liberty.
The visionary stories, treaty deceptions, and cultural ruins were never the same from one generation to the next, and the cultural conversion of casinos was only a proem to the extreme political narratives of national endorsements and the strange revisions of penalties and justice.
La Maison de Torture Extraordinaire, for instance, a reversal in the national practice of torture, would surely be more bearable than archaic political evictions, religious torture, and secret rendition strategies. The outcome would be the same but the new torture of solicitude caused no nightmares, psychic scars, or political crises. Separation with compassion, or banishment with no body trauma, was nothing less than removal and exile. There was no virtue in the cruel irony that our native ancestors endured arbitrary and malicious separation carried out by federal agents in the early years of the White Earth Reservation.
The exiles were descendants of the fur trade, and our ancestors once declared their loyalty to the French in the empire wars. Today, with loathsome stories and dreadful memories of the fur trade, we bear the surnames, totemic nicknames, and cultural distinctions of native exiles, and to create a new union with the spirits of animals we initiated totemic associations and constitutional councils to advise the new government. The original totems were created in the spirit of the animals, in ancestral stories of natural reason, the turns of seasons, eternal migrations of birds, and the common array and motion of wolf spiders, cicadas, bobcats, bats, kingfishers, carpenter ants, cedar waxwings, moccasin flowers, praying mantis, and coywolves.
Clément Beaulieu was a delegate and the principal writer of the Constitution of the White Earth Nation. Article Five provided that “freedom of thought and conscience, academic and artistic irony, and literary expression shall not be denied, violated or controverted by the government.”
The Anishinaabe told great trickster stories of creation and enticement, teases and quirky mercy, and scenes of visionary motion. These memorable stories were never translated rightly in the book, but natives have the moral imagination, the lure of totemic associations, the natural justice of stories and literary irony forever in the Constitution of the White Earth Nation, and in the ancient legacy of the Great Peace of Montréal.
Only a native constitution would include a clear and direct reference to artistic irony. My great-uncle wrote that the constitution must encourage ironic stories and art, create new totems, more than the mere imitation of the traditional birds and animals, and he specified that the totemic and community councils should “strengthen the philosophy of mino-bimaadiziwin, to live a good life, and in good health, through the creation and formation of associations, events and activities that demonstrate, teach and encourage respect, love, bravery, humility, wisdom, honesty and truth for citizens.” That good life, however, would never absolve the cruelty and spiritual abuse of animals in the fur trade. The cultural memory of dead totemic animals was unforgiven, never a constitutional clemency.
The new totems and cultural burdens of natives were hardly significant when compared with the decimation of animals, and demise of the original totemic associations in the furious continental fur trade of the past three centuries. No national separation strategy, treaty deceit, constitution, dominion, tiresome overcompensations of monotheism, or the romantic tread of enlightenment could absolve the outright cruelty and slaughter of animals for felt hats and furry fashions in Europe.
Our new totems and the constitutional associations that were founded in the name of wolf spiders, coywolves, bats, bobcats, deformed fish, and moccasin flowers, would never reconcile the native cruelty to the great spirits of the animals, and the mass murder of beaver, bear, marten, ermine, and deer in centuries of the fur trade. Some city squirrels, raccoons, caged birds, and most mongrels continue to trust humans, even after dogs were banished from the federal sector, but the spirits of the beaver and other animals remain forever distant and deny humans the right to hear their remarkable stories of survivance. Truly the spirits of the animals await the tragic outcome of human civilization.
Justice Molly Crèche protected the rights of animals in the courtroom, and she was the only jurist who honored the memory of the animals murdered in the fur trade. She argued that because so many animals were brought close to extinction, “necrostories, the testimony of native totemic associations, and hearsay of animal genocide were accepted as evidence in the courtroom.” Crèche continued to hear testimony in exile, and the court stories of exile were broadcast on Panic Radio.
Our totemic associations and heartfelt observance of natural motion were clearly a philosophy of bimaadiziwin, but the beaver would never again enable humans to stand in their daily presence and survivance culture or participate in their trust and natural duty.
The pushy game hunters resented the new totems of spiders, birds, bats, insects, and wild flowers, and at the same time they protected timber wolves. The poseurs were furious that the word wolf was specifically used in the constitutional totemic association of the coywolves and wolf spiders. The outward manly totems correlated directly with metal clamp traps, heavy weapons, bright lights, snow machines, and giant pickup trucks.
Mostly the catcalls, curses, and politics of resentment were concentrated on the actual constitution, the very ethical provisions of governance that denied the easy dominance of the tradition fascists and Midewin Messengers. The fascists favored a circular patriarchy, a fishy patchwork tradition of absolute authority, and conspired against the constitutional elections. They continued to undermine every practice of egalitarian governance. The fascists harkened to invented traditions, and perverted the sacred midewiwin, an obscure medicine dance, and an association of healers and great visionaries. So, the heavy hunters and traditioneers were eager to join the faction of authoritarian managers in the new federal sector. The blood count connivers emerged to reign over native identities a second time in reservation history.
No, we were not romantic utopians, crazed, or wanton state criminals. The national reports that we had committed a murder, violated the federal charter of sector migration, or simply traveled without permission, and disabled the drone monitors were not true. Our inherent and constitutional liberties were denied, and we were brazenly threatened by the new governor to vacate the old reservation and the new federal endorsement sector.
The Constitution of the White Earth Nation clearly prohibited banishment, yet we were ousted and our rights violated by a corrupt autocrat and private security agents twenty years after the constitution was set in motion with native citizens.
Precisely, we were removed, as our ancestors had once been ordered by federal agents to leave the treaty boundary of the reservation more than a century earlier for publishing the Progress, the first independent native newspaper critical of federal policies.
Paradoxically we were banished at the very same time that native children were taught the ethics and principles of the democratic constitution in nearby public schools, and many citizens carried a miniature copy of the egalitarian document as a native prompt of liberty. The dubious ethics of federal policies had actually advanced to a new level of hypocrisy. Native sovereignty and the doctrine of reserved rights were never mentioned or considered in the political conversion of treaty reservations and counties into federal trust endorsements sectors.
Waasese created marvelous laser holoscenes, lively and magical light shows, and the radiant scenes easily diverted the drones and distracted the sector security agents. The Specter Drones, aerial monitors, and miniature digital cameras were everywhere, mounted in trees and beams, at the casino, underwater, and in books, tablets and toilets, and managed by private surveillance agencies to detect and track human motion in the sector, but the silent drones could not always detect an actual native from a laser scene.
Yes, we rightly teased, tormented, and menaced but never murdered the first governor of the White Earth Sector of the National Sectors and Trust Endorsements. Godtwit Moon had already earned three descriptive nicknames, Mosey, for his casual manner when
