What Does “Decolonize Oakland” Mean? What Can “Decolonize Oakland” Mean?

When we presented the proposal for a Memorandum of Solidarity with Indigenous Peoples to the General Assembly of “Occupy Oakland” on October 28, several individuals came forward to pose deeply felt questions about what – exactly – we were asking of them.

Ultimately, what they were asking is whether or not we were asking them, as non-indigenous people, the impossible? Would their solidarity with us require them to give up their lands, their resources, their ways of life, so that we – who numbered so few, after all – could have more? Could have it all?

I have thought much about what a proposal of solidarity with indigenous peoples is asking of the citizens and immigrants of Oakland, California, and the United States. What does it mean to ask them to “aspire to “Decolonize Oakland” – not occupy it – in solidarity with the indigenous peoples of Oakland? Of California? Of the United States?

The History Question:

Oakland is Already Occupied Lands

Genuine solidarity assumes historical understanding. It assumes an understanding of the very basics of how indigenous peoples have been and continue to be: 1) denied their basic human rights to self-determination and self-definition; 2) defrauded of their lands; 3) targeted by military programs of genocide, enslavement, extraction, and pollution; 4) objectified through physical and sexual forms of violence and discrimination; 5) profiled in hate – sometimes in forms of romance and sometimes in forms of crime and police brutality.

The Chochenyo Ohlone people – the people indigenous to what is now Oakland – and several of their indigenous brothers and sisters throughout the State of California and the United States – have experienced such relentless colonial and imperial efforts that they now have no collective territory of their own. No recognized legal status or rights as indigenous. No means to self-government and self-sufficiency on the lands and in the waters that once sustained them.

The Chochenyo Ohlone people, like so many indigenous peoples in California and the United States, live with the historical and real consequences of a post-colonial, post-imperial stress disorder: displaced, defrauded, targeted, objectified, degraded, depressed.

Genuine solidarity with indigenous peoples assumes a basic understanding of how histories of colonization and imperialism have produced and still produce the legal and economic possibility for Oakland. For San Francisco. For San Jose. For all of the colonies-now-municipalities of the San Francisco bay area, northern California, and the west coast of the United States.

You are on occupied lands!

“Decolonize Oakland”

We can still alter our course. It is NOT too late. We still have options. We need the courage to change our values to the regeneration of our families, the life that surrounds us. Given this opportunity, we can raise ourselves. We must join hands with the rest of Creation and speak of Common Sense, Responsibility, Brotherhood, and PEACE. We must understand that The Law is the Seed and only as True Partners can we survive.

Oren Lyons, Chief, Onondaga Nation

The “Occupy Wall Street” movement is a movement mobilized by the exploitations, degradations, indignities, and incestuousness of U.S. capitalism, corporate greed, and political corruption.

“We are the 99%” because – as so many others – indigenous peoples have lost their homes, their jobs, their dignity in a legal-economic system that indentures them to it in perpetuity. 25% of indigenous peoples in the United States live below the poverty line. They have lost their lands, their jobs, their opportunities. And, as a kind of joke only capitalism can laugh at, the only viable economic options indigenous peoples have been presented in this system is to either open casinos or lease their lands to corporations and government agencies for resource extraction and toxic waste storage.

The “Occupy Wall Street” movement is a great beacon light of hope – a hope in the possibility – for a revolution that will usher in for all of us the peaceful enjoyment of our basic human rights to equality and dignity. This hope, this possibility, is the light of accountability and responsibility, not handouts. Not bail outs. But genuine account to and for the spiritual laws of relationship and responsibility to the earth, to one another, to the future.

In that light of hope and possibility, indigenous peoples ask not for a free hand, for an unfettered return of their stolen land, but for a stand in solidarity for justice. For a stand in solidarity against a capitalist system that has long since foreclosed on their land rights, their economic rights, their humanity.

There will be no reform of capitalism without redress to the history of U.S. fraud, genocide, and discrimination against indigenous peoples.

There will be no reform of capitalism without redress to the others who have been historically colonized and imperialized by its greed – including non-heterosexuals, the racialized and sexually exploited, migrant workers, the unemployed, the closed out and closed in.

The liberation of indigenous peoples cannot happen while queers, people of color, women, migrants, the poor continue to be oppressed by colonial-imperial capitalism.

“I Have A Dream…”

Martin Luther King, Jr.

Being asked to aspire to decolonization in solidarity with indigenous peoples is being asked to dream differently of what has been, what is, and what can be from the perspective of those whose stolen lands and exploited bodies capitalism has been based.

The promise of the U.S. Constitution, the U.N. Charter, the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples is the promise of justice for indigenous peoples. The U.S. government has willfully defrauded and debased that promise in the name of capitalism. In its unfettered greed and deregulation. In its distortion of democracy and freedom for market and profit.

Solidarity with indigenous peoples in reforming this bankrupt system requires everyone to compromise. To give to one another. To restore, to return, to rematriate. To liberate.

I have a dream of reform. I have a dream rooted not in the American dream, but in a dream of the decolonization of America. Of the decolonization of what Americans dream of.

I have a dream that one day this nation will hold itself accountable to its constitution, to its treaties, to its accords on the human rights of indigenous peoples: that it will genuinely affirm “that indigenous peoples are equal to all other peoples,” “that indigenous peoples, in the exercise of their rights, should be free from discrimination of any kind,” and that there is an “urgent need to respect and promote the inherent rights of indigenous peoples which derive from their political, economic, and social structures and from their cultures, spiritual traditions, histories and philosophies, especially their rights to their lands, territories and resources.”

I have a dream that the people of “Occupy Oakland” will not see the affirmation of indigenous peoples’ rights to self-government, territorial restoration, and cultural autonomy as a threat to their own; that they will see solidarity with indigenous peoples as an affirmation of their humanity and justice. Of their possibilities for transformation and empowerment.

I have a dream that the liberation of indigenous peoples from capitalism’s greed, corruption, and fraud will transform the “Occupy Wall Street” vision of what a just and equitable society looks like. I have a dream of a society that is sustainable, restorative, peaceful.

I have a dream.

Memorandum of Solidarity with Indigenous Peoples

(This memorandum passed at General Assembly on 10/28/2011 by a 97% vote among the approximately 350 people who were present.)


RESOLUTION:  Memorandum of Solidarity with Indigenous Peoples

WHEREAS, those participating in “Occupy Oakland” acknowledge that the United States of America is a colonial (and imperial) nation, and that non-indigenous people are guests upon stolen indigenous land; and

WHEREAS, those participating in “Occupy Oakland” acknowledge that Oakland is already occupied land; Oakland being the historical territory of the Chochenyo Ohlone people; and

WHEREAS, those participating in “Occupy Oakland” acknowledge that indigenous peoples here and around the world continue to resist the violent oppression and exploitation of colonizing nations like the United States, and as a result have a great amount of experience that could strengthen the “Occupy Wall Street” movement; and

WHEREAS, those participating in “Occupy Oakland” acknowledge that after centuries of disregard for the welfare of future generations, and the consistent disrespect and exploitation of the Earth, we all find ourselves on a polluted and disturbed planet, lacking the wisdom to live sustainably at peace with the community of Life; therefore be it

RESOLVED, that those participating in “Occupy Oakland” seek the genuine and respectful involvement of indigenous peoples in the rebuilding of a new society on their ancestral lands; and

As a signal to the national “Occupy Wall Street” movement and the indigenous peoples here and there who have felt excluded by the colonialist language of occupation used to name this movement, it shall be declared that “Occupy Oakland" aspires to “Decolonize  Oakland" – to “Decolonize Wall Street” – with the guidance and participation of indigenous peoples; and

Extending an open hand of humility and friendship, those participating in “Occupy Oakland” respectfully invite indigenous peoples to join the uprising against corporate greed taking place across this continent. “Occupy Oakland” wishes to further the process of healing and reconciliation and implores indigenous peoples to share their wisdom and guidance, as they see fit, so as to help restore true freedom and democracy in this country, to initiate a new era of peace and cooperation that will work for everyone, including the Earth and the original inhabitants of this land.

In Solidarity,

Corrina Gould (Chochenyo Ohlone),

American Indian Child Resource Center of Oakland

Joanne Barker (Lenape [Delaware Tribe of Indians])¸ SFSU

Luz Calvo, CSU East Bay

Andreana Clay, SFSU

Andrew Jolivétte (Opelousa/Atakapa-Ishak), SFSU

Melissa Nelson (Anishinaabe [Turtle Mountain Chippewa]), SFSU

Kathy Wallace (Karuk, Yurok, and Hupa), SFSU

John-Carlos Perea (Mescalero Apache), SFSU

The Difference that History Makes in the OWS Movements

The demands of the OWS movement include:

·  Calls for a progressive, fair tax structure. Not a flat tax that only further taxes the poor and the middle-class. And not the one we have now that allows the very, very rich to not only pay no taxes (see appendix below) but to receive federal tax refunds.

· Calls for the radical revolution of the corporate-based political and media structure we live in. There is genuine anger by the fact that both political parties and many of the news forums in this country are bought, owned, and sold by Wall Street. And that this includes the very rich being able to put forth their anti-homosexual and anti-choice legislation (all in the name of the family!) while nullifying health care reform, labor rights, and public education (often in the name of the free market).

· Calls for renewed, effective regulation that holds corporations and their CEOs and Boards accountable for their crimes and to labor rights and environmental protection.

The critiques of the movement include:

·  The 1% and their Congressional, presidential candidate, and cable news media allies and protectors accusing the 99% of not working hard enough, of not deserving their “benefits” and "entitlements," of expecting to get something for nothing, of putting an undue burden on the federal dollar, of not paying their fair share, of not understanding the complexities of the U.S. financial system.

· Other critics have focused on what they see as the presumed unity of the 99% (even in opposition to the 1%). They have expressed frustration over the realities of economic difference among the 99% and the politics of race, ethnicity, class, gender, sexuality, and age that inform them.

The History that Difference Makes

In all directions of the movement and its multiple critics, the difference that matters most is the difference of history.

The 1% would like to reinvent their history as Hard Work. They would like the 99% to believe that if they just worked hard enough, they too would be rich. That hard work is what results in not only being able to keep one’s home and pay one’s bills but being able to enjoy an extravagant lifestyle: expensive car(s), designer clothes, travel, early retirement, et cetera. The 1% want the 99% to believe that the life that they enjoy is because they have worked so very hard. And that it is grossly unfair, even unjust, of the 99% to ask them to give up anything that they have worked so hard to get.

The 99% would like the 1% to acknowledge that it is not, in fact, hard work that has earned them their wealth but that that wealth is created and protected by Congress and its laws – corporate, property, tax, health, environmental. That those protections are not new but historical – weaving back through a complex web of race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, age, and class politics. That it is that history that necessitated the civil rights movement and Affirmative Action. That it is that same history that propels them into the streets now.

The Difference Starts Here

I have found it exasperating that all this history talk has not resulted in a serious account by the occupy movement participants to the history of Native land dispossession, fraud, and human rights violations that not only made the United States possible in 1776 but that continues to define the social injustices and inequalities of Wall Street in 2011.

For instance. The U.S. Constitution’s “supremacy clause” places the Constitution, Congressional law, and ratified treaties on legal par. Yet Native land rights guaranteed by ratified treaties with the U.S. continue to be thwarted, undermined, and denied by federal and state authorities as if those treaties are some curious relic of a past America left behind long ago.

Really? Left behind?

You do not think that the denial of Western Shoshone treaty rights -- for an instance of the 371 treaties ratified by the U.S. with Native peoples -- informs the federal government’s illegal appropriations of their lands and decimation of their horses for nuclear testing and local farming purposes? Seriously?

The same argument is made about Native land fraud. That the U.S. was certainly wrong in systematically lying to the Indians to get their lands but certainly that, too, belongs to a far distant past when Americans were greedy and the Indians were savage (notice the discursive shifts here). After all, the U.S. has evolved, so too should Indians. Out of their past, and their treaty delusions, and into a civilized present.

Really? All in the past?

You don’t think the history of fraud in U.S. land “appropriations” from Native peoples hasn’t made its own urban development, industrialization, and corporate expansion possible?

Let’s take the Lenape situation, for instance.

Some historical facts:

·  The Dutch East India Company established a colony in 1625 on an island it mapped and named Manhattan, building a citadel there that it called New Amsterdam.

· The island was already inhabited, known, and named by the Lenape as Manna-hata (the island of many hills).

· The Dutch East Indian Company attempted to secure its exclusive rights to the island against all other colonial claims by performing a purchase of it from the Lenape in 1626. While the Lenape understood the Dutch to be making a gift of goods as a thanks for the use of the area, the Dutch would treat the exchange as a purchase of the island from the Lenape. As was the practice of other colonists in north America, the purchase was a claim of the exclusive rights of property ownership. An ownership that the Dutch would attempt to protect legally and then by force.

· In  February 1653, the Dutch incorporated Manhattan Island as New Amsterdam. They quickly built a wall attempting to block the Lenape, other Native nations, and the English from attacking the colony. But in 1664, the English conquered the Dutch and renamed the island New York (after the Duke of York and Albany who would become King James II). In 1673, the Dutch regained control but a year later would lose it again to the English, who then demanded a treaty of cession and forced the Dutch out.

·  By 1700, the English tore down the Dutch wall and paved a street over its location that they called "Wall Street." In 1783, the English withdrew, ceding the island to the American militia under the rule of George Washington. The Americans would preserve "Wall Street" -- and all of Manhattan and New York -- as their own.

· The Lenape had ratified a treaty with the U.S., negotiated and signed by George Washington, in 1778 that provided the Americans passage through Lenape territory to fight against the English. It would be the first of over 20 treaties the Lenape would ratify with the U.S. and whose terms the U.S. would violate as soon as it suited their purposes for expansion.

·  The U.S. has never redressed Lenape land rights.

And so you don’t think that this history defines the possibility for Wall Street now? That that fraud, corruption, crime isn't the very stuff of Wall Street today? And that the continued denial of Native treaty rights and land dispossession is required in order to keep the system expanding? Extracting? Exploiting?

The Occupied

Within the 99% are the 1.8% of the U.S. population of Native peoples who have, like the Lenape, been defrauded of their lands in a long history of colonial-imperial expansion of the United States and its Wall Street. These 1.8%ers live below the poverty line to the rate of 24.2%. They have not only lost their homes but their lands to U.S. corporate and government fraud and complicity. They have not only lost their jobs, health care, and access to education but the health and well-being of the entire ecosystems on which they depend to corporate pollution and toxic waste the likes of gulf oil disaster one-thousand fold.

As with many other Native peoples (or should I say cynics), I wonder if decolonization is possible. But I do not wonder whether or not is the right thing to demand.

Appendix: Looking for Corporate Tax

·  Exxon Mobil made $19 billion in profits in 2009. Exxon not only paid no federal income taxes, it actually received a $156 million rebate from the IRS, according to its SEC filings. (Source: Exxon Mobil's 2009 shareholder report filed with the SEC here.)

· Bank of America received a $1.9 billion tax refund from the IRS last year, although it made $4.4 billion in profits and received a bailout from the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department of nearly $1 trillion. (Source: Forbes.com here, ProPublica here and Treasury here.)

· Over the past five years, while General Electric made $26 billion in profits in the United States, it received a $4.1 billion refund from the IRS. (Source: Citizens for Tax Justice here and The New York Times here. Note: despite rumors to the contrary, the Times has stood by its story.)

· Chevron received a $19 million refund from the IRS last year after it made $10 billion in profits in 2009. (Source: See 2009 Chevron annual report here. Note 15 on page FS-46 of this report shows a U.S. federal income tax liability of $128 million, but that it was able to defer $147 million for a U.S. federal income tax liability of $-19 million)

· Goldman Sachs in 2008 only paid 1.1 percent of its income in taxes even though it earned a profit of $2.3 billion and received an almost $800 billion from the Federal Reserve and U.S. Treasury Department. (Source: Bloomberg News here, ProPublica here, Treasury Department here.)

· Citigroup last year made more than $4 billion in profits but paid no federal income taxes. It received a $2.5 trillion bailout from the Federal Reserve and U.S. Treasury. (Source: Paul Buchheit, professor, DePaul University, here, ProPublica here, Treasury Department here.)

Read More on Corporate Tax Breaks:

http://sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/news/?id=4ffdc95c-a90c-4704-a5e8-90146e826cda

What’s in a Name? Indigenous Engagements with “Occupy” Wall Street

Tuesday, October 18, on Indigenous Politics: From Native New England and Beyond Radio: Indigenous Engagements with “Occupy” Wall Street (interview now archived).

Join your host, J Kēhaulani Kauanui (Kanaka Maoli) for an episode that will focus on critical indigenous engagements and participation with the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) demonstrations. The program will include interviews with several guests: Joanne Barker (Lenape nation of eastern Oklahoma); Tiokasin Ghosthorse (Cheyenne River Lakota); and Steven Newcomb (Lenape and Shawnee) who will speak to the indigenous history of Wall Street, which was built on Lenape tribal territory, and the terms of domination and potentials for decolonization.

~~~

The producer and host, J. Kehaulani Kauanui, is an Associate Professor of American Studies and Anthropology at Wesleyan University. She is the author of Hawaiian Blood: Colonialism and the Politics of Sovereignty and Indigeneity (Duke University Press, 2008). Kauanui served on the founding steering committee for the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association and is currently serving on its inaugural council.

Because Not All 99%-ers Are Created Equal

(Lenape custom teaches that you have to hear a story three times before it is a story you hear. This would be number two.) 

We are getting kicked out of our homes. We are forced to choose between groceries and rent. We are denied quality medical care. We are suffering from environmental pollution. We are working long hours for little pay and no rights, if we're working at all. We are getting nothing while the other 1 percent is getting everything. We are the 99 percent.

http://wearethe99percent.tumblr.com/

Occupy Wall Street is a horizontally organized resistance movement employing the revolutionary Arab Spring tactic to restore democracy in America. We use a tool known as a "people's assembly" to facilitate collective decision making in an open, participatory and non-binding manner. We call ours the NYC General Assembly and we welcome people from all colors, genders and beliefs to attend our daily assemblies. To learn more about how you can start a people's assembly to organize your local community to fight back against social injustice, please read this quick guide on group dynamics in people's assemblies.

http://occupywallst.org/

The 99% percent has been a powerful way to mark the difference in economic, legal, medical, and environmental inequity addressed within the Occupy Wall Street movement. It is a difference about economic privilege but as well about the history of laws – property, tax, health, environmental -- that define and protect the privileges of the 1% over and against the 99.

It is an old history. One that continues to be embodied by the displacement of Native peoples from the “occupy” part of the Occupy Wall Street movement.

The Difference Begins Here

The Dutch East India Company established a colony in 1625 on an island it mapped and named Manhattan, building a citadel it called New Amsterdam. (The company, incorporated in 1602 but collapsing under the weight of its own corruption in 1800, was a global corporation of vast legal and economic power -- waging war, exercising criminal jurisdiction, brokering treaties, and establishing colonies.)

But the island was already inhabited, known, and named by the Lenape as Manna-hata (the island of many hills). It was part of a larger territory of the Lenape that included parts of what is now known as Delaware, New York, and Pennsylvania.

The Dutch East Indian Company attempted to secure its exclusive rights to the island against other colonial claims by performing a purchase of it from the Lenape in 1626. While the Lenape understood the Dutch to be making a gift of goods as a thanks for the use of the area, the Dutch would treat the exchange as a purchase of the island from the Lenape. As was the practice of other colonists in north America, the purchase was a claim of the exclusive rights of property ownership. An ownership that the Dutch would attempt to protect legally and then by force.

In  February 1653, the Dutch incorporated Manhattan Island as New Amsterdam. They quickly built a wall attempting to block the Lenape, other Native nations, and the English from attacking the colony. But in 1664, the English conquered the Dutch and renamed the island New York (after the Duke of York and Albany who would become King James II). In 1673, the Dutch regained control but a year later would lose it again to the English, who then demanded a treaty of cession and forced the Dutch out.

By 1700, the English tore down the Dutch wall and paved a street over its location that they called "Wall Street." In 1783, the English withdrew, ceding the island to the American militia under the rule of George Washington. The Americans would preserve "Wall Street" -- and all of Manhattan and New York -- as their own.

The Occupied

Not all 99%ers are created equal.

Within them are the 1.8% of the U.S. population -- including the 1.6% of American Indians and Alaskan Natives and the .2% of Native Pacific and Caribbean peoples including Kanaka Maoli, Taíno, and Chamorro– who have, as the Lenape, been defrauded of their lands and rights to governance in a long history of colonial expansion that now defines the imperialism of an empire: that defines, in other words, the possibility for the 1%.

Not only have they been defrauded of their lands and governance but 24.2% live below the poverty line and 31.7% live without health insurance. And these are old statistics, not ones produced by the 2008 economic crisis. They are the statistics that embody the economic system created by the colonialism and imperialism that defines the United States.

We Are Still Here

I stand with the OWSers. The economic system we live in is unjust, inhumane, and aimed at protecting the legal and economic privileges of the 1% over and against everyone else.

But we have not just been kicked out of our homes: we have been kicked off our lands.

I do not believe the occupation of the OWS movement will lead to reform.

The aim has to be on decolonization. It has to be on a redress of the very wrongs that historically and today define the system we live in.

Occupy Boston Ratifies Memorandum of Solidarity with Indigenous Peoples

Hopefully others will follow.... (This is what I'm talkin' about!)

The following resolution was passed by the Occupy Boston General Assembly on October 8th, 2011:

RESOLUTION:  Memorandum of Solidarity with Indigenous Peoples

WHEREAS, those participating in “Occupy Boston” acknowledge that the United States of America is a colonial country, and that we are guests upon stolen indigenous land that has already been occupied for centuries, Boston being the ancestral land of the Massachusett people; and

WHEREAS, members of the First Nations have continued to resist the violent oppression and exploitation of the colonizers since they first arrived on this continent, and as a result have a great amount of experience that could strengthen this movement; and

WHEREAS, after centuries of disregard for the welfare of future generations, and the consistent disrespect and exploitation of the Earth, we find ourselves on a polluted and disturbed planet, lacking the wisdom to live sustainably at peace with the community of Life; therefore be it

RESOLVED, That we seek the involvement of the First Nations in the rebuilding of a new society on their ancestral land; and

As a signal to the national “Occupy” movement and to members of First Nations who have felt excluded by the colonialist language used to name this movement, it shall be declared that “Occupy Boston” aspires to “Decolonize Boston” with the guidance and participation of First Nations Peoples; and

Extending an open hand of humility and friendship, we hereby invite members of the First Nations to join us in this popular uprising now taking place across this continent.  We wish to further the process of healing and reconciliation and implore Indigenous Peoples to share their wisdom and guidance, as they see fit, so as to help us restore true freedom and democracy and initiate a new era of peace and cooperation that will work for everyone, including the Earth and the original inhabitants of this land; and

We hereby declare that Columbus Day should be referred to as “Indigenous Peoples’ Day.”

Some other statements of solidarity:
Occupy Austin
Occupy Denver
Occupy Albuquerque

Manna-hata

Manna-hata, a Lenape term meaning "island of many hills," became Manhattan when translated into the English language by an Englishman working for the Dutch who had established a colony on the island.

The Lenape were defrauded of the island by the Dutch in 1626.

As Georgetta Stonefish Ryan (Lenape) writes for the National Museum of the American Indian:

The “sale” of Manhattan was a misunderstanding. In 1626 the director of the Dutch settlement, Peter Minuit, “purchased” Manhattan for sixty guilders worth of trade goods. At that time Indians did everything by trade, and they did not believe that land could be privately owned, any more than could water, air, or sunlight. But they did believe in giving gifts for favors done. The Lenni Lenape—one of the tribes that lived on the island now known as Manhattan—interpreted the trade goods as gifts given in appreciation for the right to share the land. We don't know exactly what the goods were or exactly how much a guilder was worth at that time. It has been commonly thought that sixty guilders equaled about twenty-four dollars. But the buying power of twenty-four dollars in 1626 is not known for sure.

As would be repeated across the region, the Lenape did not realize that the Dutch meant to claim the lands for their exclusive use -- an exclusivity that the Dutch would work violently to protect against the Lenape and then the English.

In 1653, in fact, the Dutch built a wall attempting to block Lenape, other Native nations, and the English from attacking "their" settlement. By 1700, when the English assumed Dutch land holdings in the region, they tore down the wall and paved a street over its location that they called "Wall Street."

The English would be defeated by the Americans. The Americans would preserve "Wall Street" -- and all of Manhattan -- as their own.

The Americans would never redress the history of Native land fraud that had made the U.S. possible. They would continue this fraud by violating their first ratified treaty with a Native nation -- the Lenape in 1778. This treaty provided -- among other things -- safe passage for Americans through Lenape territory during their war with the English. As all of the treaties that followed, it was a treaty that would be violated by the Americans in the name of U.S. sovereignty and territorial rights.

"Wall Street" is only possible because of this history of land fraud and treaty violation.

The "United States" is only possible because of its still imperial-colonial relations with Native peoples.

What "Wall Street" and the U.S. have become -- an imperial-colonial power over the world's economics and the laws that protect it -- is a direct legacy of the fraud and violence committed against Native nations.

Perhaps those who now claim to OCCUPY WALL STREET in the name of reforming America's economy could remember their history and call it something else (see Racialicious' post for more discussion of the importance of language in opposition). Wall Street is, after all, already an occupied territory. 

As are all of U.S. land "holdings" in northern America, the Pacific, and the Caribbean.

Decolonize the opposition! 
(especially now that it is OCCUPYING L.A., Seattle, San Francisco, Chicago....) 

(Woman in picture below: Jennie Bob [Lenape],1915)