of families and totemic associations. These very principles and sentiments of native sovereignty and liberty would continue in a state of exile.
Justice Molly Crèche initiated at the same time as the egalitarian native government the White Earth Continental Congress, a native association that soon grew to more than three thousand members around the world. The Congress celebrated the creative achievements of natives since the establishment of the White Earth Reservation.
The Dominion of Canada was established four months later on July 1, 1867, and that day of independence has been celebrated every year. The coincidence of these three crucial events in continental culture and history, the Great Peace of Montréal, the congressional separation of natives and later abrogation of the reservation treaty, and the observance of dominion liberty, provided a chance to resolve the injustice of our exile, and secure the vision of the Constitution of the White Earth Nation.
The Canadian envoys of foreign and aboriginal affairs, national defense, and immigration were scheduled to arrive by boat to consider our formal petition to reconsider the original surveys and confusion over the international border, liberate the Northwest Angle as the Angle of Native Liberty, and secure Fort Saint Charles on Manidooke Minis, an island of spiritual power, as a native state, and to provide support and sanctuary for eight political exiles and the Constitution of the White Earth Nation.
The preliminary negotiations were scheduled on the deck of the Baron of Patronia, and later on Manidooke Minis. The Canadian envoys and agencies indicated they would consider the situation of eight exiles and native continental liberty. Summaries of the discussions would be broadcast nightly on Panic Radio.
The Canadian government acknowledged our fur trade ancestors and petition of ancient treaty rights to Fort Saint Charles, the first western post in the colonial province of New France. Pierre Gaultier de La Vérendrye, the military officer and trader, established and named the post in 1732 in honor of Charles de Beauharnois, Governor of New France. Canada mistakenly allowed the survey of the international boundary to include Northwest Angle, Fort Saint Charles, and other native land and islands in Minnesota.
The native exiles were remembered only by earned nicknames. Archive, the first narrator, poet, and novelist, Gichi Noodin, Great Wind, Captain of the Baron of Patronia and spirited broadcast voice of Panic Radio, Savage Love, an irony dog trainer and innovative unpublished writer, Moby Dick, exotic publisher and totemic guardian of deformed aquarium fish, Waasese, a laser holoscene scientist, Hole in the Storm, a visionary artist who earned an ironic nickname because he was a quiet painter at the very heart of a storm, Chewy Browne, the senior exile with a magnificent soprano voice, and Justice Molly Crèche, fur trade necrostorier and the steadfast advocate of totemic justice and animal rights in courts, declared a new native nation in exile at Fort Saint Charles in Lake of the Woods.
Chewy Beaulieu Browne was a delegate, twenty years ago, to the constitutional conventions, and she initiated the community councils and totemic associations that were essential to democratic governance. “If you ain’t tookin then I’m a lookin,” she loudly teased my great-uncle at the first convention, and he was taken, but they became very close friends and active in the community and totemic councils. Chewy enchanted the delegates then and the exiles now with her course of teases and emotive soprano voice. She sang the poetry of the preamble and the articles about irony and continental liberty.
Chewy was one of the thirteen Manidoo Singers. The singers honored the spirits of the dead with songs, including the despised governor of the sector, Godtwit Moon. She was determined at age ninety to live in exile, and would not be denied the right of exile on the Baron of Patronia.
Moby Dick started the ouster stories on the first voyage of exiles that autumn. The notice of our actual banishment was a handprinted poster mounted at the entrance to the casino. The poster noted that we were removed forever from the former reservation and new federal sector. The order was arbitrary, and everyone understood that we were ostracized only because we had resisted the congressional abrogation of the constitution and egalitarian governance, declared our confidence and absolute allegiance to the native constitution, and because of our wholehearted loyalty to new totemic associations, but not the national sectors.
Many natives returned to live on the reservation the same year the constitution was certified by almost eighty percent of the registered citizens who voted in a referendum. There was great excitement at the time, election debates were serious and constructive, several native judges of the constitutional court were confirmed, totemic associations and councils were underway, and the new library collection had more than doubled with the novels, poetry, history, art, and critical studies published by native authors.
The eager delegates to the constitutional conventions initiated the new custom of Treaty Shirts on the same day that native citizens endorsed the Constitution of the White Earth Nation. The eight exiles carried on that shirty tribute to native governance for twenty years and wore the same unwashed shirt at conferences and legislative sessions, a ceremonial vestment of continental liberty. The odors of the shirts were nasty, and the conventions and native seminar stains were ironic archives, the traces and citations of hors d’oeuvres, silhouettes of chicken wings, spicy meatballs at banquets, and buffet spatters.
Tedwin Makwa, or The Bear, a native philosopher, was our garment mentor, and he was renowned for the stench of his embroidered cowboy shirt. He wore the same unwashed shirt at conferences, social and political events, and in the classroom for decades. Traces of his travels and activities, overnight binges, messy sex, pizza and burger prints, stains of mustard, wine, mayonnaise, and fry bread ooze were the distinctive codes of cryptic stories and native reciprocity.
Makwa was truly a master of ironic stories, but only strangers, the uninitiated, or those with olfactory disorder would sit next to him at a conference or a restaurant. The stench of his cowboy shirt with more than a decade of sweat, grease, and wine would foul the air and overpower any ordinary conversation. Friends held their breath when he reached out for a hearty embrace.
The Constitution of the White Earth Nation was set more than sixty years too late in any critical calendar of continental liberty. Earlier the constitutional government could have become much stronger with the actual steady growth and prosperity of the nation rather than with the slow decline of the world economy and financial systems. The economic decline resulted in the abrogation of the reservation treaty and the ruination of the Constitution of the White Earth Nation.
There were many earlier native initiatives to create a democratic constitution, the very visions and strategies that would have connected with the first wave of native college graduates in the nineteen sixties, but the steady political putter and shame of federal agents, and the obvious trickery, lethargy, and corruption of older reservation leaders were too much to counter at the time.
Twenty years ago hundreds of natives returned with their relatives to the reservation, to a new constitutional democracy, with praise and anticipation of an ethical and worthy government. We were right about the merit, ethos, and virtues of autonomous governance, but never gave much thought to the reports on the incredible race of credit and the national debt. We had overlooked the enormous increase in trust endorsements, once-named entitlements, and regulations, and the worldwide government debt and economic decline. The conditions became so serious in the past decade that some news and editorial reports declared the crises an era of political retractions, banishment and renouncement, a “national dust bowl of endorsements,” public obligations and debts, debts, debts.
Children, elders, horses, pets, boats, summer cabins, snowmobiles, stores, movie theaters, markets, malls, and houses were abandoned in the millions around the country, and we were banished along with an autonomous native government when treaty land and reservations were converted overnight to federal endorsement sectors by congressional plenary power.
Clément Beaulieu, my great-uncle, pointed out this giant
