Dreamers Must Be Protected - as Indigenous Peoples Were Not

By Betty Lyons, Guardian UK

03 March 18

For those who know the Americas as the Great Turtle Island or Abya Yala, Daca is not an immigration crisis – it is a matter of simple human rights

s we approach the 5 March date for expiration of the legal immigration status of so-called Dreamers – those who came to the US as children and now fall under Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals status, or Daca – we as citizens of the original Indigenous Nations of this continent have been watching closely.

We have dealt with these issues ever since the first Europeans crossed the Atlantic and “discovered” lands you call the Americas, known to us for millennia as the Great Turtle Island or Abya Yala. Since the United States was founded on our lands in 1776, these policies and practices have had a devastating impact on the territories and rights of the Original Nations and our relatives from both north and the south of US borders.

For us, Daca is not an immigration crisis. It is a human rights crisis. And human rights cannot be deferred. Every day approximately 122 people lose Daca protection. This cruel policy immorally punishes and traumatizes innocent young people and their families.

As Indigenous Peoples, we know our history and we know our relatives. Many so-called “undocumented” people are in fact Indigenous Peoples, children of Original Nations with a millennial history of travel across the continent to trade and engage in ceremonial obligations at sacred sites of their traditional territories before the US existed.

The US-Mexico border is not an indigenous border. Similarly, to citizens of the Onondaga Nation – part of the Six Nation Haudenosaunee Confederacy, what you call the Iroquois – the US-Canadian border runs through traditional lands that we view as one inseparable nation.

Dividing families is something we cannot imagine doing to others, because we have been through this pain many times at the hands of the same government. That is why we as Indigenous Peoples support immediate passage of a “clean” Dream Act, and it should definitely not be linked to funding a wall along the US-Mexico border that Indigenous Nations never consented to in the first place. A wall will exacerbate human rights violations and bring horrendous environmental destruction to the land.

When European colonists arrived and were hungry, we fed them. When they were cold we clothed them and when they needed a place to stay we offered hospitality on our lands. And when they moved toward independence in confederation as a country, we instructed them in our Great Law of Peace.

If we are to truly discuss US immigration, we should start in 1493 with the “Doctrine of Discovery”, a series of papal bulls declaring lands not occupied by Christians could be claimed in the name of the explorers’ European sovereigns. Far from ancient history, the doctrine to this day underlies the law and policy related to Indigenous land rights and human rights in US courts and across the world. The lingering racism underpinned by the doctrine is the real “constitutional crisis” unfolding before us daily, a symptom of the underlying crisis of self-definition of the US body politic that lies at the root of the tree of the American “experiment” in democracy.

While the US constitution says that treaties – such as the 1794 Treaty of Canandaigua with the Haudenosaunee, signed by George Washington for the United States – are the supreme law of the land, the United States failed to enforce the promised recognition and protection of our lands from illegal invasion by settlers. As we have sought justice in the US courts for this illegal theft of our land, the courts refused to hear the case, citing the Doctrine of Discovery and claiming “it would be too disruptive” to the “justified expectations” of non-native people now living on our lands.

To be clear, the Onondaga Nation explicitly stated we do not want to “deport” people from our lands, the way we have been displaced historically. Yet while the US claimed it feared disrupting our non-native neighbors, they would hypocritically deport young Dreamers who have grown up in the US, with no regard for disrupting their lives and families.

The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) proclaims: “Indigenous peoples, in particular those divided by international borders, have the right to maintain and develop contacts, relations and cooperation, including activities for spiritual, cultural, political, economic and social purposes, with their own members as well as other peoples across borders.”

In the spirit of responsibility for caretaking the land for future generations, we call upon leadership from all sectors of society to live up to the ideals of democracy and decency, of human rights and justice and act immediately to protect Dreamers and their families, and to recognize, respect and guarantee basic dignity and inherent human rights of all peoples, including Indigenous Peoples’ equal right of self-determination.

No one is illegal. Human rights cannot be deferred.

How I Found My Voice as a Pacifist

By Joan Baez, The Wall Street Journal

03 March 18

Joan Baez, 77, is a folk singer and guitarist who received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2007. Her latest album is “Whistle Down the Wind” (Razor & Tie). She spoke with Marc Myers.

hen I was 9, my father faced a moral dilemma. After getting his Ph.D. in physics, he took a job at Cornell University on a project to improve the bulletproof windows of fighter jets. But in the late 1940s, he wasn’t comfortable working for the defense industry, given the horrors of the atomic bomb.

My father, Albert, was struggling with his conscience and needed spiritual guidance.

We became Quakers. My parents decided rather than get rich in the defense industry, my father would become a professor. By then, we were pacifists.

I was born in New York and was two when we moved from Brooklyn to California so my father could study for his Ph.D. at Stanford. Our house was tiny and beautiful. It was white, with a pointed roof and an arched entrance.

When my Aunt Tia left her husband, she moved to Stanford with her two children. My parents and Tia bought a large house on Glenwood Avenue. It was Victorian and looked haunted.

I shared a bedroom with my older sister, Pauline, who wasn’t happy to have me. She was neat and tidy and precise. I was less so.

To help pay the rent, my parents and Tia took in boarders, up to five at a time. My mother cooked Sunday dinner, and everyone ate at the same table. I was exposed to people with different backgrounds.

After my father’s crisis of conscience at Cornell, we moved back to California, where he became a professor of physics at the University of Redlands.

That was in 1950. Around this time, I began experiencing bouts of melancholy. My mother, Joan, always said I looked as if I carried the world on my shoulders.

Our home in Redlands was a lower middle-class house, but there was something sweet about it. It was white, with a lawn in front that my mother lined with roses. We had a porch where I loved to sit and watch the world go by. By then, I shared a room with my younger sister, Mimi.

While in Redlands, my father took a year’s leave to work with Unesco at the University of Baghdad in Iraq. He took us with him. The poverty and desperation for food were shocking.

Back in school in Redlands, I suddenly was Mexican. My father had come to the States from Mexico with his family in 1915. In 1936, he married my mother, who was born in Scotland. Because my name was Baez and I looked Mexican, I was placed in classes for underperforming kids.

When I was 13, one of our assignments was to write our life history in a page. In my notebook, I wrote, “If there’s an underdog, I’m always for the underdog.”

In junior high school, I sang in the choir. But I had a problem. My voice was as straight as an arrow. I needed a vibrato for warmth. One day, in the bathroom, I wiggled the flesh around my Adam’s apple. As I sang, a vibrato emerged. That exercise taught me what my voice had to do.

In 1958, we moved to the Boston area when my father took a position at MIT. When I attended Boston University in the fall, I started singing for money. The guitar was never out of my hands. I sang around town and developed a following.

One day in early 1959, I was performing at a coffee shop in Cambridge when manager Albert Grossman saw me. He had me appear in Chicago, where I met folk singer Bob Gibson, who invited me to the first Newport Folk Festival that summer. We sang two songs together. My career took off.

Today, I live in Woodside, Calif., in a house built in the 1930s. I was captivated by the land and the oak trees. I’ve since renovated to put in larger windows to let in more light. They also let me see the forest and greenery from every room.

My favorite space is the living room, by the fireplace. It’s warm and serene, and covered in adobe tiles made by an artist friend of mine when he was in his 90s. I practice there when I’m not on tour.

Perhaps my most beloved possession is a framed note on the wall that my father wrote to me in his 90s. He didn’t communicate well with his kids. In the note, he wrote, “Dearest Joanie, I love it when you visit me. From your Papa, with love.” It pleases me that he finally wrote me something nice.