Six Nations Councillor Helen Miller: ‘Stop blaming colonization & residential schools’

Posted on June 10, 2011 | 2 Comments

SEE ALSO: Gary McHale to Six Nations: Beware what you teach your children

dove“It’s no wonder so many of our youth seem lost, without direction and guidance, and are choosing the wrong road. Look at the examples they have to follow.” Six Nations Councillor Helen Miller, May 25/11

UPDATED June 11/11 — In the wake of the lawless takeover of the former Six Nations police station by youths Councillor Helen Miller has written a letter to the Turtle Island News in which she itemizes a brutally honest shopping list of reserve dysfunctionality and provides a shockingly fresh solution:

  • repeated vandalism of the Veterans’ hall.
  • Men’s Fire telling people provincial laws don’t apply, and that Six Nations Police have no authority, which promotes lawlessness.
  • People paying kids to steal cars and sell drugs.
  • Cigarette shops, some of which are fronts for drug dealers.
  • ATV drivers & Poker Run organizers refuse to respect farmers’ properties and crops.
  • People stealing reserve land, including the Glebe Lands.
  • Domestic violence is rampant.
  • Women and girls are being sexually assaulted.
  • Too many kids being raised by single parents because fathers refuse responsibility or mothers deny access.
  • Increased violence at sports games with racism on both sides.
  • More suicides among kids in last few years than in 10 years.
  • Kids being bullied at school, but no zero-tolerance policy adopted.
  • Drug addictions are plaguing the community, not just youth, but moms, dads, grandmas, grandpas, aunts and uncles. Several babies born addicted to drugs, or born w/Fetal Alcohol Syndrome.
  • Elected council fighting with confederacy council with Mohawk Workers refusing to work with either council.

After listing out the social ills of her community Miller tells her fellow Six Nations residents to stop blaming others and look in the mirror for solutions:

“It’s no wonder so many of our youth seem lost, without direction and guidance, and are choosing the wrong road. Look at the examples they have to follow. […]

“What do we need to do to make our community a better place to live? First of all we have to stop blaming colonization, stop blaming residential schools, and stop blaming 1924.

“Secondly we all have to take responsibility for what has happened to our community. […] Far as I’m concerned it all comes down to leadership. The only way we can hope to get our community back on track is for the elected council, the confederacy council and the Mohawk Workers to work side by side, hand in hand, with one mind, supported by the people. For the sake of our young people and children we need to make this happen otherwise I’m afraid our young people won’t have much of a future.”

Six Nations youth leader condemns lawlessness by occupiers of former police station

In another positive development the Coordinator of the Six Nations Youth Movement, Laurel Curley, has issued a lengthy public apology and explanation to residents who were misled by the group of youths who occupied the former police station, saying, in part:

“Recently our name was appropriated and our credibility exploited without our knowledge or consent. […] None of our Core Team or Working Group members were involved in the old police station ‘takeover’ or the acts of vandalism on the Fair Grounds property. 

“As members of the Six Nations Youth Movement 2011, we do not make ‘demands’, issue ‘ultimatums, engage in ‘takeovers’, vandalize property or undertake disrespectful or unlawful activity. We…do not take kindly to individuals or groups appropriating our name and exploiting our credibility to further their own political or criminal agendas.”

  • Laurel Curley letter, Tekawennake News, June 01/11: “Youth Movement” confusion [PDF]
  • Tekawennake News: www.Tekanews.com

Curley’s letter was written in response to a militant May 25th letter written by the youth occupiers of the former Six Nations police station who say they are “not interested in collaborating with any colonial structures: Band Council, Police, CAS or corporations.”

  • Tekawennake News, May 25/11: Official statement from Youth Movement [PDF]
  • Tekawennake News: www.Tekanews.com

VoC Comment

Councillor Miller’s letter is the single most hopeful document I have seen during the past 4.5 years of fighting for justice in Caledonia, and there were tears in my eyes as I read it. The courage. The wisdom. The truth.

In 2009 I lauded Councillor Miller for another courageous letter she wrote. That letter to the Brantford Expositor denounced the various groups responsible for the lawlessness against Six Nations’ neighbours, and made it clear that they don’t speak for Six Nations, and aren’t supported by the community at large.

I have always believed that the radicals who terrorized Caledonia didn’t represent Six Nations so her words back then gave me hope and vindicated my faith in the people of Six Nations.

Since initially publishing this article I have been made aware of an excellent article about violence against native women by a woman (whom I have met personally) with a 30-year connection with aboriginal communities. She wrote to tell me  how pleased she was to have read Helen Miller’s observations about the futility of constantly blaming colonization and residential schools since she had written nearly identical words in her own article – before reading Miller’s letter on VoC: 

“Why does the violence continue to get worse?  I would argue that the constant blaming of forces such as colonization and the residential schools has not helped move the dialogue forward.  Yet many witnesses who presented evidence to the Status of Women committee included these two factors among the main causes.

“Don’t get me wrong.  I know that colonization and the residential schools have contributed substantially to the dysfunction, but I maintain it is completely unrealistic for some people to insist that all aboriginal misfortune only started when non-aboriginals arrived on this continent.” 

CUPE 3903 FNSWG interlopers also bear responsibility for Six Nations dysfunctionality

Interestingly, the groups named by Miller in 2009 as illegitimate, self-appointed spokespeople for Six Nations were the very groups being supported by Tom Keefer and CUPE 3903’s First Nations Solidarity Working Group coalition of anarchists, radical unionists and Israel haters.

Every community – native and non-native – has problems virtually identical to those facing Six Nations, but over and over again, I have been told by supporters of the Haldimand Tract lawlessness that the blame for Six Nations troubles lies not with those natives committing crimes against innocents, but with ‘racist white-privileged settlers.’

March Vandermaas speaks at 'Remember Us' March, Caledonia Lions Park, Oct 08/07The CUPE-led anarchists et al  have, however, never once acknowledged – let alone express compassion for – the native rape and assault victims of their Six Nations proxies even though I have spoken out for them again and again in my writings and in my speeches in Caledonia, in Calgary and in Ottawa. Instead, they deflect attention from the inconvenient truth that their actions are also hurting native people via false accusations that Gary McHale and I are racists:

  • Mark Vandermaas speech at ‘Remember Us’ protest, Caledonia, Oct 08/07: Natives are Victims of Two Tier Justice  [VIDEO 18.29 mins, [PDF]
  • 2010 New Directions in Aboriginal Policy forum, Mount Royal University, May 05/10, Mark Vandermaas presentation: Listening to Victims: A Fresh Approach to Healing and Reconciliation [PDF, 21p]
  • 110322 Mark Vandermaas Caledonia-No More Nightmares‘Caledonia: No More Nightmares’ event, Ottawa, March 22/11: Mark Vandermaas presentation, Part 1 – Caledonia’s Victims [VIDEO #1, 15:05] [PDF, 36p w/citations]
  • Caledonia Victims Project, April 29/10: Campaign against Vandermaas & McHale results in positive outcome

This ‘Blame Everything On The Racist White Colonialists’ dogma has been CUPE 3903 FNSWG’s battle cry all along as they have used Six Nations militants for their own anti-capitalist agenda since 2006, and it is the reason they also bear some responsibility for the miserable dysfunctionality on the reserve. 

These non-native interlopers have done their best to inculcate a culture of hopeless victimhood and lawless entitlement within the people of Six Nations. I hope that Helen Miller’s courage will encourage the community to pull up the welcome mat for them so it can begin to repair the damage done by their indoctrination of race-blame. What a wonderful first step that would be for Six Nations and her neighbours.

In a place of darkness, someone has to be the first to light a candle to chase away the shadows. Helen Miller’s latest candle isn’t really a candle at all, it is a bright searchlight on those who victimize others for their own selfish ends.

Bravo Councillor Miller. And bravo to you, too, Laurel Curley.

Other References

UPDATES

Mark Vandermaas, Editor
VoiceofCanada
info@voiceofcanada.ca

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2 responses to “Six Nations Councillor Helen Miller: ‘Stop blaming colonization & residential schools’”

  1. Bill | June 11, 2011 at 1:46 pm |

    Thanks for finally and openly connecting the dots on 6N radicalization and dysfunction. It needs to be said loudly and often until responsible 6N people take the situation in hand.

    As Councillor Miller alludes to, and you openly point out, the core element of 6N reserve-community-leadership dysfunction is the result of radicalization by external political elements. Moral relativism, rejection of law regarding private property, civil upset based in fraudulent historic revisionism, racism, situational morality, mob vandalism, continual conflict mentality – all are the symptoms of a society infected with toxic political ideologies.

    The “healing” you and CANACE pray for will only come when the radicalizing disease infecting 6N, and those interlopers carrying it into the community, is purged and replaced with true self respect and personal responsibility.

    Thank you for putting the ‘disease’ under the microscope Mark and God speed Helen Miller in her mission to save her nation from self destructive collapse.

    VoC: There is an entire ‘aboriginal industry’ – as it was called by Frances Widdowson and Albert Howard in ‘Disrobing the Aboriginal Industry’ – devoted to convincing native people that all their problems are the fault of white people, and that they could all be solved by throwing money at them, and by segregating themselves from the rest of Canadian society.

    Councillor Miller is a voice of reason in the din of insanity and, given the extreme level of violence some members of her community are capable of, and the fact that our governments appease and protect them instead of listening to people like her, her courage in speaking out is all the more remarkable, and I feel privileged to have lived to read her words. Mark

  2. Pingback: Caledonia milestone: DCE occupiers & OPP respect rights of non-natives during Truth & Reconciliation Rally | Caledonia Victims Project