{"id":8788,"date":"2011-05-06T18:02:00","date_gmt":"2011-05-07T02:32:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.dmzhawaii.org\/?p=8788"},"modified":"2011-05-06T18:02:00","modified_gmt":"2011-05-07T02:32:00","slug":"native-american-activist-winona-laduke-on-use-of-geronimo-as-code-for-osama-bin-laden-and-the-militarization-of-indian-country","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.dmzhawaii.org\/?p=8788","title":{"rendered":"Native American Activist Winona LaDuke on Use of &#8220;Geronimo&#8221; as Code for Osama bin Laden and the &#8220;Militarization of Indian Country&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Winona LaDuke has just published a book <em>The Militarization of Indian Country<\/em> in which she discusses the situation in Hawai&#8217;i and the Native-owned military contracting industry.\u00a0 I spoke with someone from her organization as they were researching information for the book.\u00a0 I haven&#8217;t seen it yet to know how the information was incorporated.\u00a0 Today, she was on <a href=\"http:\/\/www.democracynow.org\/2011\/5\/6\/native_american_activist_winona_laduke_on\">Democracy Now!<\/a> She discusses the military assault on Hawai&#8217;i and the use of &#8220;Geronimo&#8221; as code name for Osama bin Laden.\u00a0 One figure she cites &#8211; 79,000 acres &#8211; of military expansion in Hawai&#8217;i doesn&#8217;t sound correct.\u00a0 But she describes Kaho&#8217;olawe, Pohakuloa and the Stryker Brigade expansion. Here&#8217;s the video of the program and an excerpt from the transcript:<br \/>\n<script src=\"http:\/\/www.democracynow.org\/embed_show_v2\/300\/2011\/5\/6\/story\/native_american_activist_winona_laduke_on\" type=\"text\/javascript\"><\/script><br \/>\n<em><br \/>\n<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Source: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.democracynow.org\/2011\/5\/6\/native_american_activist_winona_laduke_on\">http:\/\/www.democracynow.org\/2011\/5\/6\/native_american_activist_winona_laduke_on<\/a><\/p>\n<p>We\u2019re joined now by Winona LaDuke, Native American activist, writer.  She lives and works on the White Earth Reservation in northern  Minnesota. She\u2019s executive director of the group Honor the Earth. She  was Ralph Nader\u2019s running mate in 1996 and 2000 presidential elections.  And her new book is called <em>The Militarization of Indian Country<\/em>. She\u2019s joining us from Minneapolis.<\/p>\n<p>Winona,  thank you so much for being with us. Let\u2019s start off by talking about  who Geronimo was and the significance of his name being used.<\/p>\n<p>Let me see how the <em>New York Times<\/em> described the moment: &#8220;The code name for bin Laden was &#8216;Geronimo.&#8217; The  president and his advisers watched Leon E. Panetta, the C.I.A. director,  on a video screen, narrating from his agency\u2019s headquarters across the  Potomac River what was happening in faraway Pakistan.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;\u2019They\u2019ve reached the target,\u2019 he said.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Minutes passed.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;\u2019We have a visual on Geronimo,\u2019 he said.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;A few minutes later: &#8216;Geronimo EKIA.&#8217;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Enemy Killed In Action. There was silence in the Situation Room.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Winona LaDuke, your response?<\/p>\n<p><strong>WINONA LADUKE:<\/strong> I mean, you know, the reality is, is the military looks at it from its  own perspective. This was one of the most expensive single campaigns to  find somebody, bin Laden. And the reality was, is that the Geronimo  campaign, the campaign against the Apache people, was one of the most  expensive wars ever waged by the United States government. You know, for  13 years, they spent millions of dollars, essentially. Five thousand  soldiers, and additional, went after these people, relentlessly, for  that long period of time. So, from the military\u2019s perspective, that\u2019s a  little of how they were looking at it.<\/p>\n<p>You know, from our  perspective, of course, and from, I think, all Americans\u2019 perspective,  Geronimo is a hero. He\u2019s a national patriot for our peoples. And in  that, it is indeed an egregious slander for indigenous peoples  everywhere and to all Americans, I believe, to equate Osama bin Laden  with Geronimo.<\/p>\n<p><strong>JUAN GONZALEZ:<\/strong> Well, Winona, in  terms of the military, this seems to be a constant historical inability  to grasp, the relationship of the government to Native American people. I  was struck particularly by\u2014during the wars in Kosovo, when the United  States used\u2014constantly talked about the Apache helicopters that were  leading the fight against ethnic cleansing, or the new helicopter that  supposedly was going to be the stealth helicopter that the military  developed but then had to scrap, the Comanche helicopter. And there  seems to be a constant insensitivity to the long struggle for freedom  and defense of their land by the Native American peoples on the part of  the U.S. military.<\/p>\n<p><strong>WINONA LADUKE:<\/strong> The reality is,  is that the military is full of native nomenclature. That\u2019s what we  would call it. You\u2019ve got Black Hawk helicopters, Apache Longbow  helicopters. You\u2019ve got Tomahawk missiles. The term used when you leave a  military base in a foreign country is to go &#8220;off the reservation, into  Indian Country.&#8221; So what is that messaging that is passed on? You know,  it is basically the continuation of the wars against indigenous people.<\/p>\n<p>Donald  Rumsfeld, when he went to Fort Carson, named after the infamous Kit  Carson, who was responsible for the deaths of thousands of Navajo people  and their forced relocation, urged people, you know, in speaking to the  troops, that in the global war on terror, U.S. forces from this base  have lived up to the legend of Kit Carson, fighting terrorists in the  mountains of Afghanistan to help secure victory. &#8220;And every one of you  is like Kit Carson.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The reality is, is that the U.S. military  still has individuals dressed\u2014the Seventh Cavalry, that went in in Shock  and Awe, is the same cavalry that massacred indigenous people, the  Lakota people, at Wounded Knee in 1890. You know, that is the reality of  military nomenclature and how the military basically uses native people  and native imagery to continue its global war and its global empire  practices.<\/p>\n<p><strong>AMY GOODMAN:<\/strong> Winona, you begin your  book on the militarization of Native America at Fort Sill, the U.S. Army  post near Lawton, Oklahoma. We broadcast from there about a year ago in  that area. Why Fort Sill? What is the significance of Fort Sill for  Native America?<\/p>\n<p><strong>WINONA LADUKE:<\/strong> Well, you know,  that is where the Apaches themselves were incarcerated for 27 years for  the crime of being Apache. There are two cemeteries there, and those  cemeteries\u2014one of those cemeteries is full of Apaches, including  Geronimo, who did die there. But it is emblematic of Indian Country\u2019s  domination by military bases and the military itself. You\u2019ve got over 17  reservations named after\u2014they\u2019re still called Fort something, you know?  Fort Hall is, you know, one of them. Fort Yates. You know, it is  pervasive, the military domination of Indian Country.<\/p>\n<p>Most of the  land takings that have occurred for the military, whether in Alaska, in  Hawaii, or in what is known as the continental United States, have been  takings from native land. Some of\u2014you know, they say that the Lakota  Nation, in the Lakota Nation\u2019s traditional territory, as guaranteed  under the Treaty of 1868 or the 1851 Treaty, would be the third greatest  nuclear power in the world. You know, those considerations indicate how  pervasive historically the military has been in native history and  remains today in terms of land occupation.<\/p>\n<p>I must say, on the  other side of that, we have the highest rate of living veterans of any  community in the country. It\u2019s estimated that about 22 percent of our  population, or 190,000 of our\u2014or 190,000\u2014or 190,000 living veterans in  Native America today. And all of those veterans, I am sure, are quite  offended by the use of Geronimo\u2019s name, you know, in the assault on bin  Laden and in the death of bin Laden.<\/p>\n<p><strong>JUAN GONZALEZ:<\/strong> Winona, in your book, you go through a lot of these takings of land and  what it\u2019s been used for. Obviously, the nuclear accident following the  tsunami in Japan has been in the news a lot lately, but you talk about  the origins of the United States\u2019s own nuclear power, the mining of  uranium, the development of Los Alamos Laboratory. Could you talk about  that and its connection to Indian Country?<\/p>\n<p><strong>WINONA LADUKE:<\/strong> You know, native people\u2014about two-thirds of the uranium in the United  States is on indigenous lands. On a worldwide scale, about 70 percent of  the uranium is either in Aboriginal lands in Australia or up in the  Subarctic of Canada, where native people are still fighting uranium  mining. And now, with both nuclearization and the potential reboot of a  nuclear industry, they\u2019re trying to open uranium mines on the sacred  Grand Canyon. You know, we have been, from the beginning, heavily  impacted by radiation exposure from the U.S. military, you know,  continuing on to nuclear testing, whether in the Pacific or whether the  1,100 nuclear weapons that were detonated over Western Shoshone  territory. You know, our peoples have been heavily impacted by  radiation, let alone nerve gas testing. You\u2019ve got nerve gas dumps at  Umatilla. You\u2019ve got a nerve gas dump at the Skull Valley Goshute  Reservation. You have, you know, weapons bases, and the military is the  largest polluter in the world. And a lot of that pollution, in what is  known as the United States, or some of us would refer to as occupied  Indian Country, is in fact all heavily impacting Indian people or  indigenous communities still.<\/p>\n<p><strong>JUAN GONZALEZ:<\/strong> You  also talk about the radiation experimentation in Alaska in the 1960s in  your book. I don\u2019t think\u2014very few people have heard of that. Could you  tell us a little bit more about that?<\/p>\n<p><strong>WINONA LADUKE:<\/strong> Yeah. You know, I was an undergraduate at Harvard, and I remember I  used to\u2014I researched all this really bizarre data, but there was this  project at Point Hope, where the military wanted to look at the  radiation lichen-caribou-man cycle, of bio-accumulation of radiation.  And so, they went into the Arctic. You know, there\u2019s widespread testing  on native people, because we\u2019re isolated populations. We\u2019re  basically\u2014you know, most of us in that era were genetically pretty  similar. It was a good test population, and there was no accountability.  You know, testing has occurred, widespread. But in that, they wanted to  test, so the village of Point Hope was basically irradiated. Didn\u2019t  tell the people. Documents were declassified in the 1990s. And all that  time, this community bore a burden of nuclear exposure that came from  the Nevada test site, you know, and in testing those communities.<\/p>\n<p>You  know, Alaska itself is full of nuclear and toxic waste dumps from the  military, over 700 separate, including, you know, perhaps one of the  least known, but I did talk about it in this book, <em>The Militarization of Indian Country<\/em>,  VX Lake, where they happened to forget about some nerve gas canisters, a  whole bunch of them, and they put them out in the middle of the lake,  and they sank to the bottom. And then they remembered a few years later,  and then they had to drain the darn lake to go get all these\u2014you know,  all the nerve gas, VX, out of the bottom of the lake. And, you know,  they renamed it Blueberry Lake, but it\u2019s still known as VX Lake to  anybody who\u2019s up there. And, you know, the unaccountability of the  military, above reproach, having such a huge impact on a worldwide  scale, having such a huge take at the federal trough, the federal  budget, and in indigenous communities an absolutely huge impact in terms  of the environmental consequences of militarization.<\/p>\n<p><strong>AMY GOODMAN:<\/strong> We\u2019re talking to Winona LaDuke, Native American activist, writer. Her latest book is called <em>The Militarization of Indian Country<\/em>. Winona, talk about the history of native participation in and opposition to war. But begin with your dad, with your father.<\/p>\n<p><strong>WINONA LADUKE:<\/strong> Yeah, you know, I wrote this book out of a debt, really, to my father.  My father was a Korean War resister, and he spent 11 months in prison  for refusing to fight a war that he did not believe was his. There is a  long history of native people, whether the Zunis, whether the Hopis,  whether Iroquois, whether the Ojibwes, who said, &#8220;You know, that\u2019s  really not our war. We\u2019re staying here.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The United States, you  know, people\u2014one of the reasons that it is said that native people  received citizenship in 1924 was so that they could be drafted. And they  have been extensively drafted. You know, for a whole variety of social,  political, historic, cultural and economic reasons, native people have  the highest rate of enlistment in this country, from historic to  present. You know, in some places, in our Indian communities, you have  very dire economic situations, and the military recruiters are very  aggressive. And young people do not have a lot of choices. I mean, I had  a young man from my community say, &#8220;Auntie, I joined the military.&#8221; I  said, &#8220;Why did you join the military?&#8221; He says, &#8220;Because I was either  going to jail or going to the military.&#8221; You know, and I have heard that  story more than once in Indian Country.<\/p>\n<p>So, having said that, you  have a history of warrior societies, of people who are proud, who have  defended our land. You know, 500 years is a long time to defend your  territory. And, you know, we\u2019re still here. And within that, our warrior  societies continue, whether it is at Oka, whether it was at Wounded  Knee, whether it is on the front lines of the tar sands in Alberta,  Canada, or whether it is in the Grand Canyon, defending our territory.  At the same time, you have a number\u2014you know, a large rate of  enlistment. And so, you have native veterans who are, in our community,  highly regarded for who they are as courageous individuals and a very  significant part of our communities. At the same time, there is no  program to reintegrate these individuals into our society. A lot of\u2014you  know, the highest rate of homelessness is in the veterans in this  country. And many other issues of PTSD and such exist widespread in our  communities because of our isolation and our high rates of enlistment  and our high rates of veterans.<\/p>\n<p><strong>AMY GOODMAN:<\/strong> Winona LaDuke, you also talk, when talking about Fort Sill, about the  Comanche people asking for Fort Sill not to destroy Medicine Bluff. Can  you talk about the sacred places in the United States, starting with  Fort Sill? Where are they threatened, and how do you preserve these  lands?<\/p>\n<p><strong>WINONA LADUKE:<\/strong> Well, you know, the  military has\u2014the U.S. government is the largest landowner. The United  States\u2014you know, native people are large landowners, but the military  has a huge chunk of our territories. And in those, there are a number of  places that are our sacred sites. Perhaps the best examples are really  in Hawaii, where the military took the island of Kaho\u2019olawe, an entire  island, to turn it into a bombing range for 40 years. You know, that was  my first politicization, I would say, as to the impact of the military  in indigenous communities. Took a whole island, and then, eventually,  the island is now returned. The aquifer is cracked from bombing. And,  you know, it is in\u2014it\u2019s unconscionable, the practice. Today, Hawaii, you  see the continuation of the expansion of military holdings there.  Pohakuloa is an expansion for the Stryker that they are looking at on  the Big Island of Hawaii to take another 79,000 acres of land\u2014there\u2019s  only so much land on an island\u2014full of sacred sites, full of historic  sites, that Hawaiians, Native Hawaiians and all people have a right to  visit but now is becoming a part of a military base. And increasing land  takings, particularly in Hawaii, is one of the worst cases.<\/p>\n<p><strong>JUAN GONZALEZ:<\/strong> And Winona, as we mentioned earlier, you were a vice-presidential  candidate twice on the ticket, an Independent ticket, with Ralph Nader.  And as you see now, in these years of the last few years of the Obama  administration, do you see any significant change in the way that the  Native American nations across the country have been treated under the  Obama administration?<\/p>\n<p><strong>WINONA LADUKE:<\/strong> You know, I  would say that things are better. I would say we\u2019ve got a few egregious  problems still. You know, you have, for instance, the U.N. Declaration  on the Rights of Indigenous People. As you likely know, there were four  holdout countries, as of 2007, that did not sign on. U.S. and Canada are  the only two countries that have yet to sign on the Declaration on the  Rights of Indigenous Peoples. The Obama administration made some lip  service to it, posturing. I was thinking maybe we\u2019re in like some kind  of yoga position on it; I don\u2019t know what posture he\u2019s in. But we\u2019d like  to see that carried out. As well, you know, apology\u2014you know, these  are, in many ways, symbolic gestures. There was an apology to native  peoples that was issued, but no one heard it. So its\u2019 kind of like  saying, you know, &#8220;I\u2019m sorry,&#8221; to a wall. Probably should have a little  formal apology.<\/p>\n<p>But then there is the reality of\u2014that things in  Indian Country are not getting better. You can\u2019t keep putting money in  the federal budget for the military and robbing everything else, so that  people on my reservation and other reservations don\u2019t have housing,  don\u2019t have education money, don\u2019t have health service, you know, don\u2019t  have basic, basic rights. And the only way in the native community,  really, to get economically ahead, in many cases, is to become a  military contractor.<\/p>\n<p>I don\u2019t know if you noticed in the book that  it turns out that Blackwater is a Native American contractor. Now, I  didn\u2019t know that, you know, and I really hadn\u2019t thought of them as a  Native American contractor. But with the Chenega native corporation,  they\u2019ve got about $1.9 billion in federal contracts that they received,  most of those as a sole-source, non-bid contractor, because they went  under the shell of an Alaskan native corporation, the Chenega  Corporation. And so, you know, native communities are becoming military  contractors because that\u2019s where the money is. You know, so the irony of  the whole history of colonization, military colonization, valiant  patriots like Geronimo fighting against the U.S. taking of our lands,  the destruction of our peoples, to now a situation where the largest  private army in the world is a Native American contractor. And the fact  that they so egregiously abuse the name of Geronimo and, in widespread  cases, you know, refer to Indian Country as the territory that is to be  taken by the U.S. military, you know, it is time to revisit this  history.<\/p>\n<p><strong>AMY GOODMAN:<\/strong> Finally, Winona LaDuke,  ending on where we began, with Geronimo, you supported President Obama,  Barack Obama, for president, the first African American president,  who\u2014it was under him that this Geronimo name was given. Of course, I\u2019m  sure it wasn\u2019t he, himself, who gave this name for this operation to  kill bin Laden. He was born in Hawaii. His school, native name, and you  talk about Hawaii being so important in native history. Your thoughts  about President Obama in light of what\u2014this latest controversy?<\/p>\n<p><strong>WINONA LADUKE:<\/strong> Well, you know, I think a formal apology is due to the native community, to the family of Geronimo, as requested.<\/p>\n<p>I  think that a review of the impact of militarization on Indian  Country\u2014you know, we are trying to get back some of our land that is  held by the military, but it\u2019s so darn toxic. And the military is busy  making more things toxic, getting more exemptions under federal law, so  that they are above any environmental laws. You know, it would be nice  to get something back that was taken, and to get it back clean and to  get it back good, whether Badger Munitions in Wisconsin, Fort Wingate.  But we don\u2019t want\u2014we don\u2019t want toxic land, you know, back, returned to  our people.<\/p>\n<p>Reviewing the military psychology of Kit Carson, you  know, and using that nomenclature, how offensive it is to native people.  And talking about some kind of a justice, in terms of\u2014I don\u2019t have an  answer\u2014it\u2019s a tricky one\u2014how you make justice with the military. But  what I would say is that what was done historically was wrong, what was  done this week was wrong, and it would be an opportunity for the Obama  administration to do the right thing in relation to Indian Country,  because Indian Country is not to be assaulted by the U.S. military.<\/p>\n<p><strong>AMY GOODMAN:<\/strong> Winona LaDuke, I want to thank you very much for being with us, Native  American activist, writer. She lives and works on the White Earth  Reservation in northern Minnesota, executive director of the group Honor  the Earth. Her new book, just out, <em>The Militarization of Indian Country<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Winona LaDuke has just published a book The Militarization of Indian Country in which she discusses the situation in Hawai&#8217;i and the Native-owned military contracting industry.\u00a0 I spoke with someone from her organization as they were researching information for the book.\u00a0 I haven&#8217;t seen it yet to know how the information was incorporated.\u00a0 Today, she &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.dmzhawaii.org\/?p=8788\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Native American Activist Winona LaDuke on Use of &#8220;Geronimo&#8221; as Code for Osama bin Laden and the &#8220;Militarization of Indian Country&#8221;&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[159,7,2391],"tags":[2409],"class_list":["post-8788","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-in-the-news","category-hawaii","category-maui-molokai-lanai-kahoolawe","tag-movements-resistance"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dmzhawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8788"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dmzhawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dmzhawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dmzhawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dmzhawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8788"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.dmzhawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8788\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8791,"href":"https:\/\/www.dmzhawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8788\/revisions\/8791"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dmzhawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8788"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dmzhawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8788"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dmzhawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8788"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}