LAND OF THE RED GIANTS OF IXTLAN

Chapter 7, cont. page 2

I was told on Franklin Avenue in the downtown slums of minneapolis-st. paul that
AIM got started back in 1968 right there just so Dennis Banks and Vernon and Clyde
Bellecourt and George Mitchell wouldn't get quite so hassled so much by the cops on
their nightly bar-hopping binges. Of course that was the cynical truth of winos on the
sidewalk; or, if you want the romantic liberal spin, it was to counteract the racist pirates
destroying Ojibwa and Winnebago rice-farming and other gathering economies and
traditional elders' governments, matriarchal social contracts, languages, religions; or, if
you want more of the rational conservative spin without the underlying patina of
cynicism, the idiots were naked barbarians in the first place and never had a fucking clue
(not that prudish neanderthals would ever say "fuck") about anything approximating the
civilized behavior of responsible government, work, law and order, due process, or
upward mobility.
At the same time, amerika wasn't doing any better. The Nix was going down in
Watergate just like MacBird already had. The Pentagon's Machine was in panic in
Southeast Asia just like they'd been at Manassas and the molasses of Pearl Harbor,
Korea, and the World Trade Centers-to-come. Muhammad's gas Tanks and Pharaoh's
foreign legions wiped King Solomon's butt on our other mythological flank of scriptural,
cultural necessity, using Soviet rubles for toilet paper, in the October 1973 'Yom Kippur
War'. {What was it Vine Deloria wrote, that for a country or nation to be real, it had to
have 3 things, which amerika did not: 1) A Creation Myth, 2) A Sacred Mountain, and 3)
A Prophet?} That very Fall we watched [U.S. Secretary of State] Henry Kissinger
hornswaggle the United Nations into not declaring a "cease-fire" when Pharaoh Sadat had
already won the War, cheating victory as usual, snatching "Peace Treaties" out of the
jaws of Little Bighorns, so that Salt II antiballistic Treaties could also preserve the
profitable "Cold War", and Israel, Amerika's whole religious foundation. Seymour Hersh
called it 'The Samson Option'. Historian Donald Neff wrote:

"October 7, 1973: Israel's position on the Golan Heights was

extremely grave. Syrian forces were at the very entry to northern
Israel, poised to roll down the Heights onto the Israeli towns and
cities of Upper Galilee. It still was not appreciated by the Israeli
general staff how bad things were in the Sinai, but that was almost
a disguised blessing. It left the generals time to concentrate on
the disastrously deteriorating situation in the north. They realized
that Syria's thrust had to be contained at all costs. Syrian troops
could not be allowed to penetrate into Israeli territory, only short
miles away, for psychological reasons as much as military ones.
That meant they had to be prevented at all costs from descending
down the Heights. The decision was made that Sunday to concentrate
on the defense of the Golan Heights.
"However, one man, Moshe Dayan, had no illusions about Israel's
perilous position. He was so distraught that he apparently believed
the only thing that could save Israel was use of the nuclear bomb.
Rumors, never documented but widely believed, swept Tel Aviv
and Washington on this day that Israel had activated its nuclear
weapons and was prepared for a time to use them."
- 'Warriors Against Israel '

"Just as a machine may break down if one small part is removed,

and a person may die if a single artery or vein is blocked, a modern
technological society may come to a standstill if its fuel supply is
cut off, and an ecosystem may collapse if its ozone shield is depleted.
Nuclear weapons thus do not only kill directly, with their tremendous
violence, but also kill indirectly, by breaking down the man-made
and the natural systems on which individual lives collectively depend.
... The earth is the largest of the support systems for life, and the
impairment of the earth is the largest of the perils posed by nuclear
weapons."
- 'Fate of the Earth'

"At AIM's national convention at White Oak, Oklahoma, from

July 25 to August 5, 1973, Banks was elected national director,
with Carter Camp and John Trudell as co-chairmen and the
Navajo leader Larry Anderson as national treasurer. 'Russ [Means]
ran for office but nobody voted him in,' one AIM warrior recalls.
'Nobody took him serious then, I guess. Russ had his groupies,
and his little groupie chapters, but it was all Saturday-night
warriors and raising hell.'
"At White Oak, AIM pledged to continue its campaign to repeal
the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934 and dismantle not only the
whole system of government-sponsored tribal councils but the
Bureau of Indian Affairs itself, so that, as Dennis Banks said,
'Indian people might have something to say about their lives
and their destiny.' AIM also endorsed the nationwide boycott
of Safeway Stores by Cesar Chavez's United Farm Workers
Union, and made an alliance with Mexican-American activists
in the Southwest, where Indian and Chicano problems with
Anglos were often the same.
"But the leadership could not agree on how to deal with the
threat of repression. For some, armed guerrilla warfare seemed
the only position, whereas others like Vernon Bellecourt had
not carried a weapon inside Wounded Knee. Dennis Banks said,
'At Wounded Knee, there was absolutely no drinking, but after
that it was all drugs and alcohol, which weren't so much an
obstacle to taking action as an impediment to an effective
organization, and also something that compromised our public
positions. Not that I wanted a fanatic policy, but here was a
young Indian organization moving to national prominence,
 and people were watching us, our own people especially. I
quit drinking myself in 1969, after I found myself passed out
in my own car; I didn't want young Indians seeing their leaders
in that kind of shape."
- Akwesasne Notes, Mohawk newspaper

[end of Chapter 7, and Part One]