The General
Assembly,
Mindful of the
determination proclaimed by the peoples of the world in the Charter of the
United Nations to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity
and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and of
nations large and small and to promote social progress and better standards of
life in larger freedom,
Conscious of the
need for the creation of conditions of stability and well-being and peaceful
and friendly relations based on respect for the principles of equal rights and
self-determination of all peoples, and of universal respect for, and observance
of, human rights and fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to
race, sex, language or religion,
Recognizing the
passionate yearning for freedom in all dependent peoples and the decisive role
of such peoples in the attainment of their independence,
Aware of the
increasing conflicts resulting from the denial of or impediments in the way of
the freedom of such peoples, which constitute a serious threat to world peace,
Considering the
important role of the United Nations in assisting the movement for independence
in Trust and Non-Self-Governing Territories,
Recognizing that
the peoples of the world ardently desire the end of colonialism in all its
manifestations,
Convinced that the
continued existence of colonialism prevents the development of international
economic co-operation, impedes the social, cultural and economic development of
dependent peoples and militates against the United Nations ideal of universal
peace,
Affirming that
peoples may, for their own ends, freely dispose of their natural wealth and
resources without prejudice to any obligations arising out of international
economic co-operation, based upon the principle of mutual benefit, and
international law,
Believing that the
process of liberation is irresistible and irreversible and that, in order to
avoid serious crises, an end must be put to colonialism and all practices of
segregation and discrimination associated therewith,
Welcoming the
emergence in recent years of a large number of dependent territories into
freedom and independence, and recognizing the increasingly powerful trends
towards freedom in such territories which have not yet attained independence,
Convinced that all
peoples have an inalienable right to complete freedom, the exercise of their
sovereignty and the integrity of their national territory,
Solemnly proclaims
the necessity of bringing to a speedy and unconditional end colonialism in all
its forms and manifestations;
And to this end
Declares that:
1. The subjection
of peoples to alien subjugation, domination and exploitation constitutes a
denial of fundamental human rights, is contrary to the Charter of the United
Nations and is an impediment to the promotion of world peace and co-operation.
2. All peoples
have the right to self-determination; by virtue of that right they freely
determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and
cultural development.
The Doctrine of Discovery and US Immigration
Law
Emigrants – Immigrants –
Migrants
When
the rebellious American colonists formulated the Declaration of Independence
in 1776, they made a point to acknowledge the “consanguinity” with their
“British brethren”. They explicitly warned against “unwarrantable jurisdiction”
and clearly identified themselves as “emigrants” from England. The Indigenous Peoples, “Indians” “Native
Americans” received the designation of “merciless Indian Savages”.
The
US Declaration of Independence was ratified at the Second Continental Congress
in 1776 by all thirteen states, formerly colonies under the British Crown. The
First Continental Congress (1774) had to make do with the absence of Georgia,
who was too engaged in beating back (with British support) the indigenous
uprising of the Creek Nation to attend.
The
Creek Nation would later suffer the Trail of Tears (1830-1850), a series
of forced marches of relocation to the Oklahoma Territory justified under the 1830
Indian Removal Act. Only after the Creek were violently removed from their
ancestral homelands was Georgia integrated into the US federation of states, as
a “white male” political construct.
In spite of all the official accountings of the Master’s Narrative
of American History (a history of colonization and world empire) the 23,000
remnants of the Creek nation that made their way to Oklahoma between 1827 and
the end of removal in 1837, were in reality not “emigrants” from their original
national homelands, they were not “immigrants” to another foreign country, and
neither were they “migrants” on expedition to explore new lands of their own
free will.
The
Creek Nation was forced from their ancestral homelands to make way for the
economies of exploitation and colonization at the hands of the expanding
“White” elite power structure, AKA America.
An objective analysis today would describe the same processes of
historical dynamics to report on the assault on the Original Nations of
Indigenous Peoples in Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador under the
very same regimes of exploitation and colonization, now modernized in the age
of multilateral “Free Trade Agreements”.
The result is econogenics, the policy and tactics of ethnic
cleansing realized via the monopoly on violence of the State, at the service of
the corporate and financial empires of neoliberal capitalism.
The
history of transition from a chartered colony of Christendom, to a territory
ruled by force of violent invasion by the European American “white” colonizers,
to the formation of a polity of statehood and subsequent admission into the
union of states called the USA, also required a systemic mechanism to control
the allegiances, nationality and citizenship of the constituencies of the new
republic as a whole. In the absence of
the absolute command of allegiance of the Sovereign, in this case King George
of England, the colonies broke from the modus operandi of the cartel of
the Divine Right of Kings (Christendom).
It became necessary to format the public consciousness in a systematic
manner, manufacturing consent for the rationalization and expansion of
territorial dominion via political acts of allegiance to the Divine Right of States. It became necessary to
manufacture the mythology of America.
The
“experiment in American Democracy” developed a constitutional framework based
on recognition of the democratic principle of the inherent right of
self-governance of the “people” by the “people”. But “people” is not “peoples”
and in the tradition of precedent embedded in the principles of Anglo-American
common law, the “people” is plural of the “person”
in legal status, responsibility and rights.
In
the beginnings of the United States of America the controls on allegiance,
nationality, and citizenship in the fledgling republic was simply done by
controlling and defining the legal concept of “person” within the norms
of the culture and the proceedings of the courts at all levels. The Declaration
of Independence refers to “Savage Tribes”, positioning Indigenous
Peoples completely outside of the body politic and legal personhood of the new
republic, while later the US Constitution referred to the African human slaves
as 3/5 of a person.
This
system came under stress from within after the Civil War when the 14th
Amendment to the constitution (1868) established a new context for the
interpretation of the rights of “persons” within the construct of US society and
corresponding rights of citizenship.
Although “American Indians” were excluded from the protections of the 14th
Amendment, corporations as “artificial persons” have been acknowledged with the
rights of personhood in US law since 1888.
After
the 14th Amendment and the consequent adoption of Civil Rights
laws, the non-white constituencies were provided access to the rights of US
citizenship and nationality, but only within the constraints of what the
dominant “White power structure” would allow.
It
must be acknowledged that the US Civil Rights are laws protecting individual
rights and privileges, not collective rights. The international crimes of
colonization and genocide could never be addressed or resolved in a domestic
court operating under the constraints of context and precedent of the settler
state juridical systems. Much less treaty rights, such as presented in
the still ongoing conflict over the Dakota Access Pipeline at the Treaty Territories of Standing Rock.
The
US civil rights are rights of subscription, subscription to the Master’s
Narrative of territorial dominion under the tenets of the Doctrine of
Discovery of Christendom. The script of subscription is the pledge of
allegiance to the settler state apparatus and mythology of American exceptionalism. All US Civil Rights laws are referenced by
the rights of “White Persons” as the legal standard. With the
codification of the rights of “White Persons” as legal standard, the legal and
social definition of personhood remains in control of the “White” colonial
cultural narrative.
For
the Original Nations of Indigenous Peoples to subscribe to be minions of this
dehumanizing geopolitical schema of dominion, to aspire to “equality” with the
colonizer in the system of the colonizer is tantamount to 525 morons
trying to ride a single oxcart to the Metropole Ride at Disneyland.
Puno, Tawatinsuyo [Peru 2009]
The
path to US citizenship: Forked Tongue Forks on the Road
The
Citizenship Clause is the first sentence of the Fourteenth Amendment to
the United States Constitution, which was adopted on July 9, 1868. It states
that "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and
subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of
the State wherein they reside."
These provisions of the 14th
amendment are codified in the Federal Statutes under United States Code
(U.S.C.) Title 8 "Aliens and Nationality." There are 15 Chapters
in Title 8; Chapter 12 governs Immigration and Nationality. There are 5 subchapters.
U.S.
Code Title 8. ALIENS AND NATIONALITY
CHAPTER
12— IMMIGRATION AND NATIONALITY
SUBCHAPTER I—GENERAL PROVISIONS (§§ 1101-1107)
SUBCHAPTER
II—IMMIGRATION (§§ 1151-1382)
SUBCHAPTER
III—NATIONALITY AND NATURALIZATION (§§ 1401-1504)
SUBCHAPTER
IV—REFUGEE ASSISTANCE (§§ 1521-1525)
SUBCHAPTER
V—ALIEN TERRORIST REMOVAL PROCEDURES (§§ 1531-1537)
*************
Here
is where the policies of the American Apartheid system are perpetuated
under the cover of law. Without the tie
to the English Crown to provide the continuity of the imperial system of
naturalization (a royal hierarchy, i.e. as subjects of the crown) to the
integration of “non-white” populations into the body politic, the US relies on
the constitutional framing of the “person” as either a US
Citizen or National under these statutes defining aliens and
determining the principles to recognize (and/or deny) nationality.
In the breakdown of U.S. Code Title 8 from Chapters
to Subchapters a constraint of definition of the term “person”
is disclosed.
In
Subchapter I (General Provisions §§ 1101-1107) and Subchapter II
(Immigration §§ 1151-1382): “person means an individual or an organization”.
The meaning of “person” in Subchapter III
Nationality and Naturalization (§§ 1401 – 1504) is not equivalent to: “an
individual or organization”.
SUBCHAPTER III—NATIONALITY AND NATURALIZATION
is the section of the USCA Title 8 where the terms of the policies and law are
set in order to ORDER the regulations to follow regarding implementation
of the Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States
Constitution.
“In law, man and person are not
exactly synonymous terms.”
1 Bouv. Inst. n. 13
Here
is the body of the law:
U.S.
Code Title 8. ALIENS AND NATIONALITY
CHAPTER 12— IMMIGRATION AND NATIONALITY
Subchapter I. GENERAL PROVISIONS
Section 1101. Definitions
Chapter 12 – Immigration and Nationality
8 U.S. Code § 1101.
Definitions
(a) As used in this chapter—……….
(b) As used in subchapters I and II—
(3) The term “person” means an individual
or an organization.
(c)As used in subchapter III...
SUBCHAPTER III—NATIONALITY AND NATURALIZATION
(§§ 1401 – 1504)8
U.S. Code § 1401. Nationals and citizens
of United States at birth
The
following shall be nationals and citizens of the United States at
birth:
(a) a person born in the United States, and subject
to the jurisdiction thereof;
(b) a person born in the United States to a member of
an Indian, Eskimo, Aleutian, or other
aboriginal tribe: Provided, That the granting of citizenship under this
subsection shall not in any manner impair or otherwise affect the right of such
person to tribal or other property;
***********
While
there is no mention of US “nationals” in the 14th Amendment,
and with the understanding that the Constitution is the recognized highest law
of the land, Section 8 goes further to articulate the following in Section
1101.8 Definitions:
National of the United States
(22) The term “national of
the United States” means
(A) a citizen of
the United States, or
(B) a person who, though not a citizen of the
United States, owes permanent allegiance to the United States.
Before even
beginning to question the legal syntax in this definitive chapter of US law
regarding citizenship and nationality, extrapolated from the US constitution,
it is necessary to recall that there are more than 500 Treaties with the
“Indian Nations” of the continent on record in the same statutes of the US Congress. Treaties are instruments of International
Law. Treaties are legally binding
contracts between sovereign nations that establish those nations’ political and
property relations. Article Six of the United States Constitution holds that
treaties “are the supreme law of the land.”
Treaties
are not made between a sovereign state and its citizens, or nationals.
Treaty
issues of dispute are not resolved in domestic courts, nor immigration courts
established under the arbitrary and discriminatory policies of an Attorney
General that is a political panderer to a deranged president.
Therefore,
for a polity such as the USA that derives is purported legal claim of territorial
integrity [dominion] on the continent to being a successor settler state
to the nefarious “Doctrine of Discovery” of Christendom, it is a legal
impossibility to recognize the collective personality of the Indigenous Peoples
as being equal in right before the law since to do so would necessitate the
recognition of full equality, without discrimination, of the individual
indigenous “person” as being equal to a “white person”.
Such a policy, or court decision,
or legislation, or presidential executive order, or political doctrine would
defy and deconstruct the logic and the theology of the very principles of
cultural superiority and the dominion of Christendom that the Doctrine as an ideology
of inequality commands over Indigenous Peoples of this continent. The claims of jurisdiction over indigenous
territories in legal terms by the states would disintegrate into nullity.
The
normalization of the Doctrine of Discovery of Christendom as instituted in law
and precedent in the US system of jurisprudence functions as a form of international
affirmative action of systematic discrimination in favor of the
European American “White” constituencies.
The
recognition of Indigenous Peoples in equality as “persons” within the
domestic context of Chapter 12 of the Immigration and Nationality provisions of
the U.S. Code Title 8. ALIENS AND NATIONALITY would immediately invoke the equality
of Indigenous Peoples as “Peoples, equal to all other peoples…”
in the context of contemporary international law. Seen in this light, the
notorious SCOTUS “Marshall Trilogy” of the Discovery Doctrine,
Plenary Power, and Domestic Dependent Nationhood collapses into total
incoherence.
As
peoples equal to all other peoples, the Original Nations of Indigenous
Peoples would also consequently and necessarily be recognized in terms of International
Law as “Nations, equal to all other nations” whereupon the racist
and discriminatory tenets of the Doctrine of Discovery are cast off as the
pathologic relic of the era of European colonization.
The
Doctrine of Discovery of Christendom is a zombie doctrine, it was death on
arrival.
**************
“This preliminary study establishes that the Doctrine of
Discovery has been institutionalized in law and policy, on national and
international levels, and lies at the root of the violations of indigenous
peoples’ human rights, both individual and collective. This has resulted in
State claims to and the mass appropriation of the lands, territories and
resources of indigenous peoples. Both the Doctrine of Discovery and a holistic
structure that we term the Framework of Dominance have resulted in centuries of
virtually unlimited resource extraction from the traditional territories of
indigenous peoples. This, in turn, has resulted in the dispossession and
impoverishment of indigenous peoples, and the host of problems that they face
today on a daily basis.”
United Nations Preliminary Study on the Impact of the
Doctrine of Discovery 2010
In
the intervention by Tlahtokan Izkalotl at the 1987 United Nations Human
Rights Commission, the correlation between the international legal systems
regulating cession of territories among the dominions of Christendom was
referenced as an example of the systemic collusion among the successor states
in the Americas. This collusion
is in play even as the colonizing powers compete and engage each other
in open war over territory and markets.
The
Crown of Spain transfers a franchise of title, not a possessory right, over
territory to the Crown of France, the Crown of France then sells the franchise
complete with the brand name of the French King to the bastard issue of the
King of England (Uncle Sam), and voilà! Historians then teach
about the Louisiana Purchase without substantive critical questioning of the underlying,
overlying, and just plain lies of the original claims to purported title
over the territories which all three monarchies share in common as subscribers
to the Doctrine of Discovery of Christendom, patented by the King of Kings
in the Vatican.
Today
the game is the same, but the rules have been modified to enable the modern
mechanisms of expropriation of resources and exploitation of labor in the form
of “International Trade Agreements”, either multilateral or
bilateral. Colonialism today in not
called colonization, it is called development. Of the top 100 economic entities
in today’s world, 69 are not countries but corporations. Of the top 200 the
number is 157.
There
is no pretense today that the Development Goals being promoted by the World
Bank with the UN system in tow is intended to enhance the development of
our common humanity or defend the Human Rights of our Common Future:
the future generations. The agenda is set by the profit margins of the
corporate and financial regimes that control and manipulate the international
systems that dominate global international relations. The scheme calls for the privatization of
profits and the externalization of costs to the public coffers.
The
environmental devastation and cumulative effects of the degradation of
ecosystems resulting in TERRACIDE is not on the agenda nor is it
recognized except within the context of the “market mechanisms” of the
financial markets of global capitalism.
These issues are not properly identified as exposures of risk and
financial liability for corporations in the standard accounting
practices that regulate the reporting of profit margins for the global
financial markets, such as the World Bank.
Instead,
the Original Nations of Indigenous Peoples who stand in defense of the Territorial
Integrity of Mother Earth on their traditional homelands are to be
annihilated by any means necessary.
Today
the multi-lateral or bi-lateral trade agreements and financial arrangements
define the power arrangements of “Free Market Zones” and international
private-public consortia among the corporate cartels. Yet the international corporate cartels rely
on the appearances of legitimacy that the licensing procedures and
regulatory privileges which the settler state mechanisms provide in order to
continue the plunder and destruction of indigenous territories with impunity.
In
1848 the stipulations of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in articles 8 and 9
for the collective naturalization of the former citizens and subjects of
the Republic of Mexico who remained north of the line of demarcation of the new
border did not specifically distinguish these Mexicans Nationals as “White
Mexicans” or “non-white Mexicans”.
Article 11 identified the “savage tribes” who continued to occupy
“a great part of the territories…” and also “Indians inhabiting the
territory of either of the two republics”.
Instead
the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo identified “Mexicans now established”
and “Mexicans not established” in Article 8. In today’s context we might presume that
these phrasings refer to Mexicans “with papers” and Mexicans “without papers”.
There is absolutely no mention of either “Hispanics” or “Latinos” an any
article of the treaty.
The
question then becomes how was it that the non-white Mexican Indigenous Peoples,
Original Nations, and other non-whites were to become integrated into the rights of US citizenship
in 1848 when the process of naturalization into the US body politic was limited
under the naturalization proceedings to the “Free White Male”? Or conversely, was integration ever really
the objective, or has the political project of the “Trump Wall” revealed
that US federal policy towards non-white Mexicans in the ceded territories is
either forced assimilation (as Latinos or Hispanics) or annihilation as
Indigenous Peoples?
Enter
the non-citizen national.
U.S.
Code Title 8. ALIENS AND NATIONALITY
CHAPTER 12— IMMIGRATION AND NATIONALITY
Subchapter I. GENERAL PROVISIONS
Section 1101.8 Definitions
(22) The term “national of the United
States” means
(B) a person who, though not a citizen of the
United States, owes permanent allegiance to the United States.
******************************
Person – Inhabitant - Savage
The
southern border of the United States extends from the Florida coastline
to California. The section of that border that was defined
by the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (US-Mexico 1848) is the overland
boundary
from the delta of the Rio Grande on the east to the Tijuana Riverbed on
the
west. The border along the oceanic
coastline on the Gulf of Mexico was initially established by agreements
with
France and Spain under the terms of the Louisiana Purchase (1803) and
the
Adams-Onís Treaty (1819) respectfully.
The government of Mexico agreed to honor the terms of the Adams-Onís
Treaty between the US and Spain with the Treaty of Limits Mexico-United
States
(1828).
In
consequence and in the context of the history of territorial expansion of the
US which would encompass the capture not only of territory but human
populations, populations which were not “white” – the formulae of international
law regarding the rights of inhabitants of ceded territories was put
into policy.
Here
is the Article IX of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo as ratified:
The Mexicans who, in the territories
aforesaid, shall not preserve the character of citizens of the Mexican
Republic, conformably with what is stipulated in the preceding article, shall
be incorporated into the Union of the United States and be admitted at the
proper time (to be judged of by the Congress of the United States) to the
enjoyment of all the rights of citizens of the United States, according to the
principles of the Constitution; and in the meantime, shall be
maintained and protected in the free enjoyment of their liberty and property,
and secured in the free exercise of their religion without restriction.
This article
is an extraction from Article III of the 1803 Treaty with France (Louisiana
Purchase):
The inhabitants of the ceded territory shall
be incorporated in the Union of the United States and admitted as soon as
possible according to the principles of the federal Constitution to the
enjoyment of all these rights, advantages and immunities of citizens of the
United States, and in the meantime they shall be maintained and
protected in the free enjoyment of their liberty, property and the Religion
which they profess.
Similar language is also to
be found in the Adams-Onís 1819 Treaty with Spain:
The inhabitants of the ceded territories shall
be secured in the free exercise of their religion, without any restriction; and
all those who may desire to remove to the Spanish dominions shall be permitted
to sell or export their effects, at any time whatever, without being subject,
in either case, to duties.
Preceding
the 14th Amendment in 1868, the times were very mean indeed if you
were a non-white “inhabitant” within the territorial boundaries of the
USA. If you were considered a “Savage”
or “Indian” the greatness of America was a promise of dispossession,
forced assimilation, and genocide.
The
processes of incorporation of the territories that now comprise the southern
border of the USA followed from the pattern of the formation of territories
under direct governance under the Executive Office of the President, to the
formation of States under constitutional frameworks in accord with the principles
of the US Constitution. The Southern States of the Confederacy that
ceded from the Union had to be readmitted under the terms of Reconstruction after
the Civil War.
Louisiana
State Constitution of 1812
Sect. 4. No person shall be a Representative who, at
the time of his election is not a free white male citizen of the United
States, and hath not attained to the age of twenty one years, and resided in
the state two years next preceding his election, and the last year thereof in
the county for which he may be chosen or in the district for which he is
elected in case the said counties may be divided into separate districts of
election, and has not held for one year in the said county or district landed
property to the value of five hundred dollars agreeably to the last list.
The Mississippi Constitution of 1817
ARTICLE III: LEGISLATIVE DEPARTMENT
Section 1. Every free, white male person of the
age of twenty-one years or upwards, who shall be a citizen of the United
States, and shall have resided in this State one year next preceding an
election, and the last six months within the county, city, or town, in which he
offers to vote, and shall be enrolled in the militia thereof, except exempted
by law from military service; or, having the aforesaid qualifications of
citizenship and residence, shall have paid a State or county tax, shall be
deemed a qualified elector: no elector shall be entitled to vote, except in the
county, city or town (entitled to separate representation) in which he may
reside at the time of the election.
Alabama
Constitution of 1819
ARTICLE III: LEGISLATIVE DEPARTMENT.SEC. 5. Every white male person of the age of
twenty-one years, or upwards, who shall be a citizen of the United States, and
shall have resided in this State one year next preceding an election, and the
last three months within the county, city, or town, in which he offers to vote,
shall be deemed a qualified elector: Provided, that no soldier, seaman, or
marine, in the regular army or navy of the United States, shall be entitled to
vote at any election in this State; and provided, also, that no elector shall
be entitled to vote except in the county, city, or town, (entitled to separate
representation,) in which he may reside at the time of the election.
Florida joined the
union of states as a slave state after at least three major wars of
extermination and displacement of the Seminole Nation.
Florida
Constitution of 1838
ARTICLE VI. The Right of Suffrage and Qualifications
of Officers; Civil Offices; and Impeachments, and Removals from Office.
Section 1. Every free white male person of the
age of twenty-one years and upwards, and who shall be at the time of offering
to vote a citizen of the United States; and who shall have resided, and had his
habitation, domicil, home, and place of permanent abode in Florida for two
years next preceding the election at which he shall offer to vote; and who
shall have at such time, and for six months immediately preceding said time,
shall have had his habitation, domicil, home, and place of permanent abode in
the County in which he may offer to vote, and who shall be enrolled in the
Militia thereof, (unless by law exempted from serving in the Militia,) shall be
deemed a qualified elector at all elections under this Constitution, and none
others;
In
1850 California was admitted to the US under the following constitution which
stated:
Californian Constitution
1849
Article
II. Right of Suffrage
Sec. 1.
Every white male
citizen of the
United States, and every
white male citizen
of Mexico, who shall have
elected to become a citizen of the United States, under the
treaty of peace exchanged and ratified at Queretaro, on the
30th day of May, 1848
of the age
of twenty–one years,
who shall have been
a resident of
the State six
months next preceding the election, and
the county or
district in which
he claims his vote
thirty days, shall
be entitled to
vote at all
elections which are now
or hereafter may
authorized by law: Provided, nothing
herein contained, shall
be construed to prevent
the Legislature, by
a two–thirds concurrent
vote, from admitting to the right
of suffrage, Indians
or the descendants of
Indians, in such
special cases as
such proportion of the legislative body may deem just and proper.
What was to become the
States of New Mexico and Arizona were originally formulated under the Territory
of New Mexico, whose enabling act in 1850 stated:
31st US Congress, Chapter 49 September 9, 1850
US Territorial Act Government of New Mexico,
Sec. 6. And be
it further enacted, That every free white male inhabitant, above the age
of twenty-one years, who shall have been a resident of said Territory at the
time of passage of this act, shall be entitled to vote at the first election,
and shall be eligible to any office within the said Territory; but the
qualifications of voters and of holding office, at all subsequent elections,
shall be such as be prescribed by the legislative assembly: Provided, That the
right of suffrage, and of holding office, shall be exercised only by citizens
of the United States, including those recognized as citizens by the treaty with
the republic of Mexico, concluded February second, eighteen hundred and
forty-eight.
The
land lust of territorial expansion under the White Supremacy Doctrine of US
Manifest Destiny reached the west coast of the continent in 1848 after
the War on Mexico, but it didn’t stop there. In 1893 the Kingdom of Hawaii was
illegally overthrown in a US led conspiracy with the support of the US Marines,
and in 1898 the Territory of Hawaii was created as an organized incorporated
territory under US sovereign dominion. Hawaii was annexed as the 50th
state in 1959.
Also
in 1898, thirty years after the adoption of the 14th Amendment to
the US Constitution, the US stepped onto the world stage for the first time as
a truly global imperial power with the Treaty of Paris with Spain. Under the terms of this treaty, Spain ceded
her colonial interests in Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines. Puerto Rico today is recognized as an unincorporated
territory in Associated Free State status under the US federal
republic, while Guam is only an unincorporated territory of the United
States. The Philippines was under bloody
US martial rule until achieving full independence in 1946, while the US
maintains the Guantánamo Bay military compound still today in Cuba.
1898
Treaty of Paris: Treaty of Peace Between the United States and Spain
ARTICLE VI
The inhabitants of the territories which His
Catholic Majesty cedes to the United States, by this treaty, shall be
incorporated in the Union of the United States as soon as may be consistent
with the principles of the Federal Constitution, and admitted to the enjoyment
of all the privileges, rights, and immunities of the citizens of the United
States.
Article IX.
Spanish subjects, natives of the Peninsula, residing in the territory over which
Spain by the present treaty relinquishes or cedes her sovereignty, may remain in
such territory or may remove therefrom, retaining in either event all their
rights of property, including the right to sell or dispose of such property or
of its proceeds; and they shall also have the right to carry on their industry,
commerce and professions, being subject in respect thereof to such laws as are
applicable to other foreigners. In case they remain in the territory they may
preserve their allegiance to the Crown of Spain by making, before a court of
record, within a year from the date of the exchange of ratifications of this
treaty, a declaration of their decision to preserve such allegiance; in default
of which declaration they shall be held to have renounced it and to have
adopted the nationality of the territory in which they may reside.
The civil rights and political status of the native
inhabitants of the territories hereby ceded to the United States shall be
determined by the Congress.
In
the case of Puerto Rico, under these provisions of the 1898 Treaty of Paris
between Spain and the US, the full rights of citizenship, namely the option to
either retain Spanish Nationality or the choice to pursue a “path to
citizenship” under the US occupation was ONLY LEGALLY AVAILABLE to the “White” European Peninsulares,
those born in Spain.
As
was the case of the incorporation of territories and populations acquired under
the international Law of War as articulated in the Treaty of Guadalupe
Hidalgo with Mexico in 1848, the “inhabitants” of the territory of Puerto Rico
acquired by cession from Spain were segregated into two categories. In the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (1848) the
categories were “established” and “not established” Mexicans. In
1898 and the Treaty of Paris, the categories were “Peninsulares” of
Spain and the “native inhabitants” of Puerto Rico.
The
problem for the US in 1848 was that the prerogatives of citizenship of the
Mexican constituencies of the treaty territories at the time was operative
under the Mexican law of the Constitution of 1824, which did not allow
for such racial segregation. For that
reason, the original article IX of the treaty created an international legal
entanglement regarding US-Mexican-Indigenous nationality that persists
unresolved to this day.
Mexican
nationals who could “pass for white” (i.e. Purity of Hispanic, Criollo or Peninsular bloodlines)
could avail themselves individually of the procedures of the “path to
citizenship” via the territorial and statehood acts in place that recognized “white
male citizens of Mexico” in parity to the Anglo “free white male”. Pablo De La Guerra of Santa Barbara,
California was one of these. De La Guerra argued against being identified as a
“Mexican Indian” before the California Supreme Court in 1870, claiming status
as a “White Male Citizen of Mexico” making him eligible for US
citizenship.
The
original article IX of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo however called for the
maintenance and protection of the liberty, property and civil rights of Mexicans
in the ceded territories as vested in the laws of Mexico at the time.
For a society such as was being constructed under the social schema of “White
supremacy” and the pathology of Manifest Destiny, the commitment by the US
federal government to protect the civil rights of non-white Mexicans in
the territories was not only untenable, it was never even a real consideration.
In
reflection, the systemic nature of the openly discriminatory official policies
in affirmation of “European White Supremacy” as a geopolitical project
with global horizon is irrefutable. Upon analysis and comparison of the
agreements that emerged from the Berlin Conference of 1884-1885 where
the European colonizing powers regulated among themselves the “Scramble for
Africa” the same colonial doctrines were sanctified in the name of “Western
Civilization”.
In
Geneva in 1987, representatives of the Zulu Nation also attending the UN
Human Rights Commission, in intra-continental consultation with the
delegation of Tlahtokan Izkalotl, confirmed that in fact the
British-American colonizing history of North American was identical to that of
the British-Boer Republic in South Africa.
The
correlations between the tenets of the Doctrine of Discovery, the “principles
of the US Constitution”, “white supremacy”, “white person”, “US citizenship”,
“US Nationality” and international legal personality are obvious when
studied in historical record. What appears to be lost in the confusion of the
day is how this legaloid planetary pathology has morphed into an agency of
neoliberal corporate imperialism, and ultimately self-destruction.
********************
Memes
of Caste and the Anomaly of Histories
To
fast forward to the current public dialogue on race, white supremacy, and
institutionalized racism in US that has been intensified during the administration
of President D.Trump, every day we see and hear echoes of the memes of caste
that are reinforced every time the phrase “white people” or “white”
is used to describe the European American populations of the United
States. That perpetuation of a caste-based
society would be completely antithetical to the precepts of the “American
Experiment of Democracy,” yet remain embedded in the vernacular of public and
private discourse regarding social relationships has roots in the Indo-European
histories, but is codified in the US Civil Rights statutes as follows:
United
States Code
TITLE
42, CHAPTER 21, SUBCHAPTER I, § 1981.
Equal
rights under the law
(a) Statement of equal rights
All persons within the jurisdiction of the United
States shall have the same right in every State and Territory to make and
enforce contracts, to sue, be parties, give evidence, and to the full and equal
benefit of all laws and proceedings for the security of persons and property as
is enjoyed by white citizens, and shall be subject to like punishment,
pains, penalties, taxes, licenses, and exactions of every kind, and to no
other.
The
term WHITE CITIZEN is contextualized by the language of the 14th
Amendment to the US Constitution as follows:
Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the
United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the
United States and of the state wherein they reside.
Thus,
the connection is made institutionally and culturally via the jurisprudence
of the Master's Narrative, between concepts of white citizen and WHITE
PERSON, establishing legal personality within the US social construct as a
function of relationship to the dominant “white” power structures of rights and
obligations. The anomaly being
the Nican Tlacah Indigenous Peoples who supersede the US jurisdiction as
sovereign confederations of nations holding treaty relationships with the US
and other government states of the world.
It
is evident today that the violent extremism of “White Supremacy” in American
society is a cresting phenomenon reflecting the insecurity of a public
constituency whose identity must first be normalized as “white” in order
immigrate into the psychology “White Supremacy”. The atrocities of extreme violence being
committed that target the “non-white” communities across the country are
being met by a likewise cresting wave of denunciation and determination to
address the root cause of the violence.
From
the historical perspective of the surviving Original Nations of Indigenous
Peoples of the Great Turtle Island of Abya Yala, the violent colonial invasions
of European American White Supremacy are contextualized by the history
of World War I, which began with the invasion of our continent on
October 12, 1492. Just one example of
many (too many) makes the point:
The Sand Creek massacre was a massacre of Cheyenne
and Arapaho people by the U.S. Army in the American Indian Wars that occurred
on November 29, 1864, when a 675-man force of Colorado U.S. Volunteer
Cavalry[3] under the command of U.S. Army Colonel John Chivington attacked and
destroyed a village of Cheyenne and Arapaho people in southeastern Colorado
Territory, killing and mutilating an estimated 70–500 Native Americans, about
two-thirds of whom were women and children.
The
extremes of violence at Sand Creek 1864 and El Paso 2019 are
connected via the Master’s Narrative.
But external and public acts of extreme violence are secondary. The
violence of “white supremacy” is initially psychological and emotional.
For
the still standing Original Nations of Indigenous Peoples of Abya Yala, the
first act of violence was the attempt to erase our collective history as
Nations of Mother Earth and capture our sense of self identity as a
function of the invader’s cultural paradigms of geography, of language, of
science, civilization and religion. Our “savage” histories were to be
considered anecdotal, not official. The
erasure of memory did not begin with us, however.
The
very identity of “White People” itself is an erasure. It is an erasure of kinship and amputation of
community that spans not mere ideology but human generations. It begins with
the trauma of alienation from the spirit of humanity itself, and from the
natural world of Mother Earth.
“White”
is not a nationality. There is no such territory on Mother Earth. There is no such reality in nature where the
“melanin deprived” folks get to claim a separate and superior status in
relation to all of the rest of us who are still, all of us, related to each
other in a kindom of humanity. We
are all Chichimecas: mammals.
As a species, we all share the “indigeneity” of 99% of the very same
genetic makeup as well as the inherent capacity and need to communicate
with each other.
When
the Nazis of Germany tried to impose their version of "Teutonic
constitutionalism” across the globe we all fought them back. Today, the normalization of the Master’s
Narrative is being driven openly by the predominant voice and the abject
cruelty of the policies of President D. Trump.
With Steve Bannon as empresario, Sheriff Joe Arpaio as the gorilla out
of the cage, and Steve Miller the stooge, the “Trump Wall” is a circus
scene where reality is not an invited guest on the show.
Yet
today it is President Bolsonaro in Brazil that is now literally bringing
back the true medieval nature of the 525-year-old “American” project of
colonization, genocide and TERRACIDE. The patriarchal pathology of imperialism
is no longer being scripted from the Vatican (King of Kings) nor the Crown
Powers of Christendom of the West but has morphed into the supranational
systems of corporate and financial control that command the economies of the
states. And now today it is the
corporate state of China that has joined in to collude and compete as
well in what is intended to be the final phase of a pogrom of continental
annihilation of the Original nations of Indigenous Peoples of Abya Yala. It is
the Chinese government position that there are no Indigenous Peoples (such as
the Tibetans) in China, just ethnic Chinese. It is in partnership with
corporations backed by the Chinese government that many megadevelopment
projects in the southern states of the continent are being imposed in open
violation of the territorial rights and Human Rights of the Indigenous Peoples.
The
electoral systems of the states are simply a necessary inconvenience for these
elite power structures, a venue to legitimize, commodify and commercialize the
electorates in pursuit of contractual arrangements to the benefit of the global
corporate and financial empires of petropolis: the global fossil fuel
industry.
Superseding
the Doctrine of Discovery
The
exercise of Indigenous Nationality as a collective geopolitical right
that is not only extra-constitutional in character but also stands outside
of the international Westphalian system of state sovereignty is a critical
issue of challenge and conflict at the present moment in the global agenda of
Indigenous Peoples. In 2014, a
High-Level Plenary of the UN General Assembly anointed itself with the title of
World Conference on Indigenous Peoples and just as on October 12, 1492
began to spout dictamens of regulation whose net effect is the reduction of the
universal human rights of Indigenous Peoples to categories of domestic
privileges to be delegated by the individual states subsumed under their
respective constitutional frameworks.
A
System Wide Action Plan is being implemented and a global bureaucracy of
corporate imperial control is being funded under UN auspices, positioned to
co-opt and corrupt the legitimate efforts of Indigenous Peoples to defend their
ancestral territories and legitimate rights of Nationhood and Self
Determination.
Simultaneously,
the government states of the UN system that are facing real challenges on the
ground by Indigenous Peoples asserting the right of Free, Prior, and
Informed Consent over development projects impacting their territories are
maneuvering to place domestic mechanisms of control and diversion that would subvert
the right of consent to a bureaucratic activity of consultation that is
never empowered to block any project that the corporate elites have predetermined
will be approved.
The
fast tracking of the Dakota Access Pipeline by D.Trump as soon as he
came into office in 2017 is perhaps the most well-known example in the US
context, but the immediate fight at Mauna Khea, sacred altar of the
Hawaiian Kingdom, is the same scenario in the present. Across Canada, across Mexico, the entire
hemisphere is a crime scene in this regard, a crime in progress.
The
newly renegotiated North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA 1994), now
called the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement USMCA, presents a critical nexus
of conflict and contradiction for the public constituencies of the states and
the Indigenous Peoples. The agreement provides for no substantive
recognition or respect for the right of Self Determination of the
Original Nations of Indigenous Peoples living within the borders of the states
from Mexico-US-Canada. Instead, a
context of preconditions of ambiguity that “aims” at the rights
of Indigenous Peoples has been inserted by the Government of Canada in the text
of the agreement which still must be approved in the US Congress in September
of 2019.
Beware:
The Beginning Is Here
Now.
Now is the time when even amidst the cascade of confusion and chaos that pours
out of the mouth of the monstrosity of the Master’s Narrative residing
temporarily at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, DC that the last hope
for the soul of America as an ethical country is being offered by the Original
Nations of Indigenous Peoples. Be aware:
It is now or never.
Just
as was done in the beginning, during the original sessions of the US
Constitutional Congress in 1776 where the dream of democracy and the Tradition
of Self Government was shared with the colonists by the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, once again the elder brothers of the Original Nations are
tapping the shoulder of the relatives who have emigrated to our homeland of the
Great Turtle Island. May all our
relations of all other continents listen as well.
The
Clan Mothers still call for the defense of the Human Rights of the Future
Generations, for the veneration and protection of the Territorial
Integrity of Mother Earth. The
serpentine scales of cosmetric memory, iridescent memorials of moments
recalling the millennial history of all life on earth, reflections of the rain
of time - befall us all. Amidst the sum of these histories, we stand in
the eye of the storm and understand ourselves as relatives bound by the sacred world
waterways of the Rivers of Time: Quetzalcoatl.
The
river passes, spiraling beyond the horizons to the Sky Waters of the Sea of Emergence.
World:Water
ONE
“Fundamental
to the right of nationality, as members of the Nations of Indigenous Peoples of
Abya Yala, the Great Turtle Island which is referenced in Article 6 of the UN
Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, and evidenced unequivocally by
the Treaty Status, namely international personality which was subject of the UN
Treaty Study conducted by Dr. Miguel Alfonso Martinez, is the collective right
of nationhood of Indigenous Peoples beyond the contextual constraints of the
Westphalian system of sovereignty of states.
It
is a collective right, similar to how the present UN system of mutual
international recognition as sovereign states provides the framework of
jurisprudence for the purported jurisdiction of the states individually and
then collectively at the global dimension under the dominion of the UN system,
the jurisprudence which articulates the nationhood of Indigenous Peoples is
also is a projection of jurisdiction at the planetary level, with mutual
responsibilities towards the Territorial Integrity of Mother Earth, and the
well-being of the Future Generations.
The
distinction being that our Rights of Nationhood emerge from the COGNITION, and
then thus RECOGNITION, of our responsibilities as ONE of the Nations (two
legged species of kindom) – among ALL of the RELATIONS with whom we share as
human society collectively, the responsibility to act in complementarity within
the equally shared environment of the Natural World.
We
are Nations of Mother Earth, and will not consent to be diminished or to be
dominated under the regime of the government states of the UN system as merely
ethnic groups, or minorities.
NAHUACALLI
Embassy
of Indigenous Peoples
