at the Brantford school. Like I told your co-conspirator, Bishop Bob Bennett, the graves are opening now, and your lies don’t work anymore.

So let me remind you of something you may have forgotten, along the way to grasping your Archbishop’s miter: since the truth always comes out, full disclosure is the only way left for the guilty.

You won’t disclose anything, of course, and not only because your lawyers will not allow it. But that really doesn’t matter. In the final days of any dying regime like yours, the decisions of the people “at the top” always become more self-destructive, irrational and just plain silly – which is why the abomination you represent can only be laughed at and mocked, like Walter did, and Jesus.

So relax, Fred. Nothing’s in your hands anymore. The great wheel of destiny is turning, and those with eyes to see and hearts to feel will know where they belong now.

One final point, however: I hear that Bishop Bob recently instituted a new policy in his diocese (you gotta love those quaint old Roman terms), that no Anglican clergyman can drive alone in a car with a child anymore.

I guess that goes to prove that Crazy Walter couldn’t have been that far off the mark, Fred.

Merry Christmas.

Love, Kevin
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Canada

‘Tis the Season to be Brain Dead, but Listen up Anyway: A Holiday Message and an Invitation to Anglican Bishop Bob (“The Shredder”) Bennett and other assorted Scrooges

Special Contribution
By Kevin D. Annett
Dec. 13, 2011

Rev. Kevin D. Annett

Dear Bob,

I hear you’ve told all your staff they’ll be fired if they talk to anyone about the documents you’re sitting on, concerning your Mush Hole Indian residential school where we’ve been unearthing tiny bones that are likely human.

That’s pretty harsh, Bob. It is Christmas, after all. And it’s not as if your secret is at risk, or anything. Even if somebody in your church developed a conscience and started spilling their guts about the Mush Hole, who are people going to believe: one disgruntled employee, or the entire Church of England?

So take a valium and some egg nog, Bob. Figure heads like you are supposed to remain calm at all times, and keep control of the narrative - in this case, concerning those missing 50,000 Indian children who passed through the tender mercies of your system on their one way trip to the bone yard. They all died of natural causes, don’t forget. They ran away. Maybe their records can’t be found. Hell, maybe they were even abducted by aliens.

Meanwhile, don’t forget, you have the best public relations boys in the business to rely on, and their sure-fire method called the Inoculation. It got started just yesterday on the CBC, which ran a big program on national television about the mass graves of children in Canada.

Now don’t shit yourself, Bob, they weren’t referring to the Indian residential schools, but the kids struck down by the Spanish flu in 1919. That was long, long ago. So don’t worry - our fellow pale Canadians got the message, loud and clear: massive numbers of dead kids in Canada is the result of an act of nature, and disease - not deliberate killing.

We’ve been inoculated now: prepared, conditioned, and molded in our responses. So the Mush Hole bones won’t seem so bad when they fully surface: “Mass graves? Oh yeah, I heard about that … probably the flu …”

It always works. Surely you of all people should know that, Bob. Besides, our November 21 public announcement of the discovery of probable children’s bones at your Anglican residential school in Brantford didn’t exactly cause a ripple of shock or protest anywhere here in lovely Canada. But still, you and your friends in government must be worried, to shoot us full of scandal-prevention serum like that, and just before Christmas.

After all, those little bones are exposed now, Bob, slip ups do happen, and not all of us are immunized to the bullshit. So I really do get why you’re perched these days so fretfully in your London, Ontario office astride those piles of documents about the Mush Hole. I hope you’re getting out for air, occasionally.

But I do know the score, Bob, and I realize that as a Bishop, you can conceal any evidence you like of a crime scene, and even shred it to your heart’s delight. Fred Hiltz, your big boss in Toronto, even said so the other day, when he declared that even he, the Primate (I love that term) for all Anglicans in Canada, couldn’t order you to release those documents. Fred answers to Lizzie Brit herself, Bob, and she is the Crown, after all. So that means you’re above and beyond the law.

So what is all the worry about?

I’ll tell you what. Leona Moses spilled the beans to me last month when I sat down in her home in Oshweken, on the scrap of land you guys have left her and her fellow Mohawks.

You remember Leona, Bob. She worked for your Huron Diocese as a researcher in 1999, until she and her co-worker, Wendy Fletcher, were both gagged for ten years by your church after they started talking about what they uncovered. Leona was told never to talk about what she’d seen in your archives: especially one particular document she found.

It seems that, back in 1870, your church signed a formal agreement with the puppet chiefs set up by your Crown to wipe out all the Mohawks by incarcerating their children in the Mush Hole residential school. It’s signed and sealed, in a document issued by the Crown and the New England Company, who set up the school. And it’s accompanied by a whack of letters proving that you guys and the Crown knew that children were dying en masse in the place, and you did nothing about it.

Of course, why would you? That was all in the game plan.

Now that’s what I’d call a smoking gun. But that particular document vanished, according to Leona, and ended up in something you call “the G 20 black box”.

So, Bob, the whole world wonders: where is this black box? And what else is tucked away in there?

In my teenage years, I got a real kick watching on TV former US President Big Dick Nixon sweat and lie to Congress about all the incriminating tapes and evidence he didn’t have in his possession. I like to think you’re closeted away in your drab office in the same manner, scowling and paranoid like old Dick, barking at subordinates and telling them to find a way to fix everything. But I know that’s just wishful thinking on my part.

Instead, I’m sure you’re preaching to your flock this Sunday on reconciliation and healing, or whatever.

But that black box is still in your sanctum sanctorum somewhere, Bob, just itching to be explored. And I bet that even part of you is wanting it aired. Nobody, after all, is completely iniquitous. Isn’t that what you guys teach?

Old Scrooge’s delight that glorious Christmas morning when he had found himself again, and reveled like the child we all are inside once he found it so easy to do the right thing, always struck me to the core, whenever it expressed itself in old movies or from the faded pages of my father’s Dickens collection. I laughed and I cried with Scrooge, when he discovered the real joy of the season. Just like I will laugh and will cry with you, one day, Bob.

It was Tiny Tim who said it all, in the Dickens tale. And I hear his words whisper up through the grounds of the Mush Hole, where so many other innocents lie, mangled and forgotten, almost lost to us.

You can help revive them, Bob. You can do the right thing. All you need to do is to come outside, and open all the locked and forbidden places, and secrets, and beg all those little ones for forgiveness – by telling the truth, and awaiting history’s judgment on you, and those like you.

But you'll likely need a midnight visit by three ghosts, first. Or even 50,000 of them.

Season's salutations, Kevin
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Canada

The Bone that Could Change Everything: A Time to End our Complicity in Murder, and Reinvent Canada

Special Contribution
By Kevin D. Annett
Dec. 7, 2011

Rev. Kevin D. Annett

The tiny bone weighs hardly anything, and yet it is the weightiest evidence in Canadian history.

The forensic specialists are nearly definite that it's the upper thigh bone of a small child, maybe four or five years old. This month, their tests will confirm what I felt was true when I recently lifted it from the soil near the former Anglican Indian school in Brantford: that the first of Canada's Disappeared - the missing and murdered residential school children - have begun to come home.

Canada and its churches tried for decades to bury and forget the bone, and the other remains of the 50,000 and more children who died in their residential "schools". And when these innocents' deaths could no longer be denied, the same guilty parties distracted us from their foul deed with "reconciliation" babble and a whitewashing "truth and reconciliation commission" that has not once turned over the soil at a residential school grave.

That's all about to change, in a way that most of us have yet to realize.

For one thing, once this bone, or others, are positively identified as human, the entire Indian residential schools issue becomes no longer a matter of public platitudes about "healing", but of a massive crime scene. Every possible church record and grave site connected to a residential school will have to be opened and examined by competent specialists - and that does not and cannot mean the RCMP, police or any agent of the Crown or church, who are, after all, complicit in the crime.

The opening of these graves, in other words, will require and compel us to reinvent Canada, transforming it from an agent of the Crown and its church partners to a sovereign Republic with the power to prosecute historic agents of genocide, such as, in the Brantford case, the Church of England and its head, Elizabeth Windsor.

Most mainstream Canadians want such a change to a Republic, anyway: 58% of them, in the latest national poll. And what better issue to ignite such sovereignty than the need to bring comfort and justice to innocent children who died at our hands?

Some of the good people in southern Ontario have already taken such a step by forming something called Not in Our Name!(Non!): a community network that wants to rally support for the excavations at the local residential school authorized by Mohawk elders recently, that I have helped to organize. But Non! is more than that. To quote one of its statements,

We are sickened and outraged by the acts of the Anglican, Catholic and United churches ... For generations, our ancestors have been lied to and fooled by these churches and the crown to fund the slaughter of native people, our friends and neighbors. They have killed children in our name and continue to profit from their crime by not paying taxes and having we, the taxpayers, foot their legal bills! ... The churches must instead account for their crimes not with words, or money, but by giving up their right to operate as protected corporations above the law ... We must take back our churches and our culture by returning the land and wealth they stole from the original people, and disestablishing their right to operate as anything larger than individual congregations. Perhaps that will allow moral as well as material reparations to murdered children ...

Non! could spell the death knell of the church corporations that have evaded justice for so long, simply because it's a movement emerging from within the churches themselves. One of the Non! organizers is a retired clergyman who actually left the church over its cover up of the residential schools massacre: a man who, like me, was pilloried and persecuted for his stand, but, unlike me, has chosen to stay silent about what happened to him. Until now.

Our excavations at the Anglican Indian school in Brantford are waiting for the new year, and more research, to resume, but already, three other indigenous nations have asked me to come and help them begin similar digs at their local Indian residential school mass graves.

Meanwhile, Non! is spreading as well, and setting up similar groups across the country. "White" Canadians, it seems, are switching their allegiance, and laying the basis for a sovereign nation capable of facing its past crimes and present possibilities. It all seems to echo the words of a Mohawk elder whom I've come to befriend and respect, Bill Squire, who said to me last week,

"Once we bring home our murdered children we've acted as a real nation, saying, this is our crime site. And then we're going to put Canada on trial."

Bill Squire will get his chance this spring, when a European Union parliamentary committee will hear and see the forensic proof of the dead children at the Brantford school - and much more. Canada could then face sanctions, and an international war crimes tribunal. And it will all be thanks to a small bone fragment, and many more like it, that you and I and many others will bring to light, by saying our Non!, loudly and clearly, and through action.

Welcome to the Republic of Kanata.
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Canada

An International Media Release from the Mohawk Nation and The International Tribunal into Crimes of Church and State (ITCCS)

Special Report
By Jeremiah Jourdain
Nov. 29, 2011

Piece of humerus or tibia of a young child

A Child's Remains and other bones have been identified at Canada’s oldest Indian residential school in Brantford, Ontario:

A Statement from the Kanien'keha':ka Nation of the Grand River

Video: http://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=jLEcnBy6V6M

Archaeological surveys and test digs authorized by we, elders of the Kanien'keha:ka Nation, have been conducted at the former Mohawk Institute Indian residential school since October 1.

This past week, while on the grounds of the school, our researchers along with Kevin Annett -Rawennatshani, who acts with our approval, have unearthed what has been described as human remains. One bone among sixteen uncovered has been identified, through preliminary visual examination by a competent archaeologist, as that of a young child. This bone sample is described by the same archaeologist as “definitely human”.

A test dig in a twenty square foot area on grounds adjoining the former Mohawk Institute have revealed a considerable number of bones, as well as buttons which have been confirmed to be part of the children's school uniforms. Large deposits of coal were also found associated with these remains, all at a depth of barely two feet. Several of the bones have also been cut up, suggesting that the bodies may have been deliberately dismembered, while other bones were broken.

We declare the area on and near the former Mohawk Institute to be a crime site under our jurisdiction, and we will not allow representatives of the Crown or Church of England, or the government of Canada, access to these excavations because of their complicity in this crime.

These institutions have consistently refused to disclose the evidence they possess regarding the Mohawk Institute and the deaths of children under their legal care, and therefore, we are proceeding to charge these bodies with crimes against humanity in international courts of justice, based in part on the forensic evidence we have uncovered.

We now call upon our community and the world to rally behind our efforts to bring recognition to the remains of children buried on the Mohawk Institute grounds, and our work to excavate this site. Prior to any possible repatriation of these remains, and because these remains may include children from other indigenous nations, we look to those nations to participate with us in this work and welcome their input, and we urge them to begin their own excavations at local Indian residential schools.

We appeal to other nations to send archaeological and forensic specialists and international observers and peacekeepers to our territory to operate under our Mohawk jurisdiction, to assist with our inquiry and protect the burial sites until the remains can be accorded a proper burial according to our diverse traditions. Until these experts arrive to conduct a professional archeological excavation of these graves, we are temporarily suspending our excavations.

As our investigation continues, the bone samples will be subjected to further forensic tests, and this data about the human remains uncovered at the Mohawk Institute will be prepared in a final report to be delivered in the spring of 2012 to human rights courts and Parliamentarians in Europe, as part of a campaign to bring charges of genocide against the Crown of England, the government of Canada, the Anglican Church in Canada and other guilty parties.

The Mohawk Institute inquiry is held under the auspices of the Onkwehon:we (Mohawk) Nation and Kevin Annett (Rawennatshani) of the International Tribunal into Crimes of Church and State, who has our full authority and protection.

For more information contact us at 519-757-3624
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Canada

Remembering What Cannot Be, yet Which Must Be

Special Contribution
By Kevin D. Annett
Nov. 13, 2011

Indian kids in Winnipeg

As a boy in Winnipeg, it was a day when I could show off in my boy scout uniform for all the girls, and we got the day off from school; so it was indeed a memorable time. But exactly what and who I was to remember on November 11 never was clear to me, even when it was carefully explained by parents and teachers.

For I was never there in the carnage at the Somme, or Normandy, or Vimy Ridge, although my grand dad was, and my unknown, martyred Uncle Bob who gave up his life jacket for a fellow torpedoed sailor, and who died for his act. Yet still, I was to feel something for at least the soldiers who never returned home, men who meant nothing to me, even when they were my own kin.

And so our annual Remembrance Day service was for me the same kind of showy pretense that I received every Sunday in church, where I was to mourn the tortured Jesus and rejoice in his victory over the grave, even when I never knew the guy.

And yet over time, I sensed some deeper wisdom in the pretense. For we do carry a collective memory of our dead, greater than any one of us; and from our earliest times, we have honored our fallen simply by recalling them, and keeping alive that which neither blade nor bullet can destroy.

That said, it was all still hearsay to my pre-pubescent self. Every November 11, I was expected to believe the stories of my elders, and share their grief, and memories. And with the absolute blessing of our local clergyman at Westworth United Church, who always held his own Memorial Day service, I was also to know without a doubt that the slaughter had all been very necessary.

I believed it. Like most other boys, I looked forward to each November 11. For how easily was I caught up in the thrill of the bagpipes and the drums, and entranced by the brotherhood of belonging displayed by all the aging, uniformed veterans who still stood so firm, together, in a devotion that none of us ever knew in our crowded, daily lives. I was being recruited, even then, but into what and by whom I still did not know.

“I’m just glad you’ll never have to go away to a war” my mother would say to me, like clockwork, at the end of every November 11 as she tucked me into bed. I always felt so let down by her words, and by her ignorance of what was stirring within me.

At six years old, and at twelve, I dreamt of battle, I played war, I organized all the local kids, girls included, into squads and recon units that probed the local neighborhood for shelter, and the right terrain for battle. I always stood poised on the edge, holding myself in readiness for an engagement that everything in me strained towards as if my very soul depended on it, which as it turns out, it did. And yet never did I know why I was so.

During our summer trips to my grandparent’s place in Edmonton, I’d sit at the kitchen table and listen again and again to Grandpa Ross’s tales from the World War 1 battlefront.

Gramp would speak of trench raids against the Germans, of the long, cold nights and all the lice, but also of his first Christmas eve in Belgium in 1915, when he and the enemy met beyond the wire and shared songs, and cheap booze, and promised not to be the first ones to resume the shooting.

The comradery with the krauts must have worked, Grandpa used to chortle to me from behind his pipe, for two years later at Vimy Ridge, a German soldier saved his life during battle, enduring capture by the Canadians to carry in Grandpa’s wounded and unconscious self to his own lines, and safety – and allowing me to be born.

I always cried when Grandpa told that story, just like I did when our family spoke so reverentially of young Uncle Bob and his self-sacrifice for a stranger. And it was to that innocent place in my own heart that I always went during every Remembrance Day service, recalling that which I could not possibly have known, if memory was simply an individual thing: that the highest calling of the warrior is not conquest, but sacrifice; not assault, but heroism and integrity.

I have been blessed throughout my days to have never been relinquished by that knowledge, and to allow it to take me to the graves of many innocents who have been slaughtered in domestic wars, and find there a remembrance of these unknown ones who must be remembered.

The unhealable pain of any war, and why there never are victors, is that the first casualty is always our own innocence and best hopes. And that realization struck me with a vengeance last month when I stood for the first time over the mass grave of children at a place paid for by us, run by us, and hidden by us.

Veterans can rarely return to the battlefields they survived, and where their own hopes, and buddies, lie buried. And nor have the survivors of the longest war in human history – the one we have waged against indigenous peoples – easily come to those graves where more than 50,000 of their little relatives lie. For we, who put them there, have not yet remembered our own story, and honor, and thus we have not the courage, yet, to stand there with them.

It will come, one day, but only when we truly remember that which cannot be, and yet which must be; and somehow, in the remembering, change.
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Canada

Mass Execution of Children Alleged

Special Report
By Jeremiah Jourdain
Nov. 9, 2011

Indian kids

My brother Rufus saw them take all those children and stand them up next to a big ditch, and then the soldiers shot them all and they all fell into that ditch. Some of the kids were still alive and they just poured the dirt in on top of them. Buried them alive.

This mass murder happened in 1943 – not in Nazi held Europe, but in Brantford, Ontario, on land occupied by the Canadian Army, at its Basic Training Camp Number 20.

These words were spoken today on the Native America Calling Radio program by Lorna McNaughton of Oshweken, Ontario: a survivor of the infamous “Mush Hole”, the Brantford Mohawk Indian residential school, run by the Church and Crown of England until 1970.

Why were these children shot? According to Lorna,

The school was overcrowded just then. I was there, I saw the army bring in all these cots for lots of new kids who showed up from all over the country. They must have just wanted to get rid of all the extra hungry mouths; it was wartime and everything was rationed. One day those new kids were in the dorms, then they were all taken out, and we never saw any of them kids again.

A probable site of this mass burial of the executed children has been located, and is now under the protection and jurisdiction of the Onkwehonwe Mohawk Nation and its clan mothers. Surveys and possible excavations will proceed under professional guidance, and according to the protocols of the Onkwehonwe people.

The Mohawk Institute, 1832-1970 - Church of England (Anglican) operated

The Mohawk people call upon all people of good will to help protect the remains of these murdered children until international observers can arrive to monitor events and evidence that is uncovered.

This site is under the jurisdiction of the Onkwehonwe Mohawk people and not the government of Canada or the Crown or Church of England.

The investigation into the Canadian Genocide continues. Stay tuned for regular updates from the Onkwehonwe Mohawk Nation and the ITCCS.

Issued by the ITCCS office, Brussels, and Rawennatshani of the Turtle clan, Onkwehonwe people
November 9, 2011
------------------------

Canada

Native people assaulted by Catholics as Vancouver cops stand by and watch: Occupy the Vatican serves Eviction Notice against child raping church, as Canadian media distorts event

Special Report
By Jeremiah Jourdain
Oct. 31, 2011

Aboriginal woman and member of Occupy Vancouver declares Chief Kiapilano's March, 2008 Banning and Eviction order against the Catholic church

Native people assaulted by Catholics as Vancouver cops stand by and watch: Occupy the Vatican serves Eviction Notice against child raping church, as Canadian media distorts the event

Vancouver, Squamish sovereign territory October 31, 2011:

Two dozen men and women from Occupy Vancouver and the Occupy the Vatican movement, most of them aboriginal, faced assaults and a human blockade from members of the Catholic Knights of Columbus yesterday outside Holy Rosary Cathedral, while trying to peacefully occupy it and enforce a legal eviction order against the Roman Catholic church for its murder of thousands of residential school children.

"I kept yelling to the police to help us but they just stood there at the church entrance and did nothing, even when the Knights of Columbus were shoving one man and making him fall right off the church steps" described a female member of Occupy Vancouver.

Protecting the Child Rapists: Vancouver Cop expels parishioner at Holy Rosary Cathedral for supporting aboriginal protesters

"It's like the cops were being private security for the church, and the Knights of Columbus were acting like police".

The planned occupation was called last week to bring attention to the Catholic church's illegal occupation of Squamish land, and their genocide of native children.

On Saturday, the action was temporarily postponed after two undercover operatives were exposed as attempting to incite violence at the church. Nevertheless, a group of native elders went to the church later and read the eviction notice to the police and catholics barring the church entrance.

The Vancouver media distorted the Sunday action to make it seem that Occupy Vancouver disavowed the action, which is not true. No media reported the exposure of the undercover operatives or the fact that over a hundred Occupy Vancouver members have merely postponed their protest to next Sunday.

One of the protest organizers and a legal agent for Squamish elder Kiapilano, Kevin Annett (Eagle Strong Voice), commented today,

"There's a mayoral election on in Vancouver these days, and every politician is trying to win votes by calling for the Occupy camp to be shut down. What better scare tactic to inflame the citizenry than claiming that a bunch of wild Indians from the camp are storming a church?" commented Kevin Annett today.

Annett has been authorized by Kiapilano to enforce his 2008 Eviction Order against the Catholic church in Vancouver.

"The occupation of these churches will continue, peacefully, and with increasing support from many people. The eyes of the world or on us. We will return next Sunday" announced Annett.

Occupy the Vatican groups across Canada and the world have declared their plans to take over Catholic churches in their communities.

A Press Statement and Ultimatum addressed to the Pope and the Vancouver Catholic Archdiocese will be issued later today.

Information: 250-591-4573
------------------------

Canada

Planned Disruption of Church Occupation Forces Postponement - Vancouver Group Names Provocateurs

Special Contribution
By Kevin Annett
Oct. 31, 2011

Holy Rosary Catholic Cathedral

A Statement from Occupy the Vatican (Vancouver) and Indigenous members of Occupy Vancouver

Sunday, October 30, 2011 on Squamish sovereign territory ("Vancouver, Canada")

Today's planned occupation of Holy Rosary Catholic Cathedral by our network has been postponed for one week because of our discovery of a plan by paid government provocateurs to incite violence at the event and bring discredit to our efforts and against Kevin Annett - Eagle Strong Voice.

Two of these provocateurs are paid agents of government-funded "Chief" Ed John of the collaborationist First Nations Summit. Their names are Frank Martin and Helen Michel, aka "Telquaa".

Martin and Michel, assisted by undercover operatives, planned today to publicly condemn and malign Kevin Annett before the media, and incite occupiers to damage church property, causing the arrest of occupiers and the special detainment "for questioning" of Kevin Annett by police.

Our planned peaceful occupation of the Cathedral, and other Catholic church property, will proceed under strict security precautions next Sunday, November 6 at 10 am. This action will include the infiltration of our members into church services in several locations in Vancouver.

As the attached Notice of Eviction and Right of Entry describes, our occupation of this church has been authorized by hereditary Squamish elders and by a Necessity Duty under Common Law caused by the murderous and genocidal actions of the Roman Catholic Church.

Updates will follow.

Public Notice of Enforcement of Eviction Order and Right of Entry issued against the Roman Catholic Church, the Anglican Church, and the United Church of Canada by hereditary Siem Kiapilano of the Sovereign Squamish Nation

Duly registered and entered in the Vancouver Registry of the “Supreme Court of British Columbia”, Docket S036483, on March 4, 2008

Let all people know

That under the hereditary land law jurisdiction of the Squamish people, the corporations known as the Roman Catholic, Anglican and United Church of Canada were evicted from the territory known as Vancouver, Canada on March 4, 2008, by a legal order issued by hereditary Siem Kiapilano on behalf of his people, because of the illegal occupation of Squamish land by these corporations, their rape, torture and killing of Squamish children in their Indian residential schools, and their continued refusal to surrender these children’s remains for a proper burial.

Let it be further known

That I, Kevin Annett Eagle Strong Voice, known also as Caoimhin Ui Niall and Rawennatshani, have been duly authorized by Siem Kiapilano to act as his legal agent to enforce this Eviction Order, and that I and those men and women appointed by me have been granted by this authorization a Legal Right of Entry into all of the buildings, offices and churches of these religious corporations in order to expel the officers of these corporations and claim these properties for the use of the Squamish people, and to house the homeless and feed the hungry.

And let it further be known

That I, Kevin Annett Eagle Strong Voice, do publicly affirm that I have personally served officers of these religious corporations with the Eviction Order named herein, and that they have not responded, and that therefore, these religious corporations are in a state of illegal trespass and criminal mischief on sovereign Squamish Nation territory.

And let if further be known

That under the March 4, 2008 Eviction Order of Siem Kiapilano, I, Kevin Annett Eagle Strong Voice, and those whom I appoint, are now duly authorized to not only occupy the properties of these religious corporations, but to use these properties to conduct a thorough inquiry into the fate of children killed by these churches, to seize any documents and other evidence held by these churches, to search for and excavate the buried remains of these children and return them for a proper burial according to the protocols of the Squamish people, and to bring this evidence before international courts of justice to indict these churches and their officers for Crimes against Humanity.

And let it further be known

That in order to enforce this Order and responsibility, I, Kevin Annett Eagle Strong Voice, will publicly deputize any and all members of the Vancouver police department and the RCMP to enforce this legal order, as is their duty and obligation under common law, and that any refusal by them to do so, or any attempt by them to prevent me or my agents from enforcing this Order, will be considered an act of hostile intent and criminality by them, and a violation of their oath of office. In the event of such a dereliction of duty on the part of these police officers, I reserve my right under common law and Siem Kiapilano’s original authorization to appoint Public Peace Officers to maintain the peace and enforce this lawful Order according to the principle Actus legis nemini facit injuriam, The act of the law does no one an injury.

I do solemnly swear that I, Kevin Annett Eagle Strong Voice, will enforce this authority and purpose in good faith, and in a spirit of truth and non-violence, under the jurisdiction of Siem Kiapilano and the Squamish people; and that to do so, I hereby publicly and forever renounce any and all allegiance, whether stated or implied, to the so-called Crown of England and its appendage the government of Canada, and all of its sponsors and agents, whether here or abroad.

I make this pledge and declaration in truth, as a free man on the land, in the sight of this gathering of men and women and the world, and as a sovereign citizen of the free Republic known as Kanata, established on July 1, 2009 in alliance with indigenous Nations under the original Two Row Wampum Treaty of 1613 known as Kaswehnta, and the Great Law of Peace, which preceded and supersedes all laws of the so-called Crown of England and of Canada.

I am Kevin Annett Eagle Strong Voice, Caoimhin Ui Niall, Rawennatshani

Issued and publicly read this thirtieth day of October, 2011 on Sovereign Squamish Nation land
------------------------

Canada

Aboriginal Affairs Minister John Duncan claims Indian residential schools "were not genocide" but "an education policy gone wrong"

Special Report
By Kevin Annett
Oct. 28, 2011

Indian graves

An Open Letter to John "what corpses?" Duncan from Kevin Annett - Rawennatshani

Dear John,

So what's the problem, boyo? Was it laundry day in Ottawa, or something? I mean, why would you stand up all naked like that in public and expose yourself with such a dumb-assed statement?

It's prefectly Canadian, of course, to deny our worst deeds, especially towards Indians, but you didn't have to do so in such a stupid manner. "Education policy gone wrong"? Wow.

Just for clarification,John, exactly what aspect of federal Indian education policy included the mandatory gang raping of children, their torturing with electric cattle prods, and forcibly sterilizing them at puberty?

Did Indian education, in your opinion, involve deliberately exposing kids to tuberculosis and letting them die untreated? Or giving boys and girls as young as five an hour of schooling each day before forcing them to labor in the fields or as domestic servants to rich white pedophiles?

That was, after all, the normal "curriculum" in your typical Christian Indian residential school across Canada for more than a century something you conveniently didn't mention.

It's not that I mind your strange faux pas, of course, John. Your bit of Holocaust Denial babble today actually did my job for me, big time. Just yesterday, I tried convincing American and British radio commentators that, despite all the "healing and reconciliation" rhetoric vomiting forth from Ottawa, Canadian politicians are still in utter denial about their own statistics: that nearly one-half of all the residential school children never survived.

Your words proved my point, admirably; and in appreciation, I'm tempted to offer you an honorary position on the board of our International Tribunal into Crimes of Chruch and State.

But seriously, John, when cabinet ministers like you start publicly contradicting their own Prime Ministers like you've done, they're obviously jittery about something. I dare to suggest that our commencing forensic surveys and digs of mass graves at Canada's oldest Indian residential school this past month has something to do with your defensive remark.

I imagine your telephone wires have been humming over the excavations, John, and not just from all those good ol' boy constituents of yours back home. Traditional Mohawks, digging up residential school graves without your okay? Holy shit, John Boy! Ain't it time to call out the army, or sumpthin'?

I am curious about your jitters, though. It's not as if any other Member of Parliament is going to bite your ass over your implied allegation that an "education policy" was behind the death of more than 50,000 little kids. Politicians, like church leaders and the corporate-run media in this country, will believe any bullshit whitewashing of their own, homegrown genocide as long as it placates their white guilt and legal liability.

But maybe, somewhere inside, you know that "education policy" can't possibly be used to explain all those mass graves, or the deliberate starving and killing of generations of children in the Christian internment camps you guys like to call "Indian residential schools".

So I'm hoping against hope that your statement today marks a shift in Canadian government policy, away from the present ridiculous pretense that church and state are actually serious about uncovering and coming clean about their own horror and crimes against the innocent. Otherwise, it doesn't make a hell of a lot of sense for you to deny that genocide, on the one hand, while continuing to lavishly fund a "truth and reconciliation commission" to ostensibly reveal the same genocide.

But maybe I'm assuming too much intelligent design on the part of the Harper government, and you?

Either way, John, the next time you open your mouth about "residential schools", you might first read the statements of your own predecessor at the helm of Indian Affairs, Duncan Campbell Scott, when he said, "Our policy in the Indian boarding schools is not to educate but to kill the Indian within the Indian until there is no more Indian problem."

Or, my favourite remark of his, "Fifty percent of the Indian students do not survive boarding school to receive the benefits we offer them."

John, the only education policy gone wrong is the kind of sanitized garbage we white Canadians feed our own unsuspecting children about ourselves and the real history of our country.

But thanks for the assistance, anyway. I'll see you at the next occupation.
------------------------

Canada

A Letter/Update to Friends and Supporters across the world

Special Contribution
By Kevin Annett
Oct. 26, 2011

Rev. Kevin Annett

Dear friends,

The momentous events of the past few months have caused me to revise my original plans for an October-November European and cross-American organizing tour connected to our ITCCS Tribunal. So I am sorry for any confusion and change in plans caused by this, and by my pre-occupation with the uncovering of possible grave sites at Canada's oldest Indian residential school.

Some of you have put a lot of energy into bringing me to your communities during October and November - an effort which is deeply appreciated by me and many others - and I hope you will share this letter with everyone who anticipated my arrival and who wants to lend their support to our campaign.

In a nutshell, my original speaking and tour timetable has been moved from the fall of this year to the spring of 2012. This has been caused by my involvement in the historic decision of elders of the Mohawk - Onkwehonwe people near Brantford, Ontario to begin their own inquiry into deaths of children at the local, Church of England Indian residential school, and repatriate the remains of those children for a proper burial. I've been deeply involved in this investigation in my role as representative of our ITCCS Tribunal, and accordingly I have had to put on hold other lecture commitments until the new year.

By early 2012, we hope to have from this Brantford investigation the first authenticated forensic evidence of killings of children in church-run schools in Canada, and I will then be bringing that evidence to human rights courts and media groups in Dublin, London, Brussels, Rome and elsewhere. I expect this will begin during late February or early March of 2012.

I have also been asked to help organize a massive convergence on the Vatican during Easter week of 2012 - Easter falls on April 8 - and so I will coordinate all of my future speaking events in Ireland, the UK, the Netherlands, Germany and other European nations to occur during the period of March and April, 2012.

As for North America, / Turtle Island, I am commencing a Canadian and USA speaking tour prior to my European one, during the last week of January and during February of 2012.

There will be more updates about all this coming to you during the next few months, but for now, please mark those months as times to book me to speak and meet with local groups of survivors of church crimes, and others involved in our campaign.

It will help this process if media interviews with me can be arranged early in the new year to help us kick off this new phase of our work.

I thank you for your patience and perseverance, and I look forward to hearing from and seeing you all soon. This is an historic and exciting time! in friendship,

Kevin Annett / Rawennatshani ("Powerful Voice", given upon my adoption into the Mohawk-Onkwehonwe Nation)

Tel. 250-591-4573
------------------------

Canada

An Open Letter and Appeal to the Global “Occupy Wall Street” Movement - From Those who have Faced Occupation for Centuries

Special Contribution
By Jeremiah Jourdain
Oct. 19, 2011

The Original two Row Wampum Treaty between our People and Europeans, guaranteeing respect and equality

My name is Rawennatshani and I am an adopted member of the Turtle clan of the Onkwehonwe people, known to you as the Mohawk Nation. My name was given to me by the Clan Mothers of my Nation and it means, “One whose wise and powerful voice warns the people”.

Your battle today against a global corporate dictatorship that is destroying our world and its people is the same struggle our Nation has fought for much longer than you. For centuries, we have lost most of our land and our people to a triple assault from colonial governments, their partner churches, and land-hungry corporations. Today, like you, we are all perched on a cliff of final extinction.

I am speaking to you today in my own capacity to invite you to come and sit with us under the tree that is our Great Law of Peace and join our forces, so that together we can reclaim the earth, our children, and our very lives.

This year, members of our Onkwehonwe Nation joined with five other indigenous nations here on Turtle Island, and with allies in Ireland and the Basque nation, to proclaim a Public Banishment Order against the institutions that are committing genocide against us, and against our children.

The colonial state known as Canada, its sponsor the Crown of England, and the Roman Catholic, Anglican and United Church of Canada, have been ordered by us to forever leave our territories because they caused the death of more than 50,000 children in their murderous “Indian residential schools”, and have not returned their remains for a proper burial.

In our tradition, as in yours, those who have been killed and denied a proper burial must wander forever until they are acknowledged, honoured and returned to their families. Help us then to give these innocent children the rest they have been denied.

We have asked the world to honor our Banishment Order, and to refuse to support or fund these genocidal organizations. Today, we ask you to do so, and more, and that is to help us occupy the buildings and lands of these churches and governments, and return them to the indigenous nations from whom they were stolen.

Our network has already delivered the Banishment Order to these churches, but they have refused to comply. We are therefore taking the next step of occupying their facilities and using them to house and feed our people, many of whom are destitute.

This occupation is also the only way we have to recover the bodies of the 50,000 children who were cruelly starved, tortured, raped and murdered in these residential schools, for many mass graves sit near former residential schools, and these churches refuse to surrender the remains of our children, or disclose the evidence of their fate.

The Roman Catholic church itself is one of the world’s largest and most murderous corporations, and has placed itself and its child-raping ways above any law. Our long-term aim is to bring the Vatican and other churches to trial for their crimes against humanity and for their role in laundering dirty corporate money and investing in the arms trade and in planet-raping companies.

The genocide by this church and others against our people is part of the same force that is now exterminating our planet and endangering the future of all the nations.

We therefore ask you respectfully to consider undertaking the following actions in your campaign:

1. Pass a motion supporting our Banishment Proclamation and pledging actions to occupy the buildings of these churches. A copy of the Proclamation is attached.

2. Join us in these occupations and reclamations.

3. Pass another motion supporting the efforts of our Onkwehonwe Nation of the Grand River in Brantford, Ontario, who have begun our own inquiry and excavations on the grounds of the oldest Residential school in Canada, to find and re-inter the remains of our relatives killed there.

4. Invite speakers from our Nation and the Human Rights Tribunal we are affiliated with to address your gatherings and share the evidence of the ongoing genocide of our peoples.

5. Educate yourselves about our history and campaign by sharing these websites:

The land you occupy was taken from us at the cost of millions of our lives. Help reverse this wrong by standing with us today.

I thank you and ask the blessings of all our ancestors and the Four Directions on all of us,

I am Rawennatshani of the Turtle Clan, Onkwehonwe Nation of the Grand River - Affiliated with The International Tribunal into Crimes of Church and State (Brussels) – www.itccs.org
------------------------

Letter to Editor

Amnesty International Canada calls on government to arrest former US President George W. Bush Jr. upon his arrival

By Kevin D. Annett
Oct. 16, 2011

George W. Bush Jr.

Dear editor,

Before Amnesty Canada's Director Alex Neve gets too indignant over the crimes of the latest Ugly American - in this case, George Bush - he should try looking closer to home for war crimes.

The systematic torture and starvation of children was authorized by generations of Canadian politicians and church leaders in their murderous "Indian residential schools", and thousands of kids died as a result. That's children: not fully grown political detainees at Guantanamo prison. And yet not one person has ever been arrested or tried in Canada for the deaths of these innocents, and no Canadian human rights activist - including Mr. Neve - has called for the prosecution of a Canadian head of state for these home grown crimes against humanity.

Perhaps my analogy, and the hypocrisy, escapes Alex Neve. After all, he and his group are funded by the very Canadian churches that committed the residential schools massacre; and he lives in a nation where raping a child is now less of a crime, under the law, than growing marijuana.

Oh, Canada.
------------------------

Canada

Investigations of children's graves continues; Kevin Annett adopted into Mohawk Nation, given name and protection; Excavations spark similar actions in other native nations

Special Report
Jeremiah Jourdain
Oct. 9, 2011

Test dig in forest near Mohawk Institute residential school

Brantford, Ontario: Both pro- and anti-government groups in the Mohawk Nation united this past week to endorse the independent investigation into mass graves of children at the former Mohawk Institute Indian residential school. The inquiry was initiated last April by nine elders of the Wolf and Turtle clans.

Chief Bill Montour of the government-funded Mohawk Band Council said publicly at a council meeting on October 4,

"This dig is long overdue and it's needed. I back this thing one hundred percent."

Meanwhile, the Men's Fire, a traditional group of warriors from all of the Six Nations, arrived at the excavation site the same day to provide security and protection for the inquiry members, especially for Kevin Annett of the ITCCS, who was asked by the Wolf and Turtle elders in writing to organize the inquiry into the missing children of the Brantford school.

As a sign of their support for Kevin Annett and the ITCCS, these elders formally adopted Kevin into the Turtle Clan of the Mohawk (Ongyahonway) Nation at a ceremony on October 6, and gave him the name Rawennatshani, which means "One who warns the people with a strong and wise voice".

The inquiry into the fate of many hundreds of missing children at the school continued this week, through Ground Penetrating Radar surveys that revealed that graves of children on school grounds were buried under tons of soil; and that suspected grave sites extend into the wooded perimeter of the former school, which was founded by the Crown and Church of England in 1832.

"We're looking at a massive investigation into an enormous crime site, but at least it's begun" commented Kevin Annett today.

"We hope to have a preliminary report issued before the new year once we have samples and other evidence analyzed forensically. We've already assembled an archaeological team to do a professional study of what's being uncovered."

Earlier this week, traditional Mohawk elders announced that they were imposing their own jurisdiction over the graves of residential school children, and declared that the government of Canada, its police and courts had no authority to intervene into their investigation.

Elsewhere in Canada, groups among the Maliseet, Anishnabe and Squamish indigenous nations announced this week their intent to launch their own digs and inquiries at suspected mass grave sites at former residential schools on their territories, independently of the government's stage-managed "Truth and Reconciliation Commission."

"The Mohawks have inspired all of us" said Jeremiah Jourdain of the Anishnabe nation in Winnipeg today.

"Now we have to spread this movement to bring the children home on our terms - and prosecute those who killed them."

Nearly half of all Canadian Indian residential school students - more than 50,000 children - died or went missing between 1832 and 1996, when the last school closed.

A You Tube presentation of these events will be forthcoming this week. Images follow.

For updates on the Mohawk digs and more information, see www.itccs.org and contact Kevin Annett at hiddenfromhistory1@gmail.com . The Nine Elders can be contacted through Bill Squire at 519-757-3624 .
------------------------

U.S.A

Shavendra Silva: tragi-comedy of Tamil Diaspora led prosecution operation in the United States!

Special Contribution
By Massey Subra
Oct. 7, 2011

Maj. Gen. Shavendra Silva

“Sri Lanka’s External Affairs Ministry has maintained that Maj. Gen. Shavendra Silva is protected by the Vienna Convention of diplomatic relations and diplomatic immunities and privileges accorded under the Convention on Privileges and Immunities of the United Nations, and that therefore, the litigation filed in a New York district court on behalf of two plaintiffs – the wife of the former LTTE leader of the East, Ramesh, and another Sri Lankan Tamil civilian, Seetharam Sivam, is invalid”

The judge in this case wrote (will write) his decision:

Our past experience with Sri Lanka as a whole is that Sri Lankan Government and Military always hide behind democratic institutions and laws to conduct their atrocities. Major Shavendra Silva is clearly one of the suspects in the 40,000 people’s death, which is categorize-able as genocide. He knew what he was doing, his training indicates what will happen when a particular ordnance is used in war and he failed to apply due diligence with civilians lives, therefore he is guilty. But this court has no other jurisdiction; it is left to Sri Lankan government to sentence him appropriately.

That will be the verdict!

ONE THING ANY ONE INVOLVED IN THE GENOCIDE MUST BE AWARE THAT WE WILL GET YOU ANY WHICH WAY. It is the story of Adolf Eichmann repeated several times. One by one you will be plucked away defying all international laws, protocols and etiquettes. Sixty years of atrocities came to an end on May 19th 2009. Now it is pay up time.
------------------------

Canada

Dig for Children’s Remains Begins at Canada’s Oldest Residential School Sovereign Mohawk Nation commences groundbreaking investigation of mass murder by Church and State

Special Contribution
By Kevin Annett
Oct. 3, 2011

Mohawk school survivor Geronimo Henry(L) speaks with Rev. Kevin Annett(R)

BRANTFORD, ONTARIO – Elders of the Mohawk Nation in collaboration with the International Tribunal into Crimes of Church and State (ITCCS) and its Secretary, Kevin Annett, announced today the commencement of forensic excavations on the grounds of the oldest Indian residential school in Canada - the Mohawk Institute run by the Church of England.

Frustrated by the ongoing whitewash by the Canadian government of the murder of residential school children by Catholic and Protestant churches, the Sovereign Mohawk nation of Grand River has begun digging for children’s remains to “finally give them a proper burial and bring to trial those who killed them”, to quote Mohawk elder Bill Squire.

Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) survey of Mohawk school grounds

Squire and eight other Mohawk elders have granted authorization to Kevin Annett and the ITCCS to conduct Ground Penetrating Radar surveys and excavations at the Brantford residential school in order to bring the evidence obtained to International tribunals and human rights courts.

Forensic excavations on the grounds of the oldest Indian residential school

Initial evidence obtained at these digs today confirmed eyewitness accounts of the deaths and burial of children at the Brantford school, as well as the cover up of their remains.

The Mohawk elders and the ITCCS are issuing a call to other indigenous nations to commence similar excavations at former Indian residential schools across Canada, rather than rely on the Canadian government and its churches for justice or disclosure.

Further updates will be released as the excavations continue.

For information contact the ITCCS and Kevin Annett at hiddenfromhistory1@gmail.com and http://www.itccs.org.

Media Contact: Bill Squire – Hereditary Chief, Wolf Clan
Tel. (519) 757-3624
------------------------

Canada

Dick Cheney to Speak at Notorious Child Trafficking Center in Vancouver on September 26

Special Report
By Jeremiah Jourdain
Sep. 23, 2011

Rear entrance(R), where children are brought for sexual trafficking

A Statement from The International Tribunal into Crimes of Church and State Accused war criminal former Vice President Dick Cheney is scheduled to speak at the infamous Vancouver Club on Monday, September 26.

The ITCCS supports the protest being called against Cheney's appearance for 5:30 pm that day at the Vancouver Club at 915 West Hastings street, and wishes to inform concerned citizens and the press of these facts:

1. Since the spring of 1994, lawyers and journalists have named the Vancouver Club as a site where children are routinely trafficked, exploited sexually and possibly killed. These crimes were documented, including with photographic proof, by Vancouver trial lawyer Jack Cram and his assistant Renate Andres-Auger, during 1994. Both of these lawyers attempted to bring a lawsuit against two Supreme Court judges in Vancouver for their proven complicity in this alleged pedophile ring, in April of 1994. Both of them were disbarred, and Jack Cram was arrested, drugged and jailed, and the evidence he had on the Club and these judges was stolen.

2. Aboriginal children have been a prime target of the Vancouver Club pedophile ring, which involves senior judges, church lawyers, businessmen and politicians. To quote Jack Cram's statement in the BC Supreme Court on April 26, 1994, "Indian children go into the Vancouver Club and are never seen again." As recently as the summer of 2009, aboriginal children have been observed being taken against their will into the rear entrance of the Vancouver Club at 915 West Hastings street from the Squamish Indian reserve in North Vancouver, during the hours of 1 and 3 am.

3. An attempt by reporters with the Vancouver Province and the North Shore News to investigate these claims and the Cram evidence was stopped by a threatened lawsuit against these newspapers from the two Supreme Court judges named by Cram, during 1996 and 1997.

4. One of the predecessors to our ITCCS, the U.N.-affiliated IHRAAM Tribunal into Indian Residential Schools, obtained considerable evidence during its June, 1998 hearings in Vancouver concerning the Vancouver Club pedophile ring. This included eyewitness accounts from an employee at the Club and from a retired RCMP officer, who was discouraged by his superiors from investigating the Club, where the RCMP Superintendent is a member. When one of the IHRAAM investigators, Kevin Annett, publicly surfaced this evidence, he became immediately targeted by a COINTELPRO-type "dirty tricks" campaign by the RCMP and its aboriginal agents that continues to the present day.

5. A United Nations conference on child trafficking, held in Vancouver in September, 1999, confirmed in its summary report that Vancouver is one of three cities in the world where "organized child prostitution and trafficking operates with unofficial police and judicial protection ... including at the elite Vancouver Club."

Considering these facts, we urge protesters to continue their actions against the Vancouver Club even after Dick Cheney has gone, and expose the reason why Cheney is appearing at this center where the proven rape, torture and possible murder of children goes on with impunity - and whether Cheney is himself connected to these crimes.

The ITCCS will be pursuing this investigation and will include its findings in its final report in January, 2012, and will seek an indictment against the Vancouver Club and Dick Cheney in international courts of justice.

Issued by ITCCS International - Brussels office September 23, 2011
------------------------

Canada

PUBLIC BANISHMENT ORDER

Special Report
By Jeremiah Jourdain
Sep. 15, 2011

Inuitituk dialect map


Issued against the Corporations known as the Roman Catholic Church, Anglican Church, and United Church of Canada - By Elders in Council from the Inuit, Cree, Metis, Mohawk, Anishnabe, Basque and Gaelic Nations under traditional and sovereign Land Law Jurisdiction

As of this day, September 18, 2011, your organization, its clergy and officers, are forever banished from our territories and lands, and your property and wealth is claimed and re-possessed for the use and benefit of all our people.

Your right to operate on our land has been forfeited by your rape, torture, and murder of our children, by your refusal to change and do justice, and by your betrayal of your own faith and public trust. Depart, Now and Forever

If you continue to operate on our land after September 18, 2011, your clergy and officials will be in a state of criminal trespass and public mischief, and will be subject to immediate arrest and detainment by our Common Law Peace Officers.

We call upon all the members of these churches to honor this Banishment Order by withdrawing all financial and material support for these criminal corporations posing as religious bodies, lest they be found guilty of complicity with these crimes.

This Banishment Order will be enforced through direct, non-violent actions by our people to peacefully occupy the church properties of these corporations, and use them to house the homeless and feed the hungry.

We invoke the Great Law of Peace and the Sovereignty of our respective Nations as we proclaim the Permanent Expulsion and Banishment from our communities of the Roman Catholic Church, Inc., the Church of England, Inc. (Anglican-Episcopalian), and the United Church of Canada, Inc.

Posted at these churches around the world at 11 am, local time, Sunday, September 18, 2011

Issued under the authority of the Council of Nine Traditional Elders

Jeremiah Jourdain, Convenor - www.itccs.org
------------------------

A Proclamation to the Churches Responsible for the Torture and Murder of our Children: It is Time for You to Leave

Special Contributor
By Kevin D. Annett
Sep. 7, 2011

Broken Chains

Invoking the Ancient Community Law of Banishment - Issued by the Elders of The International Tribunal into Crimes of Church and State, In Council, on September 6, 2011

The Christian churches responsible for the abduction, detainment, forced labor, rape, indoctrination, torture and murder of generations of our children and their descendents have violated the laws of God and humanity, and damaged our societies, far beyond the power of any apology or reparation to undo.

These churches have betrayed the innocent as well as their public trust, and violated the essential morality upon which any healthy society survives. In so doing, they have mocked and blasphemed their Creator, denied their essential teachings, and condemned themselves in the eyes of God and the laws of man.

These churches have in this manner forfeited their right to continue to function as protected or subsidized legal bodies among us.

They must depart forever from our communities. As of Sunday, September 18, 2011, they are banned from operating in our territories.

In all of our societies, the survival of the community, and the well being of children as the next generation, is paramount. Anyone or anything that threatens children and places itself above the law and the power of families to protect their young becomes a clear and present danger to our survival, and must be disarmed and disestablished for the good of all.

The main perpetrator of a regime of intergenerational terror against children – the Vatican and its Catholic Church Corporation – is incapable of being reformed into a benign institution because its worldview and principles are based on contempt for the inherent goodness of nature and children.

When the church absolves itself and its priests for raping and destroying that goodness, it is expressing that contempt, and commits an unpardonable crime that violates God and humanity, and the Great Law of Peace.

Jesus himself prescribes the punishment for harming children and their sanctity: the death of the offender. But rather than a millstone, we attach a more effective cure around the neck of the offending institutions, by prescribing for them a social death through their banishment from our midst, and their disestablishment as recognized institutions.

As of Sunday, September 18, 2011, we will commence this Abolition movement by declaring every church guilty of these crimes to be permanently banned from our communities.

As of that date, we will conduct a massive and ongoing public boycott campaign of these churches, denying them all financial support, attendance and public services. Their church properties are declared to be communalized and as of September 18, will be open to all people on a secular basis to use for their benefit, especially as shelters for the homeless. Their priests and officials will not be allowed to practice in our midst. And their assets and wealth will be declared to be owned by the community, and shall be distributed according to the needs of our people.

We will conduct this Abolition movement on the highest moral plain of direct, non-violent action, standing on truth and love, and on our inherent sovereign power and rights as free men and women.

We ask that Catholics, Protestants, and all members of these banished church bodies consent to help us in this process of socially disestablishing the corporate institutions that are the cause of these crimes, by leaving these churches voluntarily and joining the rest of our community in reclaiming the teachings of Christ that have been so violated and trampled asunder by the church.

As part of this Reclamation of not only the structure but the soul of Christianity, we urge Christians to dissociate themselves from the long and bloody history of Christendom, by helping us bring to trial and judgment the persons and beliefs responsible for the murder and genocide of entire nations and their children.

Our Abolition movement has already commenced, among traditional elders of indigenous nations in Canada, who have issued Banning and Eviction Proclamations on their territories against the Catholic and Protestant churches responsible for the deaths of their children in their Indian residential schools.

We will extend this movement to embrace all peoples across the world that have been harmed and brutalized by churches functioning beyond all accountability and law.

We invoke the Great Law of Peace and Justice, and the inherent land law jurisdiction of our sovereign nations, as we proclaim this, the permanent expulsion and banishment from all of our communities of the Roman Catholic Church, the Church of England (Anglican-Episcopalian), and the United Church of Canada (Methodist-Presbyterian).

We call upon all people to enforce this Expulsion and Banishment through the peaceful and permanent occupation of the properties of these churches.

This Proclamation is passed unanimously by the nine elders of the ITCCS Executive, from the Inuit, Cree, Metis, Mohawk, Anishnabe, Basque and Gaelic nations. It will be publicly read and posted around the world on Sunday, September 18 at 11 am. Please distribute this Proclamation in your own communities.
------------------------

I Come to Bury Jack Layton, Not to Praise Him: More Notes on a Journey through this Odd Thing called Canada

Special Contributor
By Kevin D. Annett
Sep. 4, 2011

Jack Layton

I landed in Toronto yesterday after a month abroad, and was surprised to be let back into the country. I sort of secretly hoped that I’d be detained at the airport by the Mounties and charged with treasonous sedition, after my many public broadsides at Lizzie Windsor. But things are never that upfront and honest, here in the Great White North.

Take the recent demise of Jack Layton, for instance.

I wandered tonight through my old haunts from my Toronto street ministry days, twenty years ago, including across Nathan Phillips square, where loads of homeless families used to squat: most of them aboriginal. They’re all gone on now, forced out by politicians like Layton. In their place, I discovered walls and walls full of chalked graffiti praising the just-dead NDP leader in a manner normally reserved for a messiah.

“LAYTON- NATION LIVES ON”

“JACK LAYTON: THE VOICE OF CANADA’S VOICELESS WILL NEVER DIE”

“WE LOVE YOU JACK”

And so on.

OK, so the guy never once replied to my letters or appeals, even when I was stuck in a British Immigration prison. I’m not bearing him much of a grudge, really. He was, after all, a politician.

What I find hugely ironic, and oh so Canadian, is how none of the people adorning the walls of downtown Toronto with their accolades for Layton have ever managed to do the same thing for any of the thousands of aboriginal children killed off by Jack’s United Church of Canada, which he clung to as a self-described “loyal member” to the day he died.

True to his denomination – whose consistency has sometimes been termed “spiritual jello” - Jack himself never once mentioned the Indian residential school atrocities until after Prime Minister Steven Harper did. Jack even claimed that he didn’t think what went on within those deadly walls constituted genocide. I guess, like the Moderator of his church, Layton thought that 50,000 dead kids can be wrong.

Leaving dead Indians aside – and we usually do – one has to admit that honesty about ourselves is not a strong point among Canadians. And Jack Layton and his United Church so perfectly embody White Canada: smiling, concerned, self-congratulatory, and politically correct and involved just so long as certain toes aren't stepped on and the Great Canadian Myth - that we’re all generally nice, civilized and humanitarian folks – can endure.

It’s this, our sanctimonious untruthfulness, which causes the Americans to hate us so.

On the other hand, during my time on Toronto’s streets as a novice minister, I met some big exceptions to Canadian duplicity, primarily among people who had been at the receiving end of it.

Back in 1991, I seemed to be the only person on staff at the United Church’s Fred Victor Mission who was enthusiastic about the people I was meeting on the hot air grates at the Square. I kept inviting these staffers to accompany me at nights to meet the homeless people they always talked about abstractly, but none of them ever came along. Almost all of these people were staunch United Church and NDP members. They had all the talk, but that was about it.

I was angry at them for awhile, until I saw the real problem was not their hypocrisy but the culture of duplicity in which they lived, as heirs to a Canada ruled so absolutely by those two enormous fraudulences of Crown and Pulpit.

It was that Brit turned Yankee firebrand, Tom Paine, who observed, “Kings could not exist without priests. First enslave the mind, and the slavery of the body follows as natural as the shadow its object.”

No matter what the politics of a white Canadian, they have universally pulled back from confronting the churches that slaughtered the innocent with impunity, and keep torturing children: even when all the proof of their crime is out there.

Granted, it’s hard to know what to do when the courts, the cops, and the government are all in bed with the Christian wolves in sheep’s clothing, and are doing their best to intimidate and criminalize the victims, and their few allies. But you’d think that such collusion would make more of us stop and question our allegiances: and our tax-paying and church-attending practices.

Sadly, within Canada’s neo-colonial culture that’s so rooted in automatic deference to authority, the psychological power of what’s called the Christian church is still formidable; and yet, it’s also extremely thin on the ground. I’ve seen that power snap and break at moments, like when bunches of us have invaded church services in Toronto and Vancouver, and spoken of the crime to startled parishioners.

If even one Member of Parliament had have had the temerity to call for the law to come down on the churches that raped, sterilized and murdered so many Indian children, those grassroots actions would have kindled a political and even spiritual revolution in Canada unseen since the days of Louis Riel and William Lyon McKenzie.

However, every MP, including Jack Layton, knew the personal consequence of taking such a step, being the oath-bound legal agents of the very foreign power that instigated the residential schools holocaust: the so-called Crown of England.

Standing last night outside Toronto’s City Hall and scanning the orgasm of cheerleading for Layton all over its walls, I couldn’t help but wonder how many of the enthusiastic inscribers knew the words of the Oath of Allegiance that Jack had taken upon entering Canada’s Parliament:

“I swear to bear loyalty and true allegiance to Queen Elizabeth the Second and all her descendents.”

Note that there’s nothing in there about bearing true allegiance to the people of Canada, and to their Constitution and laws.

Jack Layton, and every other M.P., as well as every judge, cop, soldier and civil servant in Canada, is the agent of the Crown, and is bound to do its bidding: not ours. We elect them in our name and pay for all their expenses and goodies, but legally and constitutionally, they are not accountable to us at all.

People overthrew Mr. Ghaddafi recently for running things in that kind of manner in Libya. In any other country, our political system would be considered treasonable, and grounds for ignoring such collaborating lackies, and even overthrowing them altogether. But Canadians would rather labor under tyranny, it seems, than fundamentally upset anything.

That’s why our ludicrous colonial arrangement desperately needs popular figureheads like Jack Layton in place, to convince us sheepeople that there is in fact hope and possibility in such an unrepresentative system. All we need, I keep hearing from the “progressive” deludinoids of the left, is to win another hundred or more seats in Parliament. Then we’ll have our day!

What all these folks stubbornly refuse to learn is that the entire arrangement is a stacked deck, controlled by the clique William Lyon McKenzie derisively called “The Family Compact”: the wealthy elite of church, state and corporation that run Canada as a waterhole and filling station for once the British, then the American, and increasingly Asian empires - all under the tight control of a fictitious thing called the Crown that legally owns all of the land and wealth of our nation.

Jack Layton saw nothing wrong, basically, with that arrangement: he and his party just wanted it played out a bit more “fairly” for those whom it is chewing to pieces.

Well, for some of those, at least. The homeless Indians and slaughtered kids of the residential schools somehow didn’t get included in Jack’s vision of justice, since he had his own church to consider.

Back in 1994, when I exposed how an NDP cabinet minister in B.C. who was also a United Church clergyman – John Cashore – was using his office to protect his church from scandal for their profitable trading in stolen native land, I was asked by an amused “Conflict of Interest Commissioner” why I thought that church and state were somehow separate in Canada.

They’re not at all, of course. And so both of those institutions are thoroughly above the law that the rest of us are expected to follow. But I don’t expect Canadians to stop that crime from carrying on. Instead, we’ll keep funding and honoring such church-state official whitewashes as our “Truth and Reconciliation Commission”, where the very churches – including Jack’s – that ran the Indian residential schools and buried all those kids get to investigate themselves, and tell us all what really happened.

It’s a funny thing, but I always noticed that Jack Layton and Steven Harper always smiled with the same expression.
------------------------

Canada

Action Alert: Proof of vaccine experimentation on aboriginal newborns and children in Canada today

Special Report
Jeremiah Jourdain
Aug. 20, 2011

Vaccine experimentation on aboriginal newborns and children in Canada

This internal memo (below) was obtained from the City of Edmonton's Aboriginal Affairs department and sent to us a few days ago.

It describes a program requiring aboriginal newborns and children to serve as live test subjects for vaccine experimentation. The "study" described is seeking babies as young as two months old to receive the vaccine infanrix hexa by the end of October.

This is shocking proof that the genocidal medical experimentation we have documented is continuing against native people in Canada, who cannot legally refuse vaccinations and treatments ordered by the government.

During the bogus H1N1 swine flu vaccine hysteria, aboriginal people were tested with experimental tamiflu drugs on Indian reservations across Canada, in conjunction with the shipping of dozens of human body bags to the same reserves.

Please raise a protest over these experiments, including by contacting the people listed below, and your local media. Demand to know why, if the vaccine described is a "standard" one, does it require further testing on aboriginal children in Alberta?

sincerely,

Kevin Annett with the International Tribunal into Crimes of Church and State (itccs.org)

From: Lavera Sebulsky
Sent: Tuesday, August 16, 2011 7:43 PM
To: Kate Rathwell; Violet White
Subject: Infant Aboriginal Study

Hi Kate and Violet

I expect you may have heard about the research study Dr. Predy is conducting with infant aboriginals using a vaccine, infanrix hexa. It is already used as standard vaccine in BC and we would do the 2, 4 and 6 month age vaccinations. Similar to Pediacel with the inclusion of hepatitis B. Includes Metis, First Nations and Inuit.

We are trying to recruit 12 subjects and now are at 5. Some of those are in the East Edmonton clinic area. I was hoping that you could promote the study among Aboriginal Moms who come to the Health for Two sessions or any prenatal clinic/pediatric clinic you might have at the health centre.

We can start recruiting to the end of October so would need babies who will be 2 months of age before the end of October.

I'll attach the information poster that you can give to any aboriginal moms for their possible interest. The good thing is that it is already a licensed vaccine. There is also a good reimbursement of $50.00 per visit and parking or bus tickets are also covered. We do everything the child would receive at the health centre including the other immunizations and well child components. Rotarix liquid is also offered at no cost.

Thanks for your help to share the information with aboriginal families and please do call me if you have any questions.

Lavera Sebulsky
Executive Associate
Office of the Senior Medical Officer of Health
Senior Medical Director, Population & Public Health
Alberta Health Services
Ph: (780) 342.0186
Fax: (780) 342.0249
Email: lavera.sebulsky@ albertahealthservices.ca
Alberta Health Services
www.albertahealthservices.ca
------------------------

Canada

Escaping the Sleep Room: Recovering from and Transforming Our Collective Dissociation

Special Contribution
By Kevin D. Annett
Aug. 12, 2011

Roman Catholic's inquisition

A Preparatory Parable: The Beast with Two Natures

There was once a white two headed serpent that appeared outside a village of the People. It spoke with not one, but two voices, each as convincing as the other.

One head uttered gentle, friendly sounds and asked to be received into the village. The other head frowned and hissed at the People, and threatened to devour them. The horrified villagers did not know what voice to believe. They turned to their wise shaman for advice about the strange intruder.

The old man stared at the creature for awhile, and then finally spoke to the People.

“This white monster is a strange animal and comes from another world. It will never make sense because it has two minds: one is loving and the other is hateful. One speaks like a civilized man and the other like a brute. One head does not know the other exists. Each thinks that it alone speaks and is real. This crazy creature must be sent away from us or be killed, or it will destroy us in its madness.”

But the People did not heed their shaman’s words. They took pity on the creature and told themselves they could cure it of its apparent madness. And so they welcomed it into their village.

Years later, only one man emerged from the sickness spread by the creature. He was the sole survivor of his People. He went to other nations and tried to warn them of the White Serpent with Two Minds.

He spoke,

“The creature lived among us for a time and won our trust. Then one day, it attacked us without warning or mercy. Our best warriors tried to kill the Serpent, but our weapons were useless against it, for it was too powerful. Its two heads began eating all of the people, young and old, even the babies.

“But what was more terrible was that once the creature ate anyone, that person would emerge from the Serpent changed, having two heads as well, and would help the creature destroy the others. Soon, our nation was filled only with creatures with two heads, for everyone had become as crazy as the invader.”

The loving followers of Jesus Christ used smallpox, guns and rape to spread their message of love. Their priests would bless and baptize the children of the People before torturing and killing them.

As one of the two headed invaders, I have the advantage bestowed on me by civilization of ignoring the troubling and shifting image in the mirror.

To unearth some of the root of it all, let us understand first that this Thing emerged slowly, with foreseeable consequences. Its compulsion was to impose uniformity on everything, but especially on a humanity that seemed to require unending correction. It adopted as its sign of peace a Roman military symbol.

Like its founding story, of a naked man and woman given strict orders to obey by an unseen Boss and then doing the exact opposite, what came to be called Christian civilization is an enormous, two headed incongruity: two opposite messages pretending oneness. We are loved, but damned. We are given reason, but ordered not to use it. We are free, but forever enslaved by the Original Wrong: the disobedience of that first brother and sister, the Boss’s first children, who would incestuously seed a human race that was both treasure and plague.

Does this weird, dissociated message that formed all that we are now account for the subsequent centuries of benevolent massacre wrought by Christianity and its nations? Or, for its obsessive intolerance of any other message or creed, its zeal to exterminate difference, and to obliterate all other peoples and ways for their own good – while all the time professing love for such enemies?

This puzzle has so murdered its way around our planet for so many centuries that its madness seems hardly wrong or unusual to us. We have long ago adapted to its horror. At best, its absolute disharmony seems to us slightly out of kilter at times, and can be safely readjusted with the right apologies and Royal Commissions. Yet from the beginning of Christendom, any clear, unfettered and reasonable mind could see through its confusing lie, which is why it has always tended to outlaw reason.

To emerge from any family lie is usually impossible while struggling within its entrails and assumptions. So I propose we begin from elsewhere, to try to regain some reason and sanity, which in the end always just means recovering ourselves.

All of us who have struggled to change the world, or simply speak out against wrong, have encountered the same gloomy and crippling paradox in the people who are suffering around us: namely, that they don't seem to care, and those that do, prove to be temporary in their commitment, and will abandon the cause when danger or loss threatens them.

In short, Fear, not Truth, seems to be the operating principle of the masses – as one would expect from those who have been so filled with the belief that the earth, and they, are inherently cursed, at worst, and are hopelessly inadequate, at best.

Yet religious indoctrination alone does not explain the acute sense of helplessness of the masses. For it is undeniable that, as different as people are as individuals, within so-called modern society they act in the main as a predictable, managed herd: unable to overtly challenge authority or alter their allegiances, and incapable of breaking from the trudging lifestyle that sustains their own oppression, and even destruction.

Only those who have not struggled on the ground with people can deny that this is true. What, then, can be done to free the herd from itself?

The condition I've described is not accidental, but arises from two complimentary factors that I will explore:

1. The structural requirements of a hierarchical and totalitarian social order that is more than 5000 years old, predating and giving form to Christian, “western civilization”; and

2. The dissociated psyche imposed on every person by the violence and oppression inflicted on them by fear and control- based child rearing.

In our culture and time, a child is born free, happy and integrated, empathically capable of knowing the world as it is and acting on the basis of that knowing. Yet within a few years, the same child has learned to doubt and distrust his own feelings and perceptions, defer to parental authority and internalize another person's views as his own, and generally base his entire life on the fear of what might happen to him.

This massive re-adjustment is caused quite simply by a systematic assault on a young child by parents, schooling and society, designed to break the natural will, thoughts and impulses of the newborn and mold them into conformity with another requirement: not the natural joy, freedom and independence of humanity, but social regimentation and predictability.

We are deliberately programmed in this manner to be servants - those without liberty. We become subjects to a ruler's commands, and inwardly terrified of anything that will upset or dislocate that ruler, especially dissent and difference of opinion. And we remain such permanently dissociated beings, incapable of knowing what our true impulses are, and translating them into our daily lives and actions.

In this manner, the template that shapes each of us is a figure who permanently cringes inside from the raised hand of the parent-figure that may strike us at any moment: a condition that makes it impossible for most of us to simply be an independent and critical personality, let alone who is capable of revolting or dissenting from authority. Cringing, we deny our most basic impulses, and become permanently neurotic because our very nature is no longer expressed in what we think and how we behave.

Our unbalanced psyche compensates for this imprisoned and contradictory condition by projecting all that we feel or desire but can never express outwards: we externalize our most cherished hopes and drives. Truth, justice, even love, lie forever outside ourselves, symbolized in a distant, heavenly God to whom we pray, a heroic messiah-leader who will deliver us from oppression and restore our natural freedom, or a perfect lover who will enter and mend our painful and tattered life, and make us whole again.

Unfortunately, these external figures, being imaginary, never do in fact appear to deliver us from the destruction inflicted on us at so tender an age. And bereft of our natural wisdom, we are not equipped to do anything but continue to defer and aspire to some external deliverance. We cannot imagine that we hold within ourselves our own answers, our own forgotten liberty, and the capacity to overturn our world of slavery.

How often, for instance, does the novice social activist or ordinary, "concerned citizen" exclaim,

"What can I do about things? I'm just one person!"

For to the untreated dissociate, our own person has no ultimate weight, power or value - only the external source does: God, the hero/great leader, the "enlightened politician", or the constant and faithful lover. Only these rescuers can take action against injustice or evil, since "I" am not capable or response-able.

As the abolitionist and former slave, Frederick Douglas, observed in 1862, "Make a man a slave and you take from him all moral responsibility."

By identifying this permanent dissociation induced in us by the violence done to our natural autonomy as a child, we set the framework for knowing how and why society's ruling elites have kept us in such a complete state of functional slavery since the rise of the first hierarchical societies around 5000 years ago.

How did humanity become manacled to warfare, hierarchy, oppression and slavery - to kings, priests and bosses? What compelled us to surrender our natural liberty and live in our majority in bonded service to ruling elites, making them wealthy by laboring for them and fighting their wars?

The inability of anthropologists to come up with a definitive answer to this paradox - the historic evolution of our species from freedom into slavery that so mirrors our own personal life journey - speaks much of the hold that our mass dissociation has over our reason and judgment. Can we who have never known freedom imagine it for ourselves today, let alone envision a time when it characterized humanity?

Whether collectively or personally, we are never simply a passive or unwitting victim, a raw material shaped by others. We always cooperate to some degree with our own enslavement, if only because nothing else seems possible for us. Oppression seems to arise automatically when people start to congregate in large, permanent communities. And yet the natural liberty of a man or woman does not surrender easily to captivity. It first must be beaten and terrorized out of them, according to history, and our own experience.

The world's first kings were also priests, teaches archaeology: organized religion arose in tandem with monarchy, armies and slavery. Our ancestors' fear of the unknown, of crop failure, suffering and death, was exploited by a few intriguers who declared themselves descended from mythical "gods", as in the conical clan system of Polynesian chiefdoms, or among the divine kingships of Sumeria.

Religion began as, and has always remained, an act of terror and intimidation. For the external, self-appointed authority figure arose to declare to the rest of humanity,

"I alone know what's best for you and what will save you. I alone can protect you. Worship me, and everything will be guaranteed."

Such an offer, symbolized in Satan's three offers to Jesus in the desert, and played out in the voice of every parent to their children, and every priest to his "flock", is made only once. After that, the choice is up to us.

But it is not a free choice, really, for behind it lies the threat: the violent hand that will descend on us if we refuse: as in any big protection racket. And so each of us, so inherently innocent and trusting, accepts the bully’s offer in our own way. We hand over our authority and our freedom to another, since the alternative – as Jesus learned – is slow torture and death.

On the basis of this tragic surrender has arisen civilization: an enormous and violent coercion by the few to steal the earth from the rest of us, and which is kept in place by the rendering of each new generation into a pulped mass of dissociated slaves.

Every society, whether slave-owning, feudal, capitalist, or today's global corporatocracy, is fashioned on a remarkably similar arrangement - a pyramidal structure consisting of three parts: a tiny ruling class, an educated managerial group of between 10% and 15% of the population, and the remaining 85% of people who labor to sustain, protect and feed the minority.

In that sense, it is therefore pointless to speak of fundamental social and political change up until now, since from the dawn of recorded history, this pyramid has never altered.

A pyramidal structure of three class system

Ironically, the hopes and interests of both the elite and the masses reside in the managerial class: that middle group of people who are trained to effect the functioning of the entire social order: politicians, lawyers, academics, doctors, engineers, social workers, scientists and the general professional and "white collar" strata whose spirit is neither red (masses) nor blue (elites), but pale: non-descript and colorless, which it must be to act as the functioning middle wheel of society.

These managers are, even more than the masses, the most dissociated group in the social pyramid, for their own individuality must by necessity be utterly subordinated to the prime directive of keeping the social machinery functioning. Their mental and spiritual suppression is ensured by the tangible rewards and false sense of autonomy granted them by the elites whom they serve.

Unlike the masses, despite the same brutalization and loss of self suffered at a young age, the managerial class believes they can escape or mitigate their enslavement. The submerged and invisible 85% of society, contrarily, know they cannot.

The middle group, for all its purported learning and sophistication, is therefore the most mind-muddled, adhering most completely and fervently to the lies and myths of the system. For as Noam Chomsky points out, mind control must be all the more complete and effective among educated professionals, whose collective hand is on the levers of power that legitimate the system and make its crimes appear fair and rational, and who must therefore never be allowed to become disenchanted or hostile regarding the arrangement of things. For when such alienation strikes the middle class in a serious way, societies begin to disintegrate, which is why every sustained and successful revolution is always led by the managerial strata, even though it is fueled by the masses.

Notwithstanding the hopes and predictions of revolutionary theorists, the great mass of people - despite their more sober and realistic awareness of their condition - do not seem organically capable of establishing what Antonio Gramsci called their own hegemony over society by recovering collective self-awareness, and permanently ruling in their own name.

Their historical brutalization at the bottom of society's rung, and the enormous mass dissociation arising from it, is so complete that their revolt, when it does appear, is short-lived, violent, uncoordinated and unsustainable. Like a child beaten too many times, the masses are so hardened to themselves that they have lost empathy for themselves and those around them. They cannot imagine, except so briefly, any other arrangement than following orders, laboring dutifully, accepting authority grudgingly, and just getting by while grabbing a bit of comfort - like any traumatized child forever reconciled to "the facts of life".

Far more than the managerial class, the masses know themselves to be slaves, and equally know they can be nothing else.

The ruling elite are a more nebulous and camouflaged group that resists inspection and understanding because of the absolutely precarious nature of their existence. They must rule primarily through appearance and bluff, having no actual power to compel obedience.

The elites' psyche is groomed from birth to reflect their sense of being godlike beings removed from the rest of humanity, free to commit any act or outrage and never be judged. They are, in that sense, not simply dissociated, but functionally psychotic, having lost the capacity to relate to or empathize with anyone or any group outside their own. And yet their insular madness works to their permanent benefit as well as ensuring social stability, since their values and self-interest, which are held as sacred and inviolable, are society's laws and values as well.

When I was seven years old, I was placed for four years in an elite private school in Winnipeg known as St. John's Ravenscourt School for Boys: the abode of the very wealthy, including the sons of senior politicians and business elites. The violence and degradation imposed on me and my fellow students there was far worse than anything I knew in the more plebian public school system.

These future leaders of society were battered and terrorized into a strict mental conformity that allowed no exceptions. But above all else, these young boys were conditioned to be cold, obedient, calculating and predatory individuals, without any other allegiance.

The pioneering German psychologist Alice Miller has noted that, despite all of the obvious differences within a pyramidal society, regardless of a person's class or standing, the same pattern of personal dysfunction is at work in anyone who has been alienated from his natural being in childhood.

Rich and poor alike, we are all forced to live alongside the horrible fact that we have suffered and been violated without purpose as an innocent child, and have been forced to accept and live with this injustice as moral cripples who can never raise a hand against those who harmed us. The fact that we are reconciled to that early assault on ourselves and rationalize our loss of freedom as a “necessary part of growing up” is not the issue.

Each and every one of us has indeed been compelled to live without empathy for our own victimization and pain, accepting our loss of our self as another grim "fact of life". But in so doing, claims Alice Miller, we are accordingly not capable of feeling real empathy for anyone else, and the injustices done to them: a lack of empathy mistakenly seen as political apathy or indifference.

If we do not face and feel the hurt and losses of our childhood, we must invariably inflict them on those around us, beginning with our own children, who we must train to be as unfeeling and indifferent towards their own trauma as we are to our own. The net effect of this process, of course, is to give rise to our present society: a mass of numb, atomized individuals who lack the empathy to feel injustice, other’s suffering, or the ability within themselves to confront what is causing such suffering.

In a “Christian” culture like ours that historically identifies childhood as sinful and suspect, and has completely externalized moral responsibility to a heavenly source outside of our lives, parenthood and schooling inevitably become a “poisonous pedagogy” in which children exist for the benefit of adults and their inner need to express not only their own compromised personalities, but the irresolvable personal dilemma imposed by a culture that tells each person they have no intrinsic worth apart from what an external authority delegates to them.

As I have learned over the years in many healing circles, the first step of anyone who is traumatized and violated is to recover their own voice and find their own words, not somebody else’s. But doing so has enormous social repercussions. For any step towards self-recovery is inherently subversive to any power structure, especially religious and political hierarchies, which rest entirely on the suppression of individuals’ personal reason, will and sovereignty. This consequence is never understood or considered by modern psychology, counseling or so-called “self help” methods of recovery, all of which tend to occur in a social vacuum.

Such individualist “cures” to the abuse and dissociation we suffer involve our re-experiencing and embracing our childhood pain in order to recover our stolen capacity to empathize with others, accept our actual thoughts and feelings, and express these honestly without fear of repercussion.

Unfortunately, every level of our hierarchical society is arrayed against such a personal transformation because of the social implications of breaking down the pyramid of rule described earlier.

That is, a “recovered” dissociate who has integrated his feelings and thoughts with his actions immediately clashes with the requirements of the social power pyramid. A truly aware and integrated personality is unable to abide and rationalize wrongdoing and suffering, and accordingly will not pay taxes to fund wars and cruelty, labor in a soul-killing job or obey arbitrary and tyrannical authorities, let alone endure the systemic violence of the state.

From long experience, it is obvious that such awakened individuals are quickly eliminated, lest they trigger such a subversive integration in others.

If there is to be genuine recovery for all of the masses of people, that “healing” is inconceivable within the pyramidal social structure and its harsh regimentation. If we are to truly escape the sleep room of dissociation and murderous conformity, we can only do so and become fully awakened and free by collapsing the pyramid altogether, through a long term and integrated revolutionary process that abolishes society as we know it.

An impossible order? Perhaps it only seems to be so from the vantage point of a cringing slave. But that, as we know, is not our real identity.

I spent some days relaxing and swimming in the ocean waters of the Atlantic off Florida before finding the inner clarity to conclude this reflection. Unexpectedly yet hardly a surprise, the sea and its bountiful nature gave me an answer when I wasn’t looking for it.

The surf was especially strong that day as I swam out from the shoreline, and after awhile the undertow began pulling me out to sea. Rather than fighting it, I instinctively relaxed and floated with the current, not worrying what would happen to me. I soon discovered that once I had passed the thick wall that fear had placed around my inner heart and mind, the ocean began to teach me what I needed to know.

I looked down through the churning salt water, and suddenly felt a real and enormously beautiful presence there that felt like the loving arms of a mother, but more so. I experienced the actuality of Gaia, a single, pulsing life force, our mother earth, as a fetus swims in the salinity of a womb. And with a silent brush of Gaia’s spirit, my mind became itself again, meaning, I became a part once more of everything.

Illusions and barriers crumbled. I knew instantly my true heart, and person, and the reality of which an Irish monk wrote a thousand years ago:

I am the eagle that spans the sky, I am the salmon that swims and dies; I am the wind, and the sun, and the stars, I am the earth, both here and afar.

I looked into the sea and opened my mind to it, imagining what its unity and oneness meant for all of my people and our societies, and I then remembered that which had been taken from me and everyone: the intrinsic Natural Law that formed and guides us, and is the bedrock that unites us one to another.

Another kindred spirit, Gerrard Winstanley, put that Law into these words in the year 1649 in Surrey, England, where against the landlords’ selfish law, he planted crops in the common land and envisioned a restored creation:

In the beginning of time the great creator Reason made the earth to be a common treasury, and not one word was spoken that one branch of mankind should rule over another; for every single male and female is a perfect creature in himself, and thus none is subject to another.

Yet selfish imagination did alienate man against himself, and set man against man to expel his fellow creature from the earth and its fruits. And thus did the earth, given to all equally, become fenced and divided into property, a most unnatural condition based on theft, which can only be maintained by violence … And thus did some steal the earth for themselves, and make others their servants. And that garden of creation is now bought and sold, and kept in the hands of a few, and thereby the great Creator is dishonored, as if he favored some persons and denied others.

But when the earth becomes a common treasury again, owned by none and shared by all, then all wars and violence will cease, and none shall desire more of the earth than another.

Our personal dissociation ultimately arises from a world divided against itself, as Winstanley describes: the alienation of our substance from our actions reflects the artificial boundaries running through the one mind of nature.

We war against one another to protect the bit we have grabbed from the common land that is our world, exactly as our psyche is a battleground divided against itself, and can never integrate. As goes the large, so does the small, for we are part of the same singular fabric of destiny.

When I said earlier that we cannot find true recovery without abolishing the present social order, the dilemma of “how?” is resolved by recognizing that all means lie within the psyche that has been restored to the power of the Natural Law and world. Once we have reclaimed our natural heart-mind, and feeling and action become one again by internalizing our reality, then our path becomes obvious. We are to undo the present destruction by reclaiming our minds, our lives, and the earth itself, and letting the old, artificial society crumble around us like the false dream that it is.

This is part of the hidden reality of which Jesus spoke when he said that “The realm of eternity is within you … my kingdom is not of this world.”

Besides invalidating Christianity as a whole and the church specifically, these words point to a united heaven-and-earth of integration, where all eternity is found “within” the self of the actualized and conscious soul, whose mass is infinite and whose boundary is limitless, since the “I” has recovered its consciousness of being everything, and stranger to nothing.

For the past twenty years, I have spent my days upholding the lives of men and women being crushed out of existence, and documenting how the religion and culture that is killing them, and which we have been trained to honor, is a lie and a crime. I can never, and will never, return to the criminal conspiracy known as western civilization, and I have been upheld in this resolve by ever growing numbers of people whose hearts and minds have been awakened to the horror of which we have been part.

But we have reached a crossroads, and a roadblock of sorts, in this long journey of what has become a last, great battle to save our humanity and our planet. For describing the problem is no longer enough, or even necessary. Now that we know that the “leaders” of society are duplicitous and murderous, and their system is based on theft, lies and killing, then detailing their latest crime is hardly the issue. Now that we know the nature of the Beast, we can predict its actions.

The apparent flagging interest of many people in our campaign to place genocidal churches and states on trial is not, as I first believed, the result of fear, intimidation or indifference among people, even though these are all present. People simply know by now the nature of what they face each day. We don’t have to tell them anymore. What our souls, rather, are hungering for now is an alternative: a working vision of a new world that we can all start building together.

Mere protest against the old system is the act of a barely-awakened child who angrily insists on better treatment from his parent, and captors. The child cannot yet imagine ruling himself, free of authority. Demanding “justice and accountability” from a power structure is like asking a lion to explain why it is devouring so many gazelles. For once we have lost our dissociated reliance on the very people and groups that are causing our torture, we awaken to the lonely truth that only we can bring about justice and recovery.

We demand nothing, except from ourselves, for we, not the “powers that be”, are the source of change. The question, every question, facing us now, is simply this: What is our vision? And how will be create it?

Just before Easter in 2007, fifty people accompanied me as we peacefully occupied the main catholic cathedral in Vancouver during its regular Sunday mass. We went there expecting one thing, and discovered another.

What began as yet another protest – a demand that the church come clean about its murder of aboriginal children – transformed into something that rocked the foundations of the church establishment. It became a spiritual blow: a sudden realization that we need ask for nothing from dead institutions. It was time to stop expecting and hoping for a response from so-called “authorities”. Suddenly, we were there for one another, and to reclaim our own power. And in so doing, something inside us and around us was shaken free.

This all came home to me as I stood at the front of the church sanctuary helping to hold up our banner which read “All the Children Need a Proper Burial”. The two priests there were outraged, and wanted us out, and dead. One of them even said so to me. But the “loyal Catholics” in the pews stared at us with wonder. Some of them bowed their heads in reverence. They were not even put off by the fact that mostly scruffy-looking Indians wandered among them, handing them leaflets as they smiled at them without hatred. For they, like us, sensed that something among them was changing.

Finally, when we sensed the police were about to show up, one of the elders started beating her drum, and we all walked quietly out of the church. And as we did so, the entire congregation stood up.

I have pondered that day many times since then, but only now am I beginning to understand its meaning.

If within each of us is a child looking for love and acceptance from a world incapable of offering either, then I saw that hopeful infant peek out at us from unexpecting church-goers that day, as we declared to them our unconditional love for all the missing children. Something in our act made it possible for them to feel an empathy that wasn’t there before: empathy, even for their selves.

Rediscovering that submerged humanity in us is the first step towards freeing our minds and lives from allegiance to slavery. That vital recovery cannot be granted by anyone, and certainly by no authority responsible for our captivity: it can only be undertaken and won by we ourselves. Doing so, and unleashing the free, sovereign and undiminished human being, is the cornerstone of the new society.

If there is a practical program to guide our transformation of society from the ground up of this cornerstone, it revolves around three themes that must constitute our new common ground: the wellbeing of our planet, the protection of our children, and the preservation of our natural law liberties and sovereignty as men and women. All of these, and all of us, are threatened with extermination by the prevailing global culture of corporatocracy.

Things have gone too far for mere protest or politics. We may have already gone past the point of no return. Only a radical break with the present, and with all authority, can free us to put all of our energy and time towards constructing a living alternative.

I began this reflection by asking how we can overcome our collective madness and dissociation. We have learned by our own lives that reason and well being are only reclaimed in the process of fighting for what and for those we truly love and believe in. And so may each of you share whatever wisdom and direction I have offered within your own circles of hope and life.

Believe in yourself. Trust your own power and those who are with you. And flee this corrupt and murderous generation. We are at the cusp of history, when all the chains shall be shattered, and all of us will see the new world as one, from the leveled and even place of perfect equality that has been promised. Make it so.
------------------------

Canada

An Excerpt from Kevin Annett's forthcoming new book, "An Unauthorized History of White People in Canada"

Special Contribution
By Kevin Annett
Aug. 3, 2011

Red Indians were attacked by Whites

More Subversive History for future school textbooks ...

Part 11: Big Trouble in River City, or, The Trials and Tribulations of a Railway

When he wasn’t throwing up in public in a drunken stupor, Canada’s first Prime Minister, John A. MacDonald, spent much of his time lining the very large pockets of his former employer, the Canadian Pacific Railway – the CPR.

Ever wonder why that epigram rhymes with “Cardio-Pulmonary Resuscitation”? I like to think this was no accident, for that particular railway was supposed to revive the sagging political fortunes of John A. and the clotted economic arteries of the time. Sadly for both John and the railway, however, somewhere in its westward expansion through the northern Ontario muskeg during the early 1880’s, the CPR ran out of money.

The Metis, or mixed-blood, religious zealot named Louis Riel always claimed that he was sent by God, and John A. MacDonald probably agreed with him; because Riel was a definite god-send to MacDonald, his Tories and the bankrupt CPR. Riel gave all of them a new lease on life, in fact.

Thanks to those long, cold prairie nights enjoyed under buffalo robes, white trappers and their Indian female companions spawned lots of Metis folks all over the unclaimed territories west of the Great Lakes. Louis Riel posed as their champion, even though Winston Churchill had more Indian blood in him than did Louis. But the Metis had the fiery independent souls of their Scots-French-Indian ancestors, and didn’t need much prodding to take up arms, against anyone.

The Metis were expert buffalo hunters and sharpshooters, and they didn’t take kindly to the CPR encroaching on the open prairie that gave them their freedom and their meat. When the Bible-thumping Louis Riel urged them to form their own government in what is now Winnipeg, they all said yes. And John A. MacDonald drank more than one thankful toast to their health.

Despite his blurred vision, Big Mac could play the demagogue like the best of them, and he soon had English Canada whipped up into a total frenzy with visions of rampaging Metis blocking the westward progress of British Civilization. Right on cue, Parliament quickly voted lots of new money to the CPR: millions of dollars, in fact, plus massive land grants and tons of supplies and an entire army to guard the railway and its investments.

Canada’s second civil war was all primed and ready to happen.

Unlike the 1837 fiasco, this was a more serious insurrection, and nearly brought down the Canadian government. Those pesky Metis riflemen just didn’t want to settle down on a tiny reservation and sell cigarettes to tourists, for some reason.

Their real leader was a huge bear of a man named Gabriel Dumont, half Indian and half French, whose gun, affectionately called “La Petite”, could knock off the buttons and the smug expression of an Englishman at two hundred yards. Gabriel didn’t share Louis Riel’s mystic visions and religious fervor. He wanted to force the English out of his land in a guerrilla war, and the guy had lots of Cree warrior relatives who shared his sentiments.

Gabriel offered his gun and his services to Riel when he declared his provisional government in 1884, and a match made in heaven was born: or so it seemed to the Metis.

Sadly, Riel was a bit funny in the head, having spent some time in a looney bin in Montreal, and he would often rave about majestic visions given to him by some saint or other. Advised personally by God, apparently, Louis was convinced that he could win a homeland for the Métis and Indians in the west without using force. Gabriel was a bit too much in awe of Saint Louis, unfortunately, and tended to heed his advice, even in military matters, which was just plain dumb.

Meanwhile, back in the CPR headquarters commonly known as the Prime Minister’s office, John A. and his wealthy backers were sweating. Even with oodles of cash, land grants and soldiers, the railroad was falling way behind in its construction schedule thanks to the fear generated by the new Metis Republic, and bankers back in London were getting as irate as bankers get.

“Break this bloody deadlock” the financiers declared to Prime Minister John A. “Get us a war”. And so the wily Scotsman turned to the Roman Catholic Church for help in provoking Riel to do something inflammatory.

Louis, a loyal Catholic, was buddies with a Bishop in Winnipeg named Tache, and a Vatican envoy told the churchman to employ that tried and true papal tactic of divide and conquer. So Tache maneuvered Riel into imposing a mandatory oath of loyalty to his new provisional government on all the citizens of Winnipeg, and naturally, some of the Union Jack-waving Protestants in the crowd told him to shove it. One of their more unruly members, a burly Ulster man named Thomas Scott, plotted openly to kill Riel, and he was arrested by the Metis, tried for “treason”, and shot.

The powder keg was lit, and John A. and the bankers relaxed. All of English Canada went absolutely bananas over the execution of Scott, and, amidst headlines calling for Riel’s head in a noose, began raising troops to go west and crush the subversive Metis papist hordes.

A Colonel Blimp-like British General named Middleton – undoubtedly related to Kate – was hauled out of retirement and given the job of capturing Riel. With a few thousand soldiers and the usual rabble of local rednecks with rifles, Middleton chugged west on the CPR for the big showdown affectionately known as the 1885 Rebellion.

Poor Louis, never one to deploy political savvy, chose at this moment to fight on two fronts at once by making a new enemy in the Roman Catholic Church. Riel declared himself a new messiah of Christianity and established his own church, called the “Novitiate”, which would replace the Catholic faith. All the gruff Metis buffalo hunters in his Provisional government had to kneel, join his church and renounce their baptisms as Catholics, undoubtedly with a few accompanying Hallelujahs. Meanwhile, Louis merrily proceeded to write a new version of the scriptures in a creed that resembled what later generations would dub Liberation Theology.

The Kingdom of Heaven had arrived in Winnipeg.

Naturally, the Pope, like the Queen of England, was quite livid, and Bishop Tache was ordered to work behind the scenes to bring down his freedom-espousing friend.

Fortunately, Gabriel Dumont and a whole whack of Indians under Chief Big Bear were on hand to keep Riel and his experiment in the saddle. By the time General Middleton arrived, the Metis and Cree army had scattered out onto the vast prairie, tempting the English into an ambush. Being a Sandhurst graduate, Middleton dutifully obliged his enemy and, like the Crusaders at Hattin, marched blindly into a wasteland against a much smarter foe.

In every battle that followed, Dumont so outfought and humiliated the chubby General that many of the English troops were ready to mutiny. Despite the battlefield presence of Louis Riel, who liked to run around waving a cross at his enemies and declaring that no bullet could harm him, Dumont was able to inflict lots of casualties on Middleton’s force. Using the kind of guerrilla tactics that so many other nations had already employed to their advantage against the British Army, the Metis proved, once again, that big Empires just don’t learn from their mistakes.

Things looked like the ball game was going to turn out to be Metis One, Tories Zero, when religion intervened, once again, to snatch ruin from the jaws of victory.

Inspired by several visions and the advice of a priest instructed by the scheming Bishop Tache, Louis Riel declared to Gabriel Dumont that he was fighting in an “ungodly” manner by using hit and run tactics against the English. Henceforth, under pain of excommunication from the Novitiate, the Metis soldiers would have to fight Middleton in a standard set piece battle, despite the little matter that the Brits had Gatling guns and cannons.

Dumont was ordered to dig trenches.

Wisely, Big Bear and his Cree warriors decided to leave at that point, but Dumont, to a fault, was loyal to Riel. At a small Saskatchewan town called Batoche, against his own judgment, Gabriel ordered his men to dig in and await Middleton’s army.

Middleton was the butt of a lot of jokes as a soldier, and “General Go-Not-Forth” was the tender appellation applied to him by one eastern newspaper. He was a cautious man, and when his overwhelmingly superior force arrived at Batoche, he hesitated. All the Metis dugouts seemed to confuse him.

Ignoring the advice of his staff, he camped out and tried lightly probing the Metis lines. When his men were rebuffed, Middleton sulked in his tent. Like in a Monty Python skit, the Metis laughed at and mocked the Englishmen across the battlefield in French, which they couldn’t understand, of course, but they got the message.

By day three, Middleton was about to throw in the towel, and was so demoralized he didn’t even bother using his cannons. Letting his anger get the better of his indoctrination, an enterprising British officer suddenly led his men in an unauthorized assault on the Metis lines. Dumont’s men collapsed and ran for the Rocky Mountains, and Dumont, after trying to rally his troops, headed south laconically to Montana.

And that was that for the Metis Republic.

Louis Riel said later that he deliberately sacrificed Dumont and his army in order to become a martyr for the Metis cause. He quickly turned himself in to Middleton. After a farcical show trial where he disavowed his own lawyers’ defense plea of insanity, Louis Riel was hanged by the neck until he was dead as a "traitor to the Crown".

Until 2003, the noose that killed him was displayed proudly in the headquarters of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in Regina.

Louis was still officially a Member of Parliament when he was killed, having been elected to that post by the voters of Winnipeg, comically avoiding near capture as a wanted rebel when he signed the visitors book one day in the House of Commons in Ottawa.

Riel's corpse was more useful to reformers in his native Quebec than was his living cause, and a former Riel supporter, Wilfred Laurier, would one day wear the mantle of Prime Minister of Canada, not long after John A. MacDonald passed on to that big brewery in the sky.

Big railways never die, of course, but simply fade away to become real estate companies, and the Canadian Pacific Railway was no exception, ending up with most of the prime property in most of the cities in western Canada.

And that was what all the shooting was about, I suppose.
------------------------

Canada

What My Outstretched Hand Really Means

Special Contribution
By Kevin Annett
July 19, 2011

Rev. Kevin Annett(3rd R) at the protest against Canadas holocaust

Some years ago, a stumbling native man who barely survived Indian residential school tortures came up to me and offered me $5 to support our campaign, even though it was all the money he had. I refused it, naturally, because he was destitute. He seemed hurt by my refusal. Finally he handed the $5 to me again and said,

“You’re out there for all of us. So I got to be there for you.”

He was someone who didn’t think in terms of why he couldn’t do something, but why he could, and why he had to.

When someone comes to you on the street and asks you for some spare change, they are usually not just asking you for money - they are also wanting to know that they still exist and have value, and that you see them.

I guess that’s true for me, too, when I send out occasional appeals for financial support so that our Tribunal can survive: I am really asking thousands of men and women if they care anymore about the horror that happened and still goes on against the innocent. And by that I mean, care enough to back outrage with action.

My friend Russ Letica said on the airwaves of my blog radio program yesterday that we should never talk about “abused” children, when they were and are raped, tortured, violated and murdered horribly. We must always call the crime for what it is: and publicly name the names of the killers so that no more children will suffer.

For twenty years, I have done simply that, and, to paraphrase my murdered friend, Bingo Dawson, I have given victims a way to fight back and not be victims anymore.

Unfortunately, most of the people who should have been supporting this struggle have not done so: not so much because they cannot, but because they won’t. They won’t support our work and contribute of themselves because, I have learned, they have the fatal belief that nothing they can do will make any difference. $10 sent to bolster our work seems to be just a drop in the bucket when we face the mammoth forces of church and state.

I have never been able to ask for help, even when the cause is urgent and my situation desperate. I was trained by my family, and then by my vocation as a clergyman, that my purpose was to serve others and not ask for anything in return, to carry on simply because of the necessity of a thing.

That training runs deep in me, so that, even during my worst years, when I was literally living out of a car in Vancouver and going without food, I put any money I had into helping survivors and publishing their truth of the residential schools genocide.

In the course of that struggle, I learned to trust that when I am on the right road, the help will come, and always in unexpected ways.

That is true, but only to a point. Now that our campaign has reached a critical mass, and the graves of thousands of murdered children are ready to be opened, and modern-day child trafficking is being exposed by our efforts, the Empire responsible for the slaughter has struck back at us severely. Once again, our forces have been scattered or killed, our funders scared away, and even loyal supporters now drop away in fear.

That’s why what you give now is so vital, especially by giving me and our Tribunal the financial means to travel, hold events and bring our documentation to world courts. And since we only rely on community funding, every amount you give helps.

I’ve sent you all the information how to financially sustain our work. It’s up to you now. Without you, our campaign will falter and die. It’s that simple.

With my thanks,

Kevin Annett

with The International Tribunal into Crimes of Church and State (ITCCS) - London, Dublin, Brussels, Rome, Ottawa

www.itccs.org
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Canada

The Times that Try our Souls: A Rallying Call

Special Contribution
By Kevin D. Annett
July 14, 2011

Thomas Paine

These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country; but he that stands now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly …

Thomas Paine, The American Crisis, Valley Forge, December 23, 1776

It is a neighborhood that has known unending sorrow and struggle. Smallpox and fire swept away its original inhabitants in a generation. Later, thousands of jobless men faced the clubs and machine guns of the Canadian army here in 1938. Today, its many aboriginal residents crowd its streets, scrounging for food, dodging brutal cops and murderous pimps and drug dealers.

This has been my congregation and community for decades, in what is called the downtown east side of Vancouver.

I returned to those streets last week, after months away, and saw fewer of the old, familiar faces; for, as always, more people have vanished from our neighborhood, either chased off or murdered, as has the little hope left among the survivors of an unending war.

Life in Oppenheimer Park mirrors so exactly my own situation nowadays, which I’ve been advised not to mention, since it will, to quote a friend, “just scare people off.” But it’s the worst of times that measures everything, beginning with our real story and character, and I would not deny any of you the chance to know the simple truth – even if you’re not that interested.

Those of us who feel the unanswered agony and know the truth of what is befalling our people are in a Valley Forge moment, for our supplies and ammunition are exhausted, the nights are bitter and unending, and more of us are deserting the battle every day.

Thomas Paine emerged at such a moment, long ago, to rouse the near-dead spirits of a nation trying to be born, when he wrote some pamphlets that saved the American Revolution, entitled Common Sense. Thousands of desperate men and women read his words, and found their purpose again.

Tom Paine was an unemployed corset maker from England who wasn’t even American. He hated kings and privilege and tyranny, and coming to America, his heart was won by the ordinary rebels who defied the biggest empire in history. Benjamin Franklin said that Tom Paine “knew not despair, and infused our people with the meaning of why they instinctively took up arms against England.”

Enlisting as a common solider in the Continental Army, Tom knew the bloodshed and defeat of the early battles against impossible odds, saw the dissolution of the Army, and gathered with the few remaining die-hard veterans at Valley Forge in Pennsylvania at Christmas in 1776. And it was there, in the pit of defeat and starvation when everyone expected capitulation, that Thomas Paine salvaged the soul of the revolution.

Such a moment faces us, and it’s to souls like Paine that I turn now for hope.

In The American Crisis, which General Washington ordered read to all of the army that remained, Tom Paine wrote,

An army of principles can penetrate where an army of soldiers cannot … For such is the irresistible nature of truth, that all it asks, and all it wants is the liberty of appearing. I love the man who can smile in trouble, who can gather strength from distress, and grow brave by reflection. 'Tis the business of little minds to shrink, but he whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves his conduct, will pursue his principles unto death.

And in closing, speaking to those who shirked from further conflict, Paine declared,

If there must be trouble, let it be in my day, that my child may have peace.

I need not tell any of you of the crimes and the tyranny we face, for you know it well. Each day we are bombarded by another wrong dressed like law, while those who slaughtered innocent children absolve themselves and mask their crimes behind florid talk of “reconciliation and healing”. We know of the mass graves, the children who are still trafficked and killed, the land that is still raped and stolen. We know what the times demand.

And yet our natural response to such a great violence is to flinch from it, to seek another way to win justice than grappling directly with ancient and murderous institutions armed with all of the money and means of the world.

Who are we, after all? Who am I, that I should judge or contend with popes and rulers, even though the blood on their hands is clear and undeniable?

But I know the truth, and if I were to refuse my own capacity to stop the suffering bred by these men and their institutions, I would be no better than they.

As Tom Paine observed about the Imperial enemy of his time,

There are cases which cannot be overdone by language, and this is one. There are persons, too, who see not the full extent of the evil which threatens them; they solace themselves with hopes that the enemy, if he succeed, will be merciful. It is the madness of folly, to expect mercy from those who have refused to do justice; and even mercy, where conquest is the object, is only a trick of war; the cunning of the fox is as murderous as the violence of the wolf, and we ought to guard equally against both.

And yet I thank God, that I fear not. I see no real cause for fear. I know our situation well, and can see the way out of it.

So, too, can we see the truth in our day, and that is that the supposed power of child-raping and justice-killing institutions like the Vatican is but a bluff, and that their power is waning and collapsing under the impact of the truth, as spoken by those who have survived the war inflicted on them.

When I walked down the streets of Vancouver’s skid row last week, one of the few Indian residential school survivors who has persisted, an older man named Frank Ermineskin, hurried up to me, beaming.

“I hear the bastards booted you out of England!” he exclaimed, grabbing my hand joyfully.

Before I could answer, he added triumphantly,

“They are scared shitless of us!”

I nodded, and then looked around at the desolate neighborhood. Frank seemed to read my thoughts, and said quietly,

“It’s ‘cause of men like you that I keep going, Kev … We’ll get them.”

Frank’s words were not idle compliment, but hard realism. He knows too well the impossibility of rallying those under constant fire, like so many of the survivors of crimes of church and state. But he, like me, carries on simply by holding himself in constant readiness, regardless of our situation, as an example and inspiration for those who will one day step out from history’s shadows and reclaim what has been stolen from them.

Things are no better off for me, or Frank, if you judge by appearances. Devoid of money, or means, stripped of our networks and communication, and under a constant barrage of smears and assaults, we are tempted daily to look at our lives and think the villains have won, once again.

But our hearts tell us different. For we have witnessed those with nothing force those with everything to admit the truth, and quake with fear.

Our only real enemy are the illusions spun by our own fears, and our refusal to finally break from our mental slavery and dependence on rulers who have nothing to offer but more trauma, and more lies.

So, to unlearn the long habits of mental slavery, we are today fashioning an entirely new framework to conduct our battle against this planetary enemy: one that is spiritual and political in nature.

In what is called Canada, we have established the idea and the practice of a free Republic called Kanata, breaking our ties with the Crown and the Vatican and reclaiming the land. For only in the courts of such a new Republic will those who inflicted genocide be brought to justice.

Around the world, we have created a network of people determined to bring to public trial and community sentencing those who continue to rape and murder children and defile justice and the earth; and, in the process, to reinvent what it means to be human.

This is part of the great victory that is emerging from the present Valley Forge moment, when in the individual embers of our lives, the fire may seem to wane and even die. Each of us, alone, is so very vulnerable; but beyond our personal suffering, there stands the indestructible truth that no power can halt, or dissolve.

I welcome the days to come. I expect your presence alongside me, and Frank, and so many other, hopeful hearts.
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Canada

On the Road with the Not the Royal Tour Tour

An Exclusive Report
By Kevin Daniel and Carol Annett
July 8, 2011

Flag of Kanata

We waited patiently, but the Royal Couple never responded to our invitation. They didn’t even phone us. Hell, I would have accepted the charges, since they’re traveling on our dime as it is. But that’s inbred ingratitude for you.

The way I see it, Willie and Kate had their chance. They could have taken a break from the smiling crowds shipped in from Sycophants Anonymous, and seen some of the real country and its people. Instead, they chose to feast on canned aboriginal dancing, redneck rodeos and photo ops with Stevie “Lizard Eyes” Harper. So to hell with the ungrateful little brats.

Undeterred, Carol and I took to the road last week from our Vancouver Island abode to hold our own visit of Canada in what we called The Not the Royal Tour Tour.

Our ambitious itinerary originally included a grand sweep through all the major cities, where delegations of local politicians, school children and representatives of Canada’s major churches were scheduled to welcome us, culminating in an official state dinner chaired by Truth and Reconciliation Commission chairman Murray “Eats Many Muffins” Sinclair.

Unfortunately, we got as far as Revelstoke, B.C., at which point our money gave out.

With typical Emerald Isle élan, however, our determined caravan made the best of things, pausing to visit the grave of my ancestor Daniel O’Neill and converse with Revelstoke denizens like thirteen year old child worker Cole, who’s toiled at the local MacDonald’s as an eager if underpaid employee for over three years now.

As synchronicity would have it, the politician who gave young Cole the chance to help revive the glorious English tradition of child labor, former Premier Gordon Campbell, was just appointed Canadian High Commissioner to England this week, and will be lunching in regal splendor with Willie and Kate upon their return to England.

Like my Highland ancestors always said, What can you expect from a Campbell?

The cheering crowds were nowhere in sight as we approached the cemetery holding the atoms of my mother’s grandfather, on a bluff overlooking the perfect valley where he raised seven children and died a hero’s death in January, 1912.

Surviving as a child an Irish plague ship that wiped out his entire dispossessed family, Grandpa Daniel O’Neill worked for the Canadian Pacific Railway – the CPR – and died in a snow slide coming to the rescue of strangers trapped in Rogers Pass.

One of the people Grandpa saved was a CPR supervisor named Kilpatrick, who subsequently screwed Grandpa’s widow out of his pension on a technicality, driving her and the children into a destitution that eventually killed her and scattered the kids to different families. But the CPR was saved a chunk of money by Kilpatrick’s act, proving he had the right corporate stuff.

One of the children, my grandmother Grace, told me the sorry tale when I was twelve, and over the years I’ve imagined derailing CPR freight or at least finding out where that Kilpatrick scumbag is buried so I can ceremonially piss on his grave.

But attacking the CPR in Canada is like mocking the British royals, since, as a symbol, the railway is to Canada what the sea is to an Englishman or the frontier is to Americans. It’s what made us. Or that’s what I was always taught, at least. But the CPR also made land monopolies, mega profits for the British Crown, and lots of corpses – Indians, Chinese laborers, ruined settlers – and my great grandfather, Daniel O’Neill.

But that’s all just preamble. For I’m taking some of Grandpa with me back to Ireland soon, in a lump of earth mingled with his atoms from his grave. Grandpa, not Kilpatrick or the CPR, will have the final word, as the epitaph on his headstone declares:

Greater love hath no man than to lay down his life for others.

Our O’Neill ancestors were the traditional High Kings of Ulster, and Grandpa Daniel was everything a King should be: upright, honorable, and the protector of the helpless and suffering. Everything, in short, that the English royals are not.

Note to Willie and Kate Windsor: Take a day off from your busy schedule of smiling and partying, and make a pilgrimage to Revelstoke.

Buoyed by our communion with my grand dad, our Tour struck west towards a spot familiar to the English royalty: Dead Man’s Creek, near the former Catholic Indian Residential school in Kamloops.

Note to my readers: Reading this next part may cause you anxiety and concern over possible repercussions affecting your income and credit rating. So feel free to skip this bit, especially if you’re an average Canadian.

Dead Man’s Creek is a dry and barren place, well away from the main road, where ten little Indian boys and girls were last seen in October, 1964, in the company of Queen Elizabeth and Prince Phillip. And then were never seen again.

The last surviving witness to this apparent royal abduction, William Combes, died suddenly in March in a Vancouver Catholic hospital, after he went public with what he saw at Dead Man’s Creek. And I was banned from re-entering England on May 29, after I spoke publicly about all this, including William’s unexplained death.

But I guess that all just a coincidence.

Carol and I hung around Dead Man’s Creek for awhile, listening to the lonely wind and the happy birdsong echo among the sagebrush and rocks. The sound of occasional vehicles on the nearby Trans Canada Highway was barely audible. A few dilapidated shacks and abandoned cars – the local Indian reservation – decayed in the blazing sun as we leaned over a bridge spanning the Creek.

Carol finally turned to me and said,

“If you wanted to get rid of a bunch of kids’ bodies, this would be the place to do it.”

We photographed the spot, as we did the Kamloops Indian residential school and its hillside orchard where William Combes saw a dead child get buried one night by a priest named Brother Murphy, among many other small corpses. Standing there, I recalled twenty seven other mass graves near other residential schools across Canada that I’ve reported, and that everyone is studiously ignoring.

It was time for a break, and the air was sweltering, so our Tour made an unscheduled stop along what pales call the Thompson River, in an abandoned campsite set among quiet cottonwood trees.

Doing a quick appraisal of our provisions, we discovered that, far from the caviar, roast beef and assorted wines promised us on our Tour, a pile of canned goods and crackers was all that stood between us and hunger.

“I guess we should have skipped the all you can eat Chinese buffet in Aldergrove” I muttered to my loyal, if not royal, companion.

The hamlet across the river from us was called Spence’s Bridge: ten buildings and a crumbling store, stocked with maybe twenty items. The proprietor, a plump, smiling woman, didn’t seem to recognize me, but she did offer us water from her garden hose with the comment,

“There’s a boiled water alert out, some old lady just died. But you’re welcome to take your chances like the rest of us.”

We shared our riverside campsite with a cluster of busy ant colonies, and hanging there with the bugs brought back for me a distant childhood memory, of my Dad demonstrating to me in a Manitoba park how so-called fire ants will sacrifice and immolate themselves to protect the entire colony from flames.

Staring with incredulous seven year old eyes as Dad lit a match and dropped it into dry grass near a fire ant mound, I saw that it was true. Ant after tiny ant threw themselves live into the flames, which slowly died under their collective weight. Their nation was safe.

I sensed then what I realize now: that insects know something we don’t.

Coming out of the mountains at Hope always reminds me of a birth, as angular rock opens suddenly to broad fields and sky; and the quiet womb of forested valley yields to the clatter we call civilization.

Kate and Willie will return home this week, just as we will: they to a palace, us to our house in Nanaimo with the freaky next door neighbors who go ballistic over the state of our yard, but where children's laughter is always heard.

I don’t doubt that the two Windsors did a lot of smiling on their Canadian tour, but I suspect they never honestly laughed the way children do, with heartfelt joy, because you laugh like that when you know you belong somewhere and you’re finally coming home.

Canada has always been my beloved home, but not its government, or imperial ties, or its legacy of murderous missionaries and ruthless robber barons. The real heart of my country lies in a spirit the Mohawk people called Kanata, meaning Our Village: a place where people live as equals and in peace with each other and the earth. That spirit beams out at me through the land, and from those of our people who have remained free from crown and church and corporate empires: a dream, like Avalon, of a once and future realm.

Carol and I passed through Kanata on our journey, as Kate and Wiliam Windsor were conducted through Canada during the same days, as in two worlds, forever separate. For Canada is the legal fiction created to ship furs and forests and oil to foreign lands – while Kanata is a living world of ancient tribes and sacred forests and plains, and of exiled and immigrated people seeking a way to finally live in liberty.

My Dad’s father, Ross Annett, survived the carnage of World War One trenches to become the first popular prairie writer in Canada. During the worst of the dust bowl years, Grandpa supported his family in Consort, Alberta by writing a series of syndicated short stories for the Saturday Evening Post about a widowed farmer named Joe who struggled to hold onto his land and raise a daughter, Babe, and a young son, Little Joe.

In one of his tales, Grandpa describes the British Royal Visit of 1939, when King George and his wife toured Canada and its countless impoverished towns to buck up patriotic fervor and the next group of bullet-catchers on the eve of another world war. Joe and his kids nevertheless hurry to the local train-stop town to catch a glimpse of the royalty, and by the happy circumstances allowed by fiction, the scrubby trio actually meet the King and Queen.

Taken by the young girl Babe, the Queen gives her a picture of her own young daughters, the Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret.

Facing the royal couple, Joe places his hand on the curly head of his thin, beloved daughter Babe, and declares to them,

“We got a Princess too.”

As a Canadian soldier who knew firsthand the ease with which the English crown sacrificed the lives of their colonials, my grandfather Ross survived the worst moments of battle by never obeying the orders of any British officer.
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Jan-Jun 2011