Two Perspectives

The Respect of a Cousin by Edward Miller

For Muslims, the mere rendering of an image of Muhammad is sacrilege. The portrayal of Muhammad in a pejorative fashion is to them an inconceivably offensive desecration, on the level of what would be for us the defilement of a Torah scroll. Because it was done in newspapers across Europe, it was a slap in the face repeated thousands of times.Perhaps it’s a question of respect, not freedom. Freedom of expression theoretically protects the right of a non-Jew to desecrate a Torah scroll. Yet we would all view freedom of expression as a hollow defense to such a vile act.

A Native American View Point on the Cartoons

MNN. Feb. 9, 2006. Are the Muslim riots against the cruel depictions of their Prophet Muhammad really about freedom of speech? Whose freedom? The Euro-western corporate media define freedom ofspeech as the freedom to depict the world as they see it, without respect for other people’s points of view. They pretend to represent the dominant culture in the world. According to the UN Convention on the Rights of Minorities, all states are required to educate the majority population in the perspective of the minorities. But the international press doesn’t give two hoots about that. Why should they? They’re not states. They haven’t signed any conventions. But this doesn’t stop them from relying on these very conventions to support their “freedom of speech”.

As far as they are concerned, they can write, print or depict anything they want the way they want. This right is really based on “might makes right”, a very selective cherry picking approach to international human rights laws.

We, the voiceless people of the world, don’t have the same kind of freedom.

We all know that the media are an arm of the big business mega corporations of the world. We also know they want to maintain control on all of us.

The Muslims make up a large part of the world they want to control. They’re sitting on oil the Americans want, damn it! Anything that serves to dehumanize and belittle the Muslims helps to justify the corporate takeover of the highly coveted resources that the Muslims happen to be sitting on.

Major media is one sided. This is the same problem that we Indigenous People of Turtle Island have. We sit on valuable resources. We can’t get our side of our story into the press. So the press is not really free, is it? They invoke violence everyday against those whose resources they covet and to whom they give no voice. The Muslims are now making themselves heard in the only way that is open to them.

The US President George Bush called for people to stop rioting “to protect property” and to protect his diplomats. This is the last thing he should ask for. Property is being denied to them. Diplomats are there to colonize them.

One Danish writer stated in a children’s book he wrote on Muhammad, “It’s about internal politics in many of these countries, and it’s about frustrations which have accelerated for years." What’s he talking about? The pressures are being applied from the outside!

Let’s look at what happened when Indigenous elder, David Ahenakew, expressed his contrary opinion privately about the official view on the Jews and the Holocaust in Germany during World War II. Why were his views, which most native people probably don’t agree with, published in the Regina Leader Post and blasted all across the country and the world? Because it was said by an Indigenous person and the press never misses a chance to demonize us. This leadS to attacks on Indigenous people. Sometimes I would like to pelt my views at some of these corporate media for the way they continue to depict us. There doesn’t seem to be anyway to stop them. Indian Affairs has been paying a Montreal public relations firm $17,000 a month to bash the Mohawks. We can’t get in a word edge-wise no matter how much evidence we have.

In the United States and Canada Indigenous People are told, “Why don’t you bring a class action suit against not only the media, but all the education institutions in North America that continue to generate hatred and lies against you?” These would be in their courts, at their beck and call and they would sit in judgment. What kind of relief does that give us?

At a mainstream university where I have been teaching non-native students, they arrive in my classes without a shred of knowledge about Indigenous people and history. Others come with distorted information that borders on racism. These non-native students should sue their educational institutions for being duped and misled. They are being taught lies and fables about the real gory foundation of American and Canadian society. They should put a stop to being lead under false pretenses to swallow concocted tales as story behind their colonial presence on our land.

The powers that be refer to their embellishing of facts as “freedom of speech” and “artistic merit”. All these fabulists should be punished. Rights to freedom are for the privileged who can laugh and make fun of us because we Indigenous and other voiceless people can’t do anything about it. It is those privileged who stop us from exercising our rights. Why don’t the privileged ever lose their rights? They can’t, of course, then it wouldn’t be privileged anymore.

They tell us that democracy is the freedom to vote for the candidates that the privileged put in front of us. We are being fooled all the time.

Editors, politicians and corporate businessmen are free to make choices every day. We don’t have access to the corporate press, so they can pass us off anyway they want. This takes away our power to choose and to object. If we did, the ground has been laid so that nobody will listen to us anyway.

What is the bottom line for the media – sales and profit by pushingthe mega international agenda. Just like us, the Muslims are yelling about it. The publishing of those cartoons tell us a lot.

Kahentinetha Horn

MNN Mohawk Nation News

Kahentinetha2@yahoo.com