Go Lean…Caribbean

Go Lean Commentary

When Christopher Columbus discovered the New World on his initial voyage in 1492, he brought along with him Benedictine Priests as missionaries for any native people encountered.

Encounter they did!

From this start, the quest to assimilate native people (dubbed “Indians” by all European colonizers) – to make them civilized Christians – had started in earnest and didn’t end until …

… what time is it? 🙁

The experience of European colonizers versus indigenous tribes is similar throughout the New World, but the historic model of the quest to assimilate native people is best represented by the American experience. There were the colonial efforts and early American efforts – make that wars – but eventually there was a compromise for the “White” people to co-exist with the native people, to grant them “tribal sovereignty”. This quest is codified in the American Constitution and further expanded in the Tenth Amendment (Bill of Rights); see this quotation here:

It may be noted that while Native American tribal sovereignty is partially limited as “domestic dependent nations,” so too is the sovereignty of the federal government and the individual states – each of which is limited by the other. The will of the people underlies the sovereignty of both the U.S. federal government and the states, but neither sovereignty is absolute and each operates within a system of dual sovereignty. According to the reservation clause of the Tenth Amendment, the federal state possesses only those powers delegated to it by the Constitution (expressly or implicitly), while all other powers are reserved to the individual states or to the people. For example, the individual states hold full police powers. On the other hand, the individual states, like the Indian tribes, cannot print currency or conduct foreign affairs, or exercise other powers assigned by the Constitution to the federal state. Viewed in this light, tribal sovereignty is a form of parallel sovereignty^[1] within the U.S. constitutional framework, constrained by but not subordinate to other sovereign entities. – Source: Wikipedia

The book Go Lean…Caribbean – available to download for free – details a study of the Native American efforts to preserve and elevate their society while amongst the general American population. They failed (and continue to fail) miserably. The US has a long bad history of ethnic genocide and discrimination – see the VIDEO in Appendix B below – this had been the State of their American Union.

The Go Lean book asserts that there are lessons from Indian Reservations for the Caribbean region to learn and apply in our efforts to elevate our Caribbean region. The Go Lean book serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU), for the elevation of Caribbean society – for all member-states. A CU mission is to integrate resources to field a confederated response to economic challenges and security threats. This strategy was not applied by the Indian-Native American tribes during their history. After losing many one-on-one battles against the stronger US Army; they were forced into treaties that relegated them to these Reservations.

The official American policy did not stop with Reservations; it migrated to an Indian Termination Policy – an attempt to assimilate Native American people into mainstream society, into the American Union. See more here:

Indian Termination was the policy of the United States from the mid-1940s to the mid-1960s.^[1] It was shaped by a series of laws and policies with the intent of assimilating Native Americans into mainstream American society. Assimilation was not new. The belief that indigenous people should abandon their traditional lives and become “civilized” had been the basis of policy for centuries. But what was new was the sense of urgency, that with or without consent, tribes must be terminated and begin to live “as Americans”.^[2] To that end, Congress set about ending the special relationship between tribes and the federal government. The intention was to grant Native Americans all the rights and privileges of citizenship, reduce their dependence on a bureaucracy whose mismanagement had been documented, and eliminate the expense of providing services for native people.^[3]

In practical terms, the policy ended the U.S. government’s recognition of sovereignty of tribes, trusteeship over Indian reservations, and exclusion of state law applicability to native persons. From the government’s perspective Native Americans were to become taxpaying citizens, subject to state and federal taxes as well as laws, from which they had previously been exempt.^[4]

From the native standpoint, Northern Cheyenne former U.S. Senator from Colorado Ben Nighthorse Campbell said of assimilation and termination in a speech delivered in Montana^[5]:

“If you can’t change them, absorb them until they simply disappear into the mainstream culture. …In Washington’s infinite wisdom, it was decided that tribes should no longer be tribes, never mind that they had been tribes for thousands of years.” – Ben Nighthorse Campbell, Opening Keynote Address.

The policy for termination of tribes collided with the Native American peoples’ own desires to preserve native identity, reflected in an activism that increased after World War II and survived through the anti-collectivism era of Joseph McCarthy. The termination policy was changed in The Sixties and rising activism resulted in the ensuing decades of restoration of tribal governments and increased Native American self-determination.

See the links to the detailed Table of Contents on the Indian Termination Policy in Appendix A below.

The Go Lean book posits that if the Native American tribes were able to integrate and consolidate to one unified effort they would have been so much more successful. This is not our contention alone.

Today – May 22, 2017 – marks the 75^th birthday of the late Native American Activist Richard Oakes; this is the Google Doodle in his honor. His quest was to unite all Native American tribes in their struggle for civil rights. This was a noble gesture on his part, worthy of his devotion and sacrifice; (he was assassinated on September 20, 1972).

See the related VIDEO here:

VIDEO – Activist Richard Oakes delivers the Alcatraz proclamation – http://www.express.co.uk/life-style/science-technology/807660/richard-oakes-activist-biography-death-michael-morgan-assassination-google-doodle

Richard Oakes has been honoured with a special Google Doodle – today May 22, 2017 – which shows him alongside three locations that defined his life and legacy.

The illustration features the Mohawk Indian reservation in Akwesasne – where Oakes was born, Alcatraz Island – where he launched a 19-month occupation, and Pit River – where he helped to recover tribal land.

The book Go Lean … Caribbean has a similar quest as the foregoing activist and advocacy, for the 30 member-states of the Caribbean region to convene, collaborate and confederate. There are many benefits to flow from such an unification effort.

These benefits are pronounced in the Go Lean/CU roadmap as the prime directives, with these 3 statements:

• Optimization of the economic engines in order to grow the regional economy to $800 Billion and create 2.2 million new jobs.
• Establishment of a security apparatus to ensure public safety and protect the resultant economic engines.
• Improvement of Caribbean governance to support these engines, including a separation-of-powers between the member-states and CU federal agencies.

The Go Lean book stresses that reforming and transforming the Caribbean societal engines must be a regional pursuit. This was an early motivation for the roadmap, as pronounced in the opening Declaration of Interdependence (Pages 12 – 14):

xi. Whereas all men are entitled to the benefits of good governance in a free society, “new guards” must be enacted to dissuade the emergence of incompetence, corruption, nepotism and cronyism at the peril of the people’s best interest. The Federation must guarantee the executions of a social contract between government and the governed.

xvi. Whereas security of our homeland is inextricably linked to prosperity of the homeland, the economic and security interest of the region needs to be aligned under the same governance. Since economic crimes … can imperil the functioning of the wheels of commerce for all the citizenry, the accedence of this Federation must equip the security apparatus with the tools and techniques for predictive and proactive interdictions.

xxiv. Whereas a free market economy can be induced and spurred for continuous progress, the Federation must install the controls to better manage aspects of the economy: jobs, inflation, savings rate, investments and other economic principles. Thereby attracting direct foreign investment because of the stability and vibrancy of our economy.

xxxiii. Whereas lessons can be learned and applied from the study of the recent history of other societies, the Federation must formalize statutes and organizational dimensions to avoid the pitfalls of communities like East Germany, Detroit, Indian (Native American) Reservations, Egypt and the previous West Indies Federation. On the other hand, the Federation must also implement the good examples learned from developments/communities like New York City, Germany, Japan, Canada, the old American West and tenants of the US Constitution.

The Go Lean book provides 370-pages of turn-by-turn instructions on “how” to adopt new community ethos, plus the strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to execute so as to reboot, reform and transform the societal engines of Caribbean society.

Consider this one chapter … where the Go Lean book fully detailed the lessons learned from Native American Reservations; see  these headlines from Page 141:

10 Lessons from Indian Reservations

The Go Lean movement (book and preceding blog-commentaries) relates that cultures and countries are not guaranteed to survive: many native tribes and cultures have been assimilated. In fact, in a recent blog it was detailed how the Central Pacific island-nation of Kiribati is on course to lose all of its land territory due to global warming and the resultant higher sea-levels. They have thusly used their national treasuries to buy land elsewhere (Fiji) with the intent of relocating their people there. This will undoubtedly result in all new children being awarded Fiji birth certificates; and after 2 – 3 generations, the original culture of Kiribati will be extinct, lost to time and tides.

The book Go Lean…Caribbean and accompanying blogs have asserted that without remediation and mitigation efforts, there is no guarantee that countries and/or cultures can survive. The book therefore urges the Caribbean region to act! Already, the English-speaking nations have lost 70 percent of the tertiary educated populations to the Brain Drain, while the US Territories experience an even higher rate of societal abandonment. The Dutch and French Caribbean countries, with their automatic EU citizenship status have the same cultural extinction concerns. Notice these points further developed in these previous blogs:

The foregoing is a true and accurate history of the United States of America. Considering their treatment of Native Americans, there should be no rush for the Black-and-Brown of the Caribbean to seek refuge in the US. The book Go Lean posits that fleeing the Caribbean homeland  equates to “jumping from the frying-pan into the fire”. What’s more, the Go Lean book asserts – in the quest to lower the rate of societal abandonment – that it is easier to remediate social defects in the Caribbean homeland than to attempt to remediate the American eco-system. The “grass is not greener on the other side”.

We must learn from the experiences of the Native American Tribes and Reservations – in the US and other countries – and reboot our homeland to reform and transform our societal engines, to avoid any possible cultural termination-extinction fate.

We hereby urge all Caribbean stakeholders –governments and people (residents and Diaspora) – to lean-in to this Go Lean roadmap to continue to accentuate our culture. We must work against extinction and societal abandonment by making our homeland a better place to live, work and play. 🙂

Download the free e-book of Go Lean … Caribbean – now!

Sign the petition to lean-in for this roadmap for the Caribbean Union Trade Federation.

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Appendix A – Indian Termination Policy Contents

[The detailed content on the Indian Termination Policy is catalogued as follows:]

• 1. Process
• 2. Legislation and policy
  • 2.1 The Kansas Act of 1940
  • 2.2 Survey of Indian conditions
  • 2.3 North Dakota jurisdiction on Devils Lake Indian Reservation
  • 2.4 Indian Claims Commission Act
  • 2.5 Iowa jurisdiction on Sac and Fox Indian Reservation
  • 2.6 New York Act of 1948
  • 2.7 California Act of 1949
  • 2.8 New York Act of 1950
  • 2.9 House Concurrent Resolution 108
  • 2.10 Public Law 280
  • 2.11 Indian Relocation Act of 1956
• 3. Regaining federal recognition
  • 3.1 Re-recognized and restored tribes
  • 3.2 Tribes still seeking recognition and restoration
• 4. Repudiation
• 5. Tribes which evaded termination
  • 5.1 Iroquois Confederation of the Six Nations
  • 5.2 “Emigrant Indians” of New York
  • 5.3 Confederated Salish and Kootenai Nation
  • 5.4 Kansas tribes
  • 5.5 Chippewa Indians of the Turtle Mountain Reservation
  • 5.6 Minnesota Sioux Communities
  • 5.7 Seminole Tribe of Florida
  • 5.8 Wyandotte Tribe of Oklahoma
  • 5.9 California Rancherias
  • 5.10 Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma
  • 5.11 Seneca Nation
• 6. Jurisdictional terminations and restorations
  • 6.1 Menominee Termination Act
  • 6.2 Klamath Termination Act
  • 6.3 Western Oregon Indian Termination Act
  • 6.4 Alabama-Coushatta Tribe of Texas Termination Act
  • 6.5 Ute Indians of Utah
  • 6.6 Paiute Indian Tribe of Utah
  • 6.7 Oklahoma Termination Acts
  • 6.8 California Rancheria Termination Act
  • 6.9 Catawba Indian Tribe of South Carolina Termination Act
  • 6.10 Ponca Tribe of Nebraska
  • 6.11 Tiwa Indians of Texas (now known as Ysleta del Sur Pueblo)
• 7. Alaskan natives
  • 7.1 Response and effects
• 8. Politics
  • 8.1 Legislative figures
  • 8.2 Tribal figures
• 9. Effects
  • 9.1 Education
  • 9.2 Health care
  • 9.3 Economy
• 10. See also
• 11. References
• 12. Sources

Source: Wikipedia Online Encyclopedia; retrieved May 22, 2017 from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_termination_policy

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Appendix B VIDEO – The Tragedy of Wounded Knee  – https://youtu.be/0EdRT56WK7Q

Uploaded on Jan 22, 2011 – Not even the powers of the Ghost Dance could save the victims of the Wounded Knee Massacre.

• Category: Education
• License: Standard YouTube License