By Brenda Norrell
Censored News
http://www.bsnorrell.blogspot.com
Photo: John Kane
First Lady Michelle Obama’s use of Lacrosse for publicity at the White House was an act of hypocrisy by the Obama Administration, says Mohawk radio host John Kane.
The Washington Post carried an article on the demonstration of Lacrosse in the First Lady’s Let’s Move campaign, which comes one year after the Obama Administration refused to honor the passports of the Huadenosaunee, who created Lacrosse.
Kane said, "This would be the same White House that refused to recognize the Haudenosaunee Passports and kept the Iroquois Nationals from competing at the World Cup Games in Manchester, England last year.
“There is a huge difference between irony and hypocrisy,” said Kane, host of Let’s Talk Native Pride.
In the Washington Post, Mike Wise wrote about the Iroquois Nationals Lacrosse Team.
Wise said it was almost a year ago to the day when the team was forbidden from competing in the world championships in Manchester, England, because its members’ sovereign-nation passports were not honored.
Kane points out that it wasn’t a court that halted the Lacrosse team from traveling on their Haudenosaunee passports to compete in England, it was the Obama Administration.
Kane said, “This is the White House that refuses to recognize the Haudenosaunee Passports. It wasn’t a court or a state, and it wasn’t England, that kept them from going to Manchester last year. It was this administration that failed them.”
In a related story in the news, a Mohawk official is outraged that Canadian border guards called her Haudenosaunee passport a “fantasy document.”
The National Post reported: “Joyce King, director of the Mohawk Council of Akwesasne’s Justice Department, said she was traveling from New York State into Canada on June 18 when border officials refused to recognize her passport issued by the Iroquois Confederacy. The document made headlines last summer when a 47-person delegation of Iroquois athletes from Canada and the United States were turned away from their U.K.-bound flight.
“They called it a ‘fantasy document,’ but that’s my identity,” she said from her office on the Akwesasne reserve, the Canadian part of a Mohawk community that straddles the Ontario, Quebec and New York state borders. “If it’s a fantasy document, does that make me a fantasy person living in a fantasy country?”
Kane said identification cards produced by colonizers are not an option, including the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative ID for border crossers.
“If the Haudenosaunee go along with its production of the WHTI compliant IDs, they will have caved in. These 'hi tech' cards are U.S. Identification cards that we get to pay for and put our 'Indian' logos on. They require a scannable strip (for their purposes), an expiration date (for their purposes), hi tech photos specifically designed for facial recognition computer programs (for their purpose), an RFID chip for remote detection and scanning of the card (for their purpose) and a declaration of citizenship (U.S. or Canada).”
Reference:
Lacrosse celebrates its Native American origins during visit to the White House
http://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/lacrosse-celebrates-its-native-american-origins-during-visit-to-the-white-house/2011/07/11/gIQA34Xf9H_story.html
Ottawa in ‘explosive’ situation over rejected Iroquois passport
http://news.nationalpostottawa-in-explosive-situation-over-rejected-iroquois-passport/
Let's Talk Native Pride
http://letstalknativepride.blogspot.com/