|
|
|
COAIM BLOG CO AIM LATEST NEWS MEDIA
|
March 21, 1983 Mr. Dershowitz, We appreciate your newfound sensitivity to Indian people, your interest in our conditions and future, and we sympathize with your guilt in recently having assessed US-Indian relations. We do, however, find your 3/6/83 New York Times book review of Peter Matheisso's In the Spirit of Crazv Horse to be quite insulting to our people, entirely slanderous towards the American Indian Movement, and a violent assault on the arduous efforts of all of us working in our reservation communities. You begin your review with an almost 'tearjerking" account of our lives and history, manipulatively using that facade of initial empathy to provide yourself with a legitimate basis for then venting your personal hostilities to Indian people and your unfounded position on Leonard's case. The logic and content of your review is an affront to our intelligence-your statements a blanket condemnation of what we work towards. Your racist comments about our leaders and our psychology' as a violent people belie your total ignorance of our struggle. The review simply perpetrates a 'savage' stereotype of Indian people, a stereotype which belittles the very context of our lives. It does nothing more than advocate our continued victimization by the state and the state's armed forces. In essence, it is your review which is violent, Mr. Dershowitz, a 'first-strike' offensive on those people you have the audacity to condemn and call violent. We would like to point out, specifically, some of the points of contention we have with your review: 1) You utilize evidence which you yourself fabricate to illustrate your points. For example, you state, "The two FBI agents were gunned down at close range. They were disarmed, helpless and probably begging for their lives. There were no eyewitnesses..." .This description of the shootout is a belabored attempt to muster sympathy for the FBI agents, yet the logic of your allegations totally undermines the point and proves the description to be a creation of your own imagination. After all, if there were no eyewitnesses, it is obvious you have depicted this scene to coincide with your own perspective. And, that you would resort to these ends beckons us to take note of your bias. 2) You call Leonard Peltier a "militant" AIM leader, knowing nothing of the man or his work. In fact, what do you know about any of our leaders, our movement or our people, generally or in specific? Finally, we must ask whether you are at all qualified to review a book about us, our lives and our issues (which is what you have taken up doing). We must answer that question with the response that, NO, you are in no way qualified. 3) Your major attack on Peter Matheisson is tto discredit his objectivity. In fact, you declare that he has no right to author a book such as this because he "...seems to have been taken in and to have left most of his otherwise excellent critical faculties at home..." in presenting Peltier's innocence. In other words, you disclaim any truth in the book because Matheisson is "biased" towards what you call his "journalistic clients". This is a rather ironic stance for you to take when your entire review emenates from your obvious bias against the same people, and Peltier, in specific. You condemn both the movement and Peltier to guilt on the basis of nothing more than your own bias towards a movement which you know nothing about. 4 You utilize the New York Times as a means to vent animosity towards what your call a "militant fringe group". You discredit the responsibiity our movement has to our people, proposing that AIM leadership is isolated from the Indian community and that Leonard is even further isolated. That is simply not the case. Leonard is representative of many Indian people in prison for what we see as very clear political reasons. Leonard is, in his own right, a national hero to many Indian people, a source of great inspiration and strength. People in the Indian community throughout the continent are working in his defense. Yet, since you know so little about us, and about Leonard, you disseminate misinformation. Take, for illustration, your phrase, "...Some (AIM leaders) have ended up where they belong in jail" To those of us who have toiled endlessly under your laws, businesses, educational systems and in fact, the very institution which employs you, Harvard University, this is an attack on our integrity and entirely offensive. While we worked 40 years to build New York City (from skyscraper to bridge), sent approximately 65,000 people into the World Wars for the US government, and drink contaminated water and die in providing uranium for US nuclear reactors and weapons, you have the lack of sensitivity to call us violent and tell us that we belong in jail. Finally, it is disappointing that you distort the use of a system of which you are a part the legal system. As a lawyer, you recognize that one person cannot take on the roles of Prosecutor, Jury, Judge and Witnesses in the courtroom. Yet, you have done just that in your review. You have convicted Leonard of murder and have found the book guilty for not doing so as well. You did not state, 'here are the facts, decide for yourself' to your audience. Instead, you toss off the book as a 'hype' and relegate it to the realm of idealistic oblivion. While you gruel Matheissen for integrating his personal feelings into his writing, you are more than obvious in your sentiments that neither our movement nor our people are to be taken seriously. And then, you attempt to count our public sentiment with your own. This is misinformation at it's worst. Next time, please be so kind as to leave your closet rage and racism in the closet. At one point in your review you state that "We are Custer", referring to the descendants of those who conquered America. You are Custer. You may have read Matheissen's book, but in no way did you understand his message aside from receiving a small twinge of guilt. It is people like you who, now more than ever, are the very problem which we fight. In the spirit of Crazy Horse Ward Churchill(Colorado AIM), Vernon Bellecourt(Minnesota AIM), William Means(International Indian Treaty Council), Winona LaDuke(Anishinaabe Nation), Russell Means(Dakota AIM), Oren Lyons(Onondaga Nation), John Peters(Massachussetts Commissioner of Indian Affairs), John Mohawk (Akwesane Notes), Jose Barreiro (Akwesane Notes), Katsi Cook (Mohawk Nation), Russell Peters (Wampanoag Nation), Mark Banks ( International AIM), Madonna Thunderhawk (WARN), Cliff Saunders (Boston Indian Council, E.D.) |
|
© 2004-2005
Colorado AIM Contact us at
denveraim@coloradoaim.org or
303-832-2544 |
