Let me first start out by thanking the organizers of this event this weekend - thanks for the invite - and to thank the traditional people from the region for allowing us to say what we've come here to say.
When I think of September the 11th, that date, the very first date that comes to mind, historically, is the brutal assassination of Salvador Allende, democratically elected president of Chile, in the US's CIA-backed interest in having him deposed and assassinated.
I've been involved in a number of incidence that have become somehow significant on that particular day, September the 11th. One of those incidence was the infamous insurrection at Attica State Prison in 1971 [1] [2] [3], and the other was the infamous uprising at Gustafsen Lake [1] in 1995. And I think for the sake of this conference, when we're thinking about 9-11, 9-11 of what happened in New York, the toppling of the twin towers, the murder of three thousand people... I think we have to understand that in contemporary terms this is visualized and used by the power, by the oligarchies and the plutocrats to advance an anti-terrorist agenda, when in fact we're going to have to come to the realization that what happened on 9-11 was not an outside job, it was an inside job. And we're going to have to come to grips with the fact that they told us exactly what they were going to do. They wrote a document called "The Project for a New American Century" -- PNAC is the acronym. That particular document is sort of the child from the mother document, known as "The Grand Chessboard", which was written by Zbigniew Brzezinski, the founder for David Rockafeller's "Trilateral Commission". And in that particular book it basically critiques in 122 pages how they intend, the western powers intend, to put themselves in the Mideast and to secure all of the natural resources, from oil to natural gas to all the mineral rights in the Mideast. They had the nerve to tell us, point blank, through these two basic documents they were in fact going to need an excuse to justify an incursion internationally. And in order to get the American people and the Canadian people and the civilized people of the western hemisphere to justify this massive incursion which was going to cost millions of lives in doing so, in acting a theatre of wars, conducting a theatre of wars simultaneously. And Dick Cheney in May of 2001 put together his National Energy Policy [local PDF], where he sat down with representatives from Exxon, Mobile, Shell, BP, and all of the western consortiums , and they came down with one basic axiom: National Security equals Energy Security equals National Security. The supply of oil in the world is rapidly depleting. We are reaching peak oil proportions. The global agenda is to seize the oil. The oligarchies or the "oiligarchies" want the oil, want the resources, therefore they are employing the military to get out there and to seize this oil, but in order to justify it to the American people, or to the Canadian people, or the good people of Great Britain, they have to make it look like it was an attack. In The Project for a New American Century it very discretely said that in order to justify an incursion, the only way we can justify it to the civilized populations would be to conduct a modern day Pearl Harbour catastrophe [local PDF]. Now, coincidentally 9-11 happens? Please, let's not get locked-up into calling someone who might think in this way, that it was an inside job, a conspiracy theorist. Because there is nothing more conspiratorial than to blame it on 19 Saudis, 10 of them were still raising their hands over in Pakistan saying "Hi, I'm still alive, I'm not dead." It's racism for us to accept that it was Arabs that conducted this massive operation at 9-11. It's a racist, subconscious propaganda, proposition to accept that it was somebody from the mid-east that conducted this massive military operation. It was an inside job, and the sooner that we come to grips with that, the sooner we can begin to arrest those criminals and bring them before a war crimes tribunal and make them answerable to the world for the crimes that they've committed of mass murder and genocide.
6:51 (8:00)
And now, while we're on the subject of genocide, let's talk about who the number one terrorist in the world is, if it isn't the United States, if it isn't the European genocidal policies of the killing of over one hundred million Indian peoples of the western hemisphere, what in fact is the definition of a terrorist?
7:21 (8:30)
Given the sake of time [at this conference], I think it's necessary to do a 101, a historical 101, on the question of "rule of law" in the western hemisphere, let's say versus the "rule of force". Historically, in 1497, when the new world and the new comers came to this continent, there was a papal bull [1] that was issued called "Terra Nullius" [2]. And that papal bull basically said that the indigenous populations were not human beings, that they were dark skinned delightful looking people, but they were on par with the four legged animals of the woods. Therefore, they didn't have the intelligence, or we didn't have the intelligence, to enter into negotiations to making treaties for property relationships to acquire our lands. Therefore they were given a moral justification to utilize troops in order to kill Indians on the same par that you would any four legged animal of the woods. Historically, hundreds of thousands of native peoples were being brutally murdered, and in the process of that murder there happened to be a person by the name of Bartholomew Delacasas [note to self: contact Bruce Clark for more info], who was witnessing the outright massacre of many thousands of Mayans and Inca peoples in Central America. He petitioned Pope Paul III in 1532 to rescind the original 1497 papal bull, Terra Nullius, and subsequently declaring that indigenous people were human beings of high intelligence, and able to enter into property relationships subsequently in 1537. Pope Paul rescinded that 1497 papal bull with a papal bull called Sublimis Deus [2], recognizing that indigenous peoples had the right to own and control our own territories and to defend ourselves against any further colonial encroachment [1]. And at that point they were forced .... this became the basis of modern day or contemporary law known as the 1763 Royal Proclamation also which was validated by a 1704 Queen Anne's decision that came down in a case known as "The state of Connecticut versus the Mohegan Indians" [edit: "Mohegan Indians v. Connecticut"]. And in that case, the Mohegan Indians challenged the state of Connecticut, who thought they had the right to seize millions acres of unsurrendered Indian land, they petitioned at that time Queen Anne to intervene as a third party on the whole question of title. She put together the privy council which came together and ordered an ordering council years later and ruled in favour of the Mohegan [editorial note: 1772-73 decision of the Privy Council in Mohegan Indians v. Connecticut]. That particular law was never rescinded or repealed and stands as international law today. That same law, move it down fast, but given the time constraints here [at this conference], that same law, was validated after the massive military campaign of Pontiac, (and thousands of warriors in the northern hemisphere here), against the crown, (Great Britain), when King George was forced to acknowledge the sovereignty and the self determination of indigenous populations according to the original papal bulls of 1532, the Sublimis Deus and subsequently the 1704 Queen Anne's ordering council. And in there, in the 1763 Royal Proclamation, it states "all lands belonging to Indigenous people should be left unmolested and undisturbed"; and the only way that "we", meaning "the crown", can purchase this land is either by direct surrender of the land, or by financial purchase. And if that weren't done on international levels then title was still vested in the indigenous populations. Thus you have international law. Then moving very fast in history to 1982, you have this country, in the Canadian Constitution, under section 35, recognizing the supreme law of the land (and in treaty, the 1763 Royal Proclamation [editorial note: mentioned in section 25 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms]). International recognition of self-determination (of sovereignty) of indigenous populations under section 35 of the Canadian constitution.
12:31 (13:40)
Now, all that said, what we are living with today is the fact there is still a law that recognizes that we (indigenous people) are self determining sovereign people. And any nations of people throughout all of Canada or the United States are still sovereign peoples in control of our own sovereign land and resources and constantly engaging in struggle with colonial interest upon our lands, mostly for material acquisition, for the resources. And that's where they utilize the rule of force in order to acquire through military campaigns our resources, just like they are now doing it with the justification of 9-11 in Iraq, hundreds of thousands murdered in Fallujah [edit: Iraq] [1] [2] [3], soon to be Iran, they're going to use the excuse that they're trying to put down the Bushehr reactor plant, and then they're going to try to challenge 400,000 specially trained Iranians... they can't do nothing right now with the Iraqis, they definitely are not going to beat the Iranians. Let's hope they don't, because I support the resistance in Iraq, I support the resistance in Iran, I support the resistance in Afghanistan [1], soon to be in Venezuela [1] [2], in Cuba, and all around the world, and in Palestine. I support resistance wherever resistance is raised!
14:01 (15:10)
There was a judge in Portland, Oregon, a woman by the name of Janice Stewart, who in 1995 ruled in an extradition application that was made. Professor Anthony Hall and myself put together and formulated all the law on international and constitutional law, and submitted it before this judge on behalf of a brother by the name of James Pitawanakwat, who was one of the defenders at Gustafsen Lake in 1995. And they were trying to extradite him back to Canada to face further criminalization charges on possession of weapon (a shotgun). And he did not want to be extradited. He called me up and subsequently I told him that he should tell the judge that he refuses to be extradited back to Canada, and that he wants hearings to that effect immediately, and that if his lawyer is not willing to argue that, fire him right away and I'll act down as his curiae, or not really a friend (it's called a friend to the court, and I'm not really a friend to the court), but I would assist him, because as far as I'm concerned courts only have the assumption of jurisdiction on unsurrendered Indian land. Well, they do (assume jurisdiction) -- that's colonialism -- it's colonialism to assume that you have the right to judge anything I do on unsurrendered lands. That's colonialism. It's racist, and it's part of genocidal, ongoing assimilative genocidal policies of the colonial powers that be. In any event, she (for the sake of time [at this conference]) ruled in the thirty page decision that we had the right to defend that territory in an armed defensive posture at Gustafsen Lake in 1995, because Canada was illegally occupying Indian lands in violation of the law I just explained to you, on international-constitutional levels. And she then said [that] she doesn't understand why the lawyers for Leonard Peltier never utilized that same law to keep him from being extradited back to the U.S. on the falsified information by a woman by the name of Myrtle Poor Bear. Then she went on to say [that] we had the right to defend that territory in unsurrendered Indian lands -- in the same way that the Palestinians defend themselves against Israeli aggression, the Tamil Tigers [defended themselves against the Indian Raj], and the IRA [defended themselves against British Colonialism]. This is a thirty page decision which is a landmark decision. There's an author by the name of Gary Bets from Victoria, [British Columbia], that has written a book recently [???DATE??? note to self: contact Charles Boylan (778.772.8550) of Vancouver coop radio for more info] and said it was one of the most astounding landmark decisions of all times, on the question of extradition. I told [the lawyer of Pitawanakwat], "don't you dare". Under article 4 of that extradition treaty it says that if you believe that what you did was a crime of political nature as opposed to a crime of criminal nature you had the right to fight extradition. We unequivocally proved that Ujjal Dosanjh manufactured lies about shoot-outs that never happened at Gustafsen Lake in order to justify an incursion. I put him right in the hot seat, right before the media, and made him basically agree that he was lying. We took the whole propaganda machinery during 1995 and showed you the law that we stood on; and showed you that we were trying to live by the rule of law, international and constitutional in nature; we showed you that we were lied to by the state and that they wanted to suppress this uprising -- because this uprising on the question of title, if it was to seep into other nations could get very contagious and move straight along in indigenous populations, throwing off the yoke of colonialism in unsurrendered Indian land. So they definitely had to put an end to that.
18:19 (19:30)
But the point I'm making here today is that now, as far as the rule of law is concerned, in the interest of the globalization forces, now according to this Gary Bets, that same law that we made from Gustafsen Lake ten years ago, or just recently in this decision, now Canada and the United States are saying [that they] will no longer argue this kind of point in a court of law -- from now on it will be a matter just before the two justice departments of both countries. So what does the rule of law mean? They just threw it all out the backdoor to justify their ongoing incursion into unsurrendered Indian lands. I must say that on September the 11th, in 1995, the Canadian government launched over 75,000 [correction: 77,000] rounds of bullets in an attempt to kill a handful of indigenous peoples at Gustafsen Lake. -- Now, nobody was killed, and so you have to say to yourself that they must be some pretty bad shots. -- A handful of basically exposed people defending unsurrendered territories in accordance to international and constitutional laws. But I am here to tell you that the reason that they did not kill them is because we were effective in getting you to see the lie, and to say: no will do, no will kill. We were able to expose the lies and show that they were using it to demonize us to justify the kill. Subsequently we put the fear in that abyss [??? 20:16] [context: fear of retaliation in/by the RCMP] .... I know specifically, when you look at their documents inside of the book that I wrote. And their documents intelligence report says Splitting the Sky may very well have warrior societies surrounding us. If you shoot at any of the defenders inside of the camp, if you shoot at them, shoot over their heads because we've been told by Splitting the Sky [that] if anybody killed up there, there's going to be an all-out war across this country. And so they were scared enough not to kill anybody. So when I think of September the 11th [1995], I think [that] people could have been murdered on that day, many people could have died, if it hadn't been for the work that I and others had done to stop that massacre in contemporary times; and I am reminded of what we fought for. I am reminded of the many people that are survivors of the residential schools -- including myself and people sitting in this audience here this evening -- the tortures and the murders that were committed. But I am also reminded of being 19 years old, as an urban Indian that was inside one of the infamous prisons in the 1971, [and] being the only person convicted for allegedly killing a cop (William Quinn) during the 1971 Attica stand-off rebellion. Which of course we showed later that when we took the prison on September the 9th 1971, we had to liberate the gates and cast-iron gates (they had four of them closed off and we ripped those gates out of the wall) and [one] gate came down and hit this guy, [a police officer], on the head, [and] he died two days later, on September the 11th. At that point New York state ordered in 1000 state troopers. On September the 13th, they came in that morning with every kind of assault rifle you can possibly think of, in like a turkey-shoot, state troopers on top of that prison, they let out over 40,000 rounds of bullets [note: in less than 10 minutes] and I watched people being shot, bludgeoned to death; heads exploding; guts falling out; guards taking guns and shoving [them] down [the prisoner's] throats and blowing peoples brains out; shoving [guns] up people's anuses and shooting [them]; stripping them naked, making people crawl and beg for their lives; throwing people inside of trenches -- that we used to defecate and urinate in -- and put their hands execution-style and put guns to the back of their heads and executing them. Over 43 people were murdered in cold blood, over 200 people were wounded and maimed for life. [edit: 39 killed, 80 maimed.] [note: Robert Mckay Commission on Attica.] So when I think of these days, I think of resistance. I see that there were 61 of us that were indicted during that time. [Nelson] Rockefeller tried to suppress any of this information from going to a second grand jury when he was facing confirmation hearings. As vice-president of the United States under Gerald Ford he tried to get the Bureau of Criminal Investigation to suppress any information from going to a second jury, grand jury, about the murders that were committed on September the 13th at Attica State Prison.
23:56 (25:05)
Given the time constraints [at this conference], this is what I remember when I think about September the 11th, and that's just off the cuff of my head at this moment. I have thought about these dates that seem to coincide, and I can tell you one thing: we better not believe the lies of this imperialist colonial beast, because they have utilized 9-11 and 3000 bodies in New York.
24:31 (25:40)
And by the way, I happened to be there, [in NYC], the day before [9-11], promoting my book, on the 30th anniversary of Attica. I was promoting my book at a place called S.O.B.'s -- I guess that's apropos -- but I was there, just two blocks away from the twin towers and I know that the Thomas Kean commission was a blue ribbon scam commission. Because when they brought up the question of FEMA being there in the two hundreds -- over two hundred FEMA agents were there the day before. The commission said that they weren't there. I can tell you I saw them in the same hotel [note: World Financial Trade Centre] as I was in for ten days. I saw them all come in, and I saw every FEMA agent ready to conduct an operation that was put out by one of my political nemesis, Rudy Giuliani, the former mayor of New York, who used me as a political leverage in a campaign against the woman that he was going up against in his second bid for mayor of New York. But I know that there was an operation, known as Operation Tripod, and that was done in May of 2001, months before 9-11 happened, that on September the 12th FEMA was supposed to conduct an operation drill in case any buildings were blown up or anybody was hit with anthrax-type chemical agents. Now, is that a coincidence? No. Because the command centre that he had at the World Trade number 7, which was fortified in offices on the 23rd floor, the Office of Emergency Management, which were operated through FEMA. [The command centre] was so totally fortified, it was used with computers, to guide in remote controlled drones to hit the twin towers, [so] that they (the people running the command centre) wouldn't be touched. When the twin towers went down, they slid over to Pier 92 [edit: 29] in the New York harbour, which was the new command centre under Operation Tripod. Coincidence? Coincidence? Is it coincidence? You call me a conspiratorial theorist, I'll call you a coincidental theorist. I'd rather be a conspiratorial theorist than a coincidental theorist, because there is not that much coincidence in the world. To think that the U.S. imperialist capitalist beast is not able to conduct such military inside-operations is to give your enemy just way too much.
Thank you very much.
27:29 (28:38)