The following came over the Anarchy listserv yesterday -- someone posted the Cree prophecy, and then this post updating the capital situation there:
Quebec's Cree indian lands and rights sold for $3.8 billion. The treaty was signed February 7th. The Cree community wants profits from hydroelectricity and forestry projetcs despite their famous prophecy :
Only after the last river has been poisoned,
Only after the last fish has been caught,
Only then you will find out that money cannot be eaten.'
The treaty was hailed as a triumph, the final, cheery chapter of an otherwise messy history between the Quebec government and the province's Cree. The 50-year deal would give the Cree much needed income and stability, while allowing the province to develop the vast hydroelectric, forestry and mining opportunities in the north.
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Then, last night, I was involved in a long debate around the intersections of the work of radical educator Paulo Freire and the problems of indigenous peoples. It was pointed out that the North American indigenous peoples, through wave upon wave of oppression against them, find themselves in the contradiction of 1) shut out capitalism and try in whatever brutal fashion to remain traditional in non-traditional times, or 2) embrace capitalism and be assimilated. In the United States, the Cree appear to have chosen the latter, though in the guise of a cyborg culture which practices both native traditions and Anglican traditions -- weddings for instance have priests from both supervising. In any event, the idea was floated by Peter McLaren that it is interesting that a third possibility is never apparently presented as a real option for these peoples: to take capitalism up critically in revolutionary struggle against its oppressive nature. Can Chairman Mao be made to speak with Geronimo?
