Eie Lidgan Dait
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THURSDAY, OCTOBER 7, 1971 NIGHT EDITOR: CARLA RAPOPORT
he cas for the Indians
THE CHIPPEWA, Ottawa, and Potowa-
tomy Indians have found a treaty to
add prestige of history and legality to
what has long been a plaintive cry to
improve Indian educational opportuni-
ties.
In a lawsuit initiated by Paul Johnson,
grad., the Indians have charged the
University with violating its 1817 Ft.
lI\iegs Treaty promise to educate Indian
children in return for 3,840 acres of land.
Johnson is asking the court to force the
University to account for the profit it
has received from this land in the past
154 years and that this money be chan-
neled into two funds - one for college
scholarships and the other for elemen-
tary and secondary school financial aid
for the tribes' descendants.
Scattered in pockets of reservations
that they don't even get to administer,
the Indians are too poor to raise big
funds to finance their own movement.
The prosecuting team must try to
arouse Indians who've been co-opted into
being so highly urbanized they've forgot-
ten to agitate for the brothers they've
left behind. Another problem is the lack
of enough Indian students within the
University. If the Indians in the Uni-
Indian students enrolled now instead of
30.
Having decided to employ the 1817 Ft.
Meigs Treaty, the Indians have armed
themselves with an extremely adequate,
superbly relevant instrument to probe
the open wound.
The Ft. Meigs Treaty, signed by Lewis
Cass, governor of the territory of Mich-
igan and by President James Monroe,
ceded one tract of land to the University
and another to St. Anne's Church of De-
b' I dri-i alt tg
Editorial Staff
ROBERT KRAFTOWITZ
Editor
JIM BEATTIE DAVE CHUDWIN
Executive Editor Managing Editor
STEVE KOPPMAN . ..Editorial Page Editor
RICK PERLOFF .... Associate Editorial Page Editor
PAT MAHONEY .... Assistant Editorial Page Editor
LYNN WEINER . . Associate Managing Editor
LARRY LEMPERT . Associate Managing Editor
ANITA CRONE ............... Arts Editor
JIM IRWIN ,. . .............. Associate Arts Editor
JANET FREY ...... .......... Personnel Director
ROBERT CONROW .. ...... .. Books Editor
JIM JUDKIS'. ......... . , . . . ... Photography Editor
troit. In 1825 the University acquired the
land given St. Anne's Church, and with
that tract combined the church's pre-
vious committment to furthering the
education of Indian youngsters with its
own inherent promise to further Indian
education on the college level.
That the Indians have had to resort
to a legal battle over a human rights
and historical issue is the crown-
ing indictment of a University too ob-
livious to the plight of a significant num-
ber of its state's population.
The University's legal adviser, Roder-
ick Daane, has said that the Indians gave
the 3,840 acres of land to the University
as a gift, with "some hopeful language"
regarding Indian education mentioned.
WHETHER THE suit is successful or
not, the principle remains. The In-
dians, with their 1817 land grant to the
University, endowed it with more money
than either the founding fathers of Har-
vard or Yale gave their universities, ac-
cording to a statement by former Michi-
gan Supreme Court Justice John Cooley
in 1888. These Indians have not gotten
their just due from the University. In-
dians are underrepresented in the stu-
dent population. Indian-oriented courses
are of a backward looking anthropolo-
gical type. Indians throughout the area
are often too poorly educated to envision
later going on to college.
Historically, the, Indians relinquished
valuable land to the University, the Uni-
versity has profited from this land, and
it must have the grace and the obliga-
tion to help the Indians who've helped
them.
This is why Paul Johnson, who filed
the lawsuit on behalf of the Great Lakes
Indian Alliance, is insisting the suit be
followed all the way through the courts
as a matter of principle. The Indians are
asking for justice, not handouts.
THE LAWSUIT should force a profound
re-examination of University consid-
eration of the Indians. The Indians have
stepped out from the background now:
Their rights best be recognized lest ig-
noring them or moving too slowly pre-
cipitate retrenchment into a hate-whites
bitterness that isn't necessary.
"EVERYONE WANTS to b e
happy. But you aren't going
to be happy until you see t h a t
we're all together. We're brothers
and sisters in this world and we
got to be open and loving with
each other. Most of us are afraid
to be open with our brothers and
sisters because we're afraid to give
of ourselves. But we got to give.
We got to give everything we
have."
We gave. We talked to men we
wouldn't call brothers, to women
who couldn't be sisters, to psy-
choanalysts who weren't even
friends. We talked about love,
lust, dreams and despair w i t h
people we didn't know before the
puff of a joint, or a night in bed,
or an evening in church praying
to Jesus.
But we wanted to be open, so
we talked. We spilled out our lives
into the sink of another person
who usually wasn't listening since
he was trying to pour out him-
self into us. We needed to talk
so we did.
When it was over, we felt as
drained and empty as a man
who howls at the desert - as
strange as the desert were o u r
comrades, but comrades they
were supposed to be.
. . . "Every man is your broth-
er, every woman is your sister.
We got to be open with every-
body."
And why we should be as open
with strangers as we are with our
friends went unasked since one
had to be open . . talking, con-
fessing . . . talking like Americans
who accost you in the bar on
lonely evenings: "Sit down a mo-
ment. You think you got prob-
lems?"
AND IT MAY all be a natural
reaction to a society in which
love and warmth and emotional
contact come in droplets. And it
may be natural when you've
grown up among countrymen who
insist they're individuals before
they're people, individuals and in:;
dividuals. and more self-sufficient
individuals, so self-sufficient they
cannot depend on anyone or love
anyone for fear the coarse edge
of their personality wil slip away-
proudly proclaiming "I am a
rock" in defiant denial of the
satire the authors of the song.
Simon and Garfunkel, had sought
to portray since to these Ameri-
cans being the Gibralter of in-
dividuality is the highest form of
nobility one can achieve because
to them emotions are a feminino
form of weakness which means the
only way to communicate w i t h
other people is through the brit-
tle fabric of individuality - ex-
cept when you have so many
individuals, each an individual
in his own individualistic w a y,
you have a world of islands which
share only the sea.
WE REACT. .We sense t h i s
crazy emphasis upon individual
uniqueness; and detecting t h e
abundance of secrecy in society.
disgusted by the notion that a
person is his mind before his
body, we cry: Enough.
"People got to learn to com-
municate. They got to understand
none of us is any better or worse
or different than the other. We're
all people. And we got to be open
with each other."
Women dress braless. People
skinny dip at rock concerts. Nu-
dist camps multiply. Everyone is
One. We are The People, T h e
Third World, the Youth Culture.
In short, our public eye has grown
more public.
Not so fast. If the goal here
is a society which not only per-
mits, but actively encourages, us
to live nude in the streets while
we talk about the most intimate
aspects of our private lives w it h
strangers simply in the spirit of
being open, then what of our bod-
ies can we reserve for those we
love: and what conversations can
be spoken untainted to the private
ear? Everything, after all, is com-
mon. We are all presumably equal
in the jungle.
But we must not become so pre-
occupied with Equality, in the
wild rejection of individualism,
that we lose any notion of peo-
ple's differences. There are peo-
ple within The People and youth
among the Culture. If not, we are
as guilty as liberals who would'
sacrifice each other to some
amorphous Humanism, Demo-
cracy or Freedom.
THERE HAS BEEN an over-
reactionamong us to standards
of propriety, and the aristocratic
sense of what is private. Some-
how, what is private smacks of
discrimination against The Pub-
lic, but this confuses matters.
One can still support The Pub-
lic yet maintain a notion of pri-
vacy. There is something quite
dignified about preserving a sense
of private self which obtains its
honor precisely because it's pri-
vate. What is common to all, pro--
claimed Nietzsche, is tainted for
that reason.
We are houses, but the door
need not stay open for every
visitor. If the door lets in al)
the public, our house will become
but a barn - our pride a com-
modity. Let us open our doors.
but reserve our right to close
them.
I
Seeing astronauts
as super-robots
By JIM JUDKIS
Photography Editor
ALL HUMAN BEINGS know the moon. It's gentle light turns night
into a fantasy world. The moon's rhythms move the tides and
transform straight average men into hairy raving werewolves. Astrol-
ogically, the moon exerts the main cosmic force upon human emotions.
It is associated with fertility, the female, and romanticism. However,
science has proven that the moon is little more than a huge cold
ball of rock, broken out with a bad case of craters.
Before a man can set his space-boot onto that cosmic territory,
a lot of high-brow technology must be developed.
Also trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous kind, obedient,
cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean, And reverent, and do their duty to God
and country and obey the scout law. Not only that, they must be
handsome air force pilots and pretty intelligent, too. David Scott, Al-
fred Worden, and James Irwin meet all the above criteria, but while
listening to them talk and watching them sitting and standing around,
I asked myself, "How much do these guys really have it all together?"
MY FIRST IMPRESSION was that none of the astronauts had
that much going for them, at least as far as one's choice of friends
goes. They seemed like over sophisticated robots, incapable of show-
ing any emotion other than patriotism. They displayed as much enthus-
iasm about going to the moon as they would when taking out the
garbage. What's so great about travelling to the moon, anyway, all
they had to do was follow some step-by-step instructions. How much
creativity was displayed? They may have walked on the moon but,
would any of them give a few minutes to talk with a wino on a
street corner?
However, there is another side to the astronauts, a much brighter,
more positive side. These men do what they do with the absolute
highest standards of perfection. When viewed aesthetically, their
trip has a cold, lucid type of beauty unlike any previous human
experience. Their moonscape photographs have a clarity and sur-
realistic beauty to match an ancient Chinese landscape scroll.
..
-MARCIA ZOSLAW
Bangladesh: Genesis of
a crisis
By MUZAMMEL HUQ
ON MARCH 25, the occupation
forces of the Pakistan Army
unleashed a well-planned Gestapo-
style terror on the 75 million
people of Bangladesh (formerly
known as East Pakistan or East
Bengal) whose only crime w a s
their unanimous support of the
demands for more autonomy and
self-determination. The Bengalis
overwhelmingly voted for t h e
Awami League, a political party.
which won 167 out of 169 National
Assembly seats allotted to Bang-
ladesh in the only free General
Election ever held in Pakistan's
24 year old history. The result of
the Pakistan Army's "Cleansing
Operation" is well known to news-
paper readers. The Pakistan Army
has so far:
-Killed one million people in
Bangladesh in addition to loot-
ing properties, buring villages and
raping girls. (The Globe and Mail,
July 20, 1971).
-Driven out over nine million
"fellow East Pakistanis" to India.
of which 10,000 already died of
cholera and many more are dy-
ing. (Time, August 2, 1971).
-Created artificial famine
amongst the remaining 67 million
people in Bangladesh so t h a t
about 20 million will die of star-
vation in the next 3 to 4 months.
The surviving Bengalis will then
be docile enough to be colonized
permanently by West Pakistan.
never again to speak of inde-
pendence.
INDIA WAS RULED by the
British from 1757 to 1947. Bengal,
one of the provinces of the un-
divided India, was the first vic-
tim of, and the great opponent to.
British colonization. A prominent
Indian leader once said, "What
Bengal thinks today, India thinks
tomorrow."
The Muslim League which was
founded in Dacca in 1905 exploit-
ed this sentiment of the Muslimi
in Bengal as well as in other
parts in India. Its demand for a
separate and independent home-
land for the Indian Muslims cul-
minated in the historic Lahore
Resolution. This resolution, which
is considered to be the basis for
the creation of Pakistan, w a s
proposed by a veteran Bengali
leader A. K. Fazlul Hug and un-
animously passed in 1940. In 1947,
Pakistan was carved out of In-
dia with two wings i.e., East and
West Pakistan, separated by over
1,000 miles of Indian territory and
linked only by the common, but
very loose, bond of religion.
The Lahore Resolution s a y s,
"... the areas in which the Mus-
lims are numerically in a major-
ity - as in the North-Westerr.
and Eastern zones of India -
should be grouped to constitute
independent states in which the
constituent units shall be auto-
nomous and sovereign."
SINCE THE BIRTH of Pakis-
tan, the people of Bangladesh
have been raising demands for
provincial autonomy and self-de-
termination in accordance with
the Lahore Resolution. Sadly, a
small group of big capitalists and
feudal landlords in West Pakis-
tan, in collusion with the Pun-
jabi dominated Army, have ruth-
lessly suppressed the legitimate
demands of Bangladesh in order
to perpetuate, in the name of
Islam and the integrity of Pakis-
tan, their exploitation and dom-
ination of the Bengali people. Sta-
tistics from Pakistan Government
publications point out the astro-
nomically high proportion of dis-
!oarities in the two wings of
Pakistan.
The conspiracy of destroying
the political, economic, cultural
cent of the population of what
was formerly Pakistan.
THE RULING CLIQUE in Wes1
Pakistan ultimately recognized
Bengali as one of the two na-
tional languages, but only after
killing hundreds of Bengali stu-
dents and innocent people in 1952.
This incident gave the necessary
impetus to the demands of Ben-
gali people for more provincial
autonomy and self-determination,
The West Pakistani military-in-
dustrial complex was using the
Muslim League as a tool for suck-
ing the blood of Bangladesh. In
the 1954 provincial election, the
Muslim League was completely
obliterated by the overwhelming
victory of the United Front of sev-
eral Bengal-based political par-
treme political instability and
corrupt bureaucracy which ulti-
mately led the Coup d'E tat, stag-
ed in 1958 by the notorious Gen.
Ayub Khan. He opened a new
chapter of unprecedented exploi-
tation of Bengladesh through his
infamous 'Basic Democracy'. The
Punjabi military fascists e v e n
planned to kill Sheitkh Mujibur
Rahman and other Bengali poli-
tical leaders because of their de-
mands for provincial autonomy
and fabricated a totally false
case, known as the 'Agartala Con-
spiracy'.
The Bengalis protested in one
voice and Gen. Ayub Khan not
only withdrew the 'Conspiracy
Case' against Sheikh Mujib and
others, but was also forced to re-
sign. But this was not the end
THE MILITARY regime of
Yahya Khan could not resist the
demands of the Bengalis for a
free general election. He prom-
ised to hold the election in De-
cember, 1970. One month before
the election, Bangladesh was
swept over by the worst cyclone of
the century, killing an estimated
one million people. This tragedy
horrified the whole world, but not
Yahya Khan and his West Pakis-
tani accomplices.
Even a few weeks after the cy-
clone, no relief work had b e e n
organized by the central govern-
ment. The utter indifference and
extreme callousness of the West
Pakistani rulers greatly upset the
Bengalis, who -verwhelmingly vot-
ed for the Awami League of the
Sheikh Mujib in the December
election.
The landslide victory of A.wami
League greatly displeased the mil-
itary generals and political lend-
ers of West, Pakistanis who fear-
ed that they would not be able
to milk Bangladesh dry as they
had done for the last 24 years.
They outlawed the Awami
League, branded Mujib as a trait-
or, put him in jail in W e s t
Pakistan and started systematic
mass m'urder of the Bengalis on
the night of March 25.
They killed 10,000 people in
Dacca on that night alone and be-
gan to wipe out Bengali intelli-
gensia and political leaders. This
was the first time in the history
of mankind that a majority pro-
vince had been forced to secede
and declare independence.
The result of Pakistan Army's
brutal oppression is well known,
Despite the terror, the Bengalis
are fighting with whatever arms
they have. The resistence by the
Mukti Bahini or Liberation Artn
is rapidly taking on the earmarks
of a classic guerrilla war.
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