"Spokesperson for the Colonial Police Force Opens Mouth and Inserts Foot" -- Friends of Leonard Peltier

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Feast your eyes on this tidbit. The following is a blog posting made by the Leonard Peltier Defense Offense Committee today with regard to a blog posting made by Ed Woods of the No Parole Peltier Association.

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"The United States did not follow a policy of genocide; it did try to find a just solution to the Indian problem. The consistent idea was to civilize the Indians, incorporate them into the community, make them part of the melting pot. That it did not work, that it was foolish, conceited, even criminal, may be true, but that doesn’t turn a well-meant program into genocide."

A former agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Ed Woods--who has made it his life's mission to prevent Leonard Peltier's release from prison--recently had the audicity to use the above quote to refute Leonard's use of the word "genocide" with regard to Indigenous Peoples.

For your edification, Ed:

Genocide is the deliberate and systematic destruction, in whole or in part, of an ethnic, racial, religious, or national group.

A legal definition of "genocide" is found in the 1948 United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide:

"...any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

-- killing members of the group;
-- causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
-- deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life, calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
-- imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; and
-- forcibly transferring children of the group to another group."

Perhaps you'd prefer the term "ethnic cleansing" better, Ed? A 1993 United Nations Commission defined it specifically as "the planned deliberate removal from a specific territory, persons of a particular ethnic group, by force or intimidation, in order to render that area ethnically homogenous."

Simply, denying historical facts about the ongoing genocide of Indigenous Peoples is just not acceptable.

Shame on you, Ed.

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We concur. But we're not surprised by this man's comments. We've heard other agents involved with the Peltier case refer to Indians as "conquered people" before. That's their justification for the "Reign of Terror" on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota in the 1970s. How interesting it is that folks sworn to uphold the U.S. Constitution also think it's appropriate to steal peoples' languages, culture... all they know... and all they are. This former agent also had the audacity to make a "come to Jesus" speech to Leonard Peltier (who isn't a Christian) during his parole hearing last summer. Keep it up, Ed. We love it when you show your true colors.