Monsanto stealing and patenting Indian products - Mohawk Elder Tekarontake
The situation in Ukraine and the policies of the United States internationally with regard to sovereignty, resources and force all have their origins in the founding of the American state on the genocide of the native people and the stealing of their resources, says elder with the Mohawk Nation Tekarontake.
Hello! This is John Robles, I'm speaking with Tekarontake – an elder with the Wolf Clan of the Mohawk Nation. This is part 2 of a longer interview. You can find the rest of this interview on our website at voiceofrussia.com. You are listening to an interview in progress.
Tekarontake: You can travel all over North America, one of the most wealthiest lands in the world, and yet native people are at the bottom, are stilll the poorest, in just about every one of our communities, those are the only places where socialism is encouraged.
Where our people as individuals, we don't have rights. Only though the corporations that have been established on our territories called tribal councils and band councils that the government recognized, they are the only ones who have the right to make business, control business and so on. And our people are just peasants.
Our people have no rights. The thing is that they give the corporations tax exemption and they are telling our people that we are tax exempt but yet they are trying to tax us.
The thing is that what they did was – we are a nontaxable people and that's our birth right, but they want us to give up our birth right for a privilege they call tax exemption, because if they can give you that exemption, they can take it away.
They want us to alienate ourselves from who we are. But we are not willing to do this. And the thing is that they've stolen so many of our children and put them into residential schools and brainwashed, and took the Indian out of them. And many of the people today, they don't know what their rights are.
They are only now finding out because those of us who have never relinquished this, we continue to fight this and a lot of us are not part of the corporation. Most of the people that are part of corporation, they don't even understand what any of that means. They think that being part of the corporation makes them an Indian. But that's how much the government has confused the people.
There are those of us who continue to adhere to our traditional ways and maintaining the birth right that we've always had, we are continuing to try to educate our own people, as well as the non-native community as to what is really the truth, what is really going on.
So, we continue our stand on this and we maintain our principles and our philosophy. And again we are faced with this situation with the State of New York.
Just a couple months back some of our men were charged supposedly with running an illegal gambling establishment. But there was nothing illegal about what they were doing. And even the federal government and the state admitted that there was no wrongdoing. But they used the corporation to push the issue and got a district attorney to support it and took these men to court. And the state lost. The jury acquitted these men and said that there was no wrongdoing.
Robles: I'm sorry, can you... for our international listeners because a lot of people don't know about the situation with gambling, and tobacco and alcohol tax exemptions and stuff. Can you explain a little bit about how that is on the small areas of land where the indigenous people have been trapped? What their laws are regarding gambling and stuff?
Tekarontake: You see, there was no law against any of these things. There was a case, I believe it was in California, where the court said that the governments had no right to tell our people that they couldn't do these things. And a lot of this gaming industry and tobacco, and all that, it wasn't something our people thought up. Our people always had tobacco. We traded tobacco, we had different types of tobacco, some as trade goods and other tobacco we use for our ceremonies.
So, when the Europeans landed here, that was one of the things our people offered as a trade good, tobacco. And in fact, it was the tobacco that financed the American Revolution.
The thing is that it is not so much the businesses we do. The thing is if our people are going to do a business, and the outside has their hands in our business, then it is okay. As long as the outside get their cut, like the state and the municipalities and the federal government, if everybody gets their share of it there is no problem. But if our people do a business and the outside gets no share of it, then they call it illegal. Basically, it is mafia tactics that they use against our people.
Robles: I'm sorry, let me expand on that from there. We are seeing mafia tactics. If I could, give me a minute here. I'd like to expand on that because it's been bothering me for a while too and it is not just against the native peoples, it is their global policy against everyone. And it is like they've gone insane. I mean, this mafia tactic, now they are threatening the Russian Federation with sanctions, they are threatening other countries with bombing them, they are threatening everybody in the world with something, if they don't give up their resources and give up their sovereignty, and give up their rights.
Tekarontake: That's right!
Robles: And I think it's come to the point where they've gone insane. I don't know what do you want to call it. This delusional exceptionalism they have. They've kept subjugating our people in the US, the native American people, the indigenous peoples, the black peoples, the ancestors, the slaves they treated like dirt as well. That's been contained, but I think that's now spreading outward. And I think now the world in general is starting to see a little bit of the real beast that is…I don't know what else to call them, this cancer that has inhabited North America for..
Tekarontake: It is for over 500 years.
Robles: I mean, the same thing with the sanctions. We are going to take away this unless you give us this gas. You are going to buy this. It almost made me sick a couple days ago to hear Obama say, I don't know if you heard this quote, he said "we are blessed with such wonderful resources." I'm paraphrasing. He said – we are blessed in this country with resources, we want to sell to Europe. And they are telling Europe – you can't buy Russian gas. Russian sells gas to Europe very cheap. And he says – we are going to give you "our" blessed resources. I'm just thinking in my head – those are stolen resources. You are not blessed with anything.
Tekarontake: That's right! The thing is that everything the US and Canada, and all the countries in the western hemisphere, the resources that they claim they own, they don't own it, it is what they've stolen. They stole it from the indigenous peoples of the Western hemisphere. And yet the poorest people in the western hemisphere are the indigenous people. And they are telling us that we don't have a right to any of this stuff and that this is theirs. They make a law and then they legislate it, and they say – well, this is the law.
When they came to this land, our people extended a hand of friendship. We extended to them what we call the Two Row Concept, meaning that everyone should treat each other with respect.
And we told them that we would never interfere with their language, their laws, their customs, their traditions, their people or any of these things. They were free to exercise all those things. But the thing they needed to always keep in mind is that this land here is our Mother and that our Mother is a good mother, and that she would take care of them, but to remember that this is our Mother.
And we told them that we will give you the right to go the depth of a plow so that you can sustain yourselves. But it is only to sustain yourself. It does not mean that we have given you the land, the depth of the plow. We allowed you the use of this land. As long as you follow the way of respect, there will be no issue. But as soon as they became large enough in number, as soon as they were able to decimate so many of our communities and our people with their diseases and so on, and put us in a state of poverty, and weakness, they moved in to try to take away everything else that we still had. And they are still trying to do that to us today.
Robles: I'm sorry, if I could, because this is a correlation with what they are doing right now in Ukraine.
Tekarontake: That's right!
Robles: What they are doing right now, they've gone in there and again they made the people believe that if they join the EU, if they join the West, their lives are going to be better. But all these agreements and everything, and these hidden agreements, they are going to completely devastate and impoverish the Ukrainian people.
And the goal there is, again, the resources. They want to sell them gas, they want to make money of these people, they want the gas that is the Russian gas, they to control that, they want to control the territory of Ukraine.
It is the same lying, stealing, cheating game, only now it is 2014 and they've become technologically more sophisticated in packaging their theft, but it is the same thing. Would you agree with that?
Tekarontake: Oh, yes! That's always been the way of thieves.
Robles: And they are not going in there and killing the Ukrainian people, they are getting these neo-Nazis, who they are also using and manipulating, to go in there and kill and terrorize the Ukrainian people.
Tekarontake: Oh, yes! It is like a bacteria, it looks for a place to land. And it starts there and just going to work in its way till it engulfs the whole body, and destroys it, takes the life out of it.
The thing is that they want you to resolve all of their issues. They'll talk about: it's a violation of international law. But the law can't apply to one and not to the other.
And the thing is that they make the rules and say: "Well, we'll tell you who is a nation and who is not a nation, who has sovereignty and what is sovereignty and so on...
They have not even defined anything. Every time they open their mouth, this terminology changes its meaning. Even the language changes its meaning all the time. And they try to acquire intellectual property rights even to people's language, so that they can alter the language so the language will mean something other than what the people know that it has always meant. There is not a thing that they don't try to take total control over.
For instance, our people are the people who cultivated and created a thing called maize or corn. Our people have continued this agricultural life for hundreds of thousands of years. And now, today, companies like Monsanto claim that they own the intellectual property rights to this corn.
One of the native people, he grew corn and it just happened that Monsanto had a corn field not far away and they cross-pollinated. So, the corn kind of changed a bit and so Monsanto sued this native farmer saying that the corn he planted is their corn, because of the cross-pollination. It is ridiculous, suing a native for growing corn, corn that they have grow as far back as anyone can remember.
Robles: Some day you need to sue them for growing corn, for eating corn, because it was the indigenous people that gave them corn and tobacco, and watermelons, and potatoes were not in Europe, tomatoes, certain types were only in North America, what else?
Tekarontake: You know, the thing is that 75% of the world's diet originated out of the western hemisphere. 75% of the medicines that the world uses today also originated out of the western hemisphere. Indigenous people were using all of these things. And many of these things they cultivated, because they didn't grow naturally, like the different beans. There are hundreds of varieties of beans, hundreds of varieties of corn. Tomatoes were a poisonous plant, but our people cultivated it so it could be edible. There are just so many things. There are hundreds of different types of squashes and pumpkins.
But the thing is that what the white man does is when he goes to your land and because we didn't do things the way he did, he starts to register these things, he patents these things, he claims he has the intellectual property rights to these things and he has the property right on this and that.
You take a simple thing like aspirin. Aspirin in its natural form comes from the willow tree. And you boil that and you use that, and it takes away your pain and fever, and other things.
But the white man refines these things and he puts it into a pill, and then he claims it as his. But the thing is – when he refined it, it is no longer like the natural product in its natural form, because the natural form has no side-effects. But when they refine it, yes, it might help you with your fever, it might help you with your aches and pains, but by refining now this stuff eats away your stomach, it eats away other organs…
Robles: That's a great example, because aspirin causes internal bleeding in your stomach. I can't take aspirin.
Tekarontake: That's right! But if you took it in the natural form, it wouldn't do that. So, there are many medicines like this. Quinine…you know, there are just so many.
And even many of the good things that our people did, like gathering and growing of hemp. Our people split the fibers of hemp and made cloth, they made ropes, they made other byproducts, oils and so on. And it was used for good purposes. And you have coca that's been used by indigenous peoples for centuries. And these things never caused the problem.
But when they started creating these hybrids and started refining these things, and making them into powders and so on, and they started to abuse it, now one of the biggest industries in North America and in the world is the drug trade. And they make it sound like it is all these cartels. But who the heck is behind all of this? Who is creating the market for it? The FBI, the CIA....
Robles: Exactly! Look at Afghanistan.
You were listening to an interview with Tekarontake – an elder with the Wolf Clan of the Mohawk Nation. That was part 2 of a longer interview. You can find the rest of this interview on our website at voiceofrussia.com
Read more: http://voiceofrussia.com/2014_04_12/Monsanto-is-stealing-and-patenting-Indian-products-Mohawk-Elder-Tekarontake-5052/
Read more: http://voiceofrussia.com/2014_04_12/Monsanto-is-stealing-and-patenting-Indian-products-Mohawk-Elder-Tekarontake-5052/
Hello! This is John Robles, I'm speaking with Tekarontake – an elder with the Wolf Clan of the Mohawk Nation. This is part 2 of a longer interview. You can find the rest of this interview on our website at voiceofrussia.com. You are listening to an interview in progress.
Tekarontake: You can travel all over North America, one of the most wealthiest lands in the world, and yet native people are at the bottom, are stilll the poorest, in just about every one of our communities, those are the only places where socialism is encouraged.
Where our people as individuals, we don't have rights. Only though the corporations that have been established on our territories called tribal councils and band councils that the government recognized, they are the only ones who have the right to make business, control business and so on. And our people are just peasants.
Our people have no rights. The thing is that they give the corporations tax exemption and they are telling our people that we are tax exempt but yet they are trying to tax us.
The thing is that what they did was – we are a nontaxable people and that's our birth right, but they want us to give up our birth right for a privilege they call tax exemption, because if they can give you that exemption, they can take it away.
They want us to alienate ourselves from who we are. But we are not willing to do this. And the thing is that they've stolen so many of our children and put them into residential schools and brainwashed, and took the Indian out of them. And many of the people today, they don't know what their rights are.
They are only now finding out because those of us who have never relinquished this, we continue to fight this and a lot of us are not part of the corporation. Most of the people that are part of corporation, they don't even understand what any of that means. They think that being part of the corporation makes them an Indian. But that's how much the government has confused the people.
There are those of us who continue to adhere to our traditional ways and maintaining the birth right that we've always had, we are continuing to try to educate our own people, as well as the non-native community as to what is really the truth, what is really going on.
So, we continue our stand on this and we maintain our principles and our philosophy. And again we are faced with this situation with the State of New York.
Just a couple months back some of our men were charged supposedly with running an illegal gambling establishment. But there was nothing illegal about what they were doing. And even the federal government and the state admitted that there was no wrongdoing. But they used the corporation to push the issue and got a district attorney to support it and took these men to court. And the state lost. The jury acquitted these men and said that there was no wrongdoing.
Robles: I'm sorry, can you... for our international listeners because a lot of people don't know about the situation with gambling, and tobacco and alcohol tax exemptions and stuff. Can you explain a little bit about how that is on the small areas of land where the indigenous people have been trapped? What their laws are regarding gambling and stuff?
Tekarontake: You see, there was no law against any of these things. There was a case, I believe it was in California, where the court said that the governments had no right to tell our people that they couldn't do these things. And a lot of this gaming industry and tobacco, and all that, it wasn't something our people thought up. Our people always had tobacco. We traded tobacco, we had different types of tobacco, some as trade goods and other tobacco we use for our ceremonies.
So, when the Europeans landed here, that was one of the things our people offered as a trade good, tobacco. And in fact, it was the tobacco that financed the American Revolution.
The thing is that it is not so much the businesses we do. The thing is if our people are going to do a business, and the outside has their hands in our business, then it is okay. As long as the outside get their cut, like the state and the municipalities and the federal government, if everybody gets their share of it there is no problem. But if our people do a business and the outside gets no share of it, then they call it illegal. Basically, it is mafia tactics that they use against our people.
Robles: I'm sorry, let me expand on that from there. We are seeing mafia tactics. If I could, give me a minute here. I'd like to expand on that because it's been bothering me for a while too and it is not just against the native peoples, it is their global policy against everyone. And it is like they've gone insane. I mean, this mafia tactic, now they are threatening the Russian Federation with sanctions, they are threatening other countries with bombing them, they are threatening everybody in the world with something, if they don't give up their resources and give up their sovereignty, and give up their rights.
Tekarontake: That's right!
Robles: And I think it's come to the point where they've gone insane. I don't know what do you want to call it. This delusional exceptionalism they have. They've kept subjugating our people in the US, the native American people, the indigenous peoples, the black peoples, the ancestors, the slaves they treated like dirt as well. That's been contained, but I think that's now spreading outward. And I think now the world in general is starting to see a little bit of the real beast that is…I don't know what else to call them, this cancer that has inhabited North America for..
Tekarontake: It is for over 500 years.
Robles: I mean, the same thing with the sanctions. We are going to take away this unless you give us this gas. You are going to buy this. It almost made me sick a couple days ago to hear Obama say, I don't know if you heard this quote, he said "we are blessed with such wonderful resources." I'm paraphrasing. He said – we are blessed in this country with resources, we want to sell to Europe. And they are telling Europe – you can't buy Russian gas. Russian sells gas to Europe very cheap. And he says – we are going to give you "our" blessed resources. I'm just thinking in my head – those are stolen resources. You are not blessed with anything.
Tekarontake: That's right! The thing is that everything the US and Canada, and all the countries in the western hemisphere, the resources that they claim they own, they don't own it, it is what they've stolen. They stole it from the indigenous peoples of the Western hemisphere. And yet the poorest people in the western hemisphere are the indigenous people. And they are telling us that we don't have a right to any of this stuff and that this is theirs. They make a law and then they legislate it, and they say – well, this is the law.
When they came to this land, our people extended a hand of friendship. We extended to them what we call the Two Row Concept, meaning that everyone should treat each other with respect.
And we told them that we would never interfere with their language, their laws, their customs, their traditions, their people or any of these things. They were free to exercise all those things. But the thing they needed to always keep in mind is that this land here is our Mother and that our Mother is a good mother, and that she would take care of them, but to remember that this is our Mother.
And we told them that we will give you the right to go the depth of a plow so that you can sustain yourselves. But it is only to sustain yourself. It does not mean that we have given you the land, the depth of the plow. We allowed you the use of this land. As long as you follow the way of respect, there will be no issue. But as soon as they became large enough in number, as soon as they were able to decimate so many of our communities and our people with their diseases and so on, and put us in a state of poverty, and weakness, they moved in to try to take away everything else that we still had. And they are still trying to do that to us today.
Robles: I'm sorry, if I could, because this is a correlation with what they are doing right now in Ukraine.
Tekarontake: That's right!
Robles: What they are doing right now, they've gone in there and again they made the people believe that if they join the EU, if they join the West, their lives are going to be better. But all these agreements and everything, and these hidden agreements, they are going to completely devastate and impoverish the Ukrainian people.
And the goal there is, again, the resources. They want to sell them gas, they want to make money of these people, they want the gas that is the Russian gas, they to control that, they want to control the territory of Ukraine.
It is the same lying, stealing, cheating game, only now it is 2014 and they've become technologically more sophisticated in packaging their theft, but it is the same thing. Would you agree with that?
Tekarontake: Oh, yes! That's always been the way of thieves.
Robles: And they are not going in there and killing the Ukrainian people, they are getting these neo-Nazis, who they are also using and manipulating, to go in there and kill and terrorize the Ukrainian people.
Tekarontake: Oh, yes! It is like a bacteria, it looks for a place to land. And it starts there and just going to work in its way till it engulfs the whole body, and destroys it, takes the life out of it.
The thing is that they want you to resolve all of their issues. They'll talk about: it's a violation of international law. But the law can't apply to one and not to the other.
And the thing is that they make the rules and say: "Well, we'll tell you who is a nation and who is not a nation, who has sovereignty and what is sovereignty and so on...
They have not even defined anything. Every time they open their mouth, this terminology changes its meaning. Even the language changes its meaning all the time. And they try to acquire intellectual property rights even to people's language, so that they can alter the language so the language will mean something other than what the people know that it has always meant. There is not a thing that they don't try to take total control over.
For instance, our people are the people who cultivated and created a thing called maize or corn. Our people have continued this agricultural life for hundreds of thousands of years. And now, today, companies like Monsanto claim that they own the intellectual property rights to this corn.
One of the native people, he grew corn and it just happened that Monsanto had a corn field not far away and they cross-pollinated. So, the corn kind of changed a bit and so Monsanto sued this native farmer saying that the corn he planted is their corn, because of the cross-pollination. It is ridiculous, suing a native for growing corn, corn that they have grow as far back as anyone can remember.
Robles: Some day you need to sue them for growing corn, for eating corn, because it was the indigenous people that gave them corn and tobacco, and watermelons, and potatoes were not in Europe, tomatoes, certain types were only in North America, what else?
Tekarontake: You know, the thing is that 75% of the world's diet originated out of the western hemisphere. 75% of the medicines that the world uses today also originated out of the western hemisphere. Indigenous people were using all of these things. And many of these things they cultivated, because they didn't grow naturally, like the different beans. There are hundreds of varieties of beans, hundreds of varieties of corn. Tomatoes were a poisonous plant, but our people cultivated it so it could be edible. There are just so many things. There are hundreds of different types of squashes and pumpkins.
But the thing is that what the white man does is when he goes to your land and because we didn't do things the way he did, he starts to register these things, he patents these things, he claims he has the intellectual property rights to these things and he has the property right on this and that.
You take a simple thing like aspirin. Aspirin in its natural form comes from the willow tree. And you boil that and you use that, and it takes away your pain and fever, and other things.
But the white man refines these things and he puts it into a pill, and then he claims it as his. But the thing is – when he refined it, it is no longer like the natural product in its natural form, because the natural form has no side-effects. But when they refine it, yes, it might help you with your fever, it might help you with your aches and pains, but by refining now this stuff eats away your stomach, it eats away other organs…
Robles: That's a great example, because aspirin causes internal bleeding in your stomach. I can't take aspirin.
Tekarontake: That's right! But if you took it in the natural form, it wouldn't do that. So, there are many medicines like this. Quinine…you know, there are just so many.
And even many of the good things that our people did, like gathering and growing of hemp. Our people split the fibers of hemp and made cloth, they made ropes, they made other byproducts, oils and so on. And it was used for good purposes. And you have coca that's been used by indigenous peoples for centuries. And these things never caused the problem.
But when they started creating these hybrids and started refining these things, and making them into powders and so on, and they started to abuse it, now one of the biggest industries in North America and in the world is the drug trade. And they make it sound like it is all these cartels. But who the heck is behind all of this? Who is creating the market for it? The FBI, the CIA....
Robles: Exactly! Look at Afghanistan.
You were listening to an interview with Tekarontake – an elder with the Wolf Clan of the Mohawk Nation. That was part 2 of a longer interview. You can find the rest of this interview on our website at voiceofrussia.com
Read more: http://voiceofrussia.com/2014_04_12/Monsanto-is-stealing-and-patenting-Indian-products-Mohawk-Elder-Tekarontake-5052/
Read more: http://voiceofrussia.com/2014_04_12/Monsanto-is-stealing-and-patenting-Indian-products-Mohawk-Elder-Tekarontake-5052/
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