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See also: "Resolutions on Cross-Cultural Breeding"
By a contributor March 24, 2005
On March 21, a sixteen-year-old Red Lake indigenous youth allegedly shot and killed his grandfather and a companion, a security guard at his usual high school, several students, a teacher, and himself, on the Red Lake Reservation inside Minnesota borders.
Let the pontificating of the "experts" and religious zealots begin.(1)
It's been almost six years since Dylan Klebold shot and killed Cassie Bernall purportedly after asking her if she believed in God.(2) Now, the Associated Press is spreading the rumor that "before killing himself, he [alleged Red Lake Reservation school multiple killer Jeff Weise] fired on fellow students, asking one if he believed in God before pulling the trigger" according to police.(3) Drawing from different sources, the same Associated Press article characterizes the suspect as a loner goth who killed his "well-liked and respected" tribal police officer grandfather. The "victim" security guard "was remembered as a gentle spirit who loved the children he watched over at Red Lake High School." The rest of the story is a lot of sentimentalizing about three student victims. One was friendly. One was just a "typical teenager." Another was "nice," and her shocked mother wonders how she got shot.
This is what passes for news reporting, as if such information about individual victims' psychology were supposed to help readers analyze the situation. The quality of this reporting shows that Amerikans have learned no lessons since Columbine. Indeed, the fear-mongers are already calling for increased surveillance and control of youth as if ending school violence were simply a matter of enough persynnel, technology, or perhaps more/better psychology. A USA Today editorial remarks: "If schools use these latest 10 deaths as a reason to redouble safety efforts, then perhaps some good can emerge from the rampage at Red Lake."(4) The writer says this even after acknowledging that "Students are 100 times more likely to be murdered outside school than inside."
As Arville Garland once said before killing his daughter and her "hippie friends," "children have no freedom; they are property, just like a book."(5) Garland was "a stable citizen and a loving father . . . driven to desperation by attitudes of youth beyond his comprehension."(6) It isn't just children who are said to be influenced by violent entertainment. "Horrible as it may be, Garland's crime is not without precedent, at least on the screen. Before the trial began, Judge Joseph A. Gillis saw the movie Joe, and was struck by the similarities. He strongly suggested that both prosecution and defense attorneys see the film, and during jury selection, he carefully questioned the jurors to exclude any who had seen it."(6) That was almost thirty-five years ago. The entertainment media and the entertainment news media today may not be the main cause of copycat multiple killings, but they certainly are not helping with all of their unscientific and contradictory portrayals of the "epidemic" of school violence that is also described as an unprecedented "tragedy."
The rulers will take advantage of whatever "tragedy" is currently popular in the news to uphold the oppressor police, rent-a-pigs, and courts. So it is with the judge Rowland Barnes, who has drawn "an outpouring of support" according to his teary-eyed daughter on the Nancy Grace show (March 22, 2005). Everybody wept for the Tennessee school bus driver allegedly killed by a high school freshman on March 2 just a few weeks ago ("AmeriKKKan 'generosity': United $tates abolishes the juvenile death penalty and pats itself on the back," ). Now, a storytelling-style article sings eulogies to "unarmed security guard shot and killed at the school's entrance"(7) at Red Lake High School. "[H]e enjoyed kids and was a gentle, giving person."(7)
The notion that there has recently been an increasing epidemic of school violence has been refuted since the Littleton multiple killing in 1999. Even the bourgeois reporters (as shown above) and government will concede that there has actually been a decline, so there is no need to repeat the arguments in detail here. A recent u.$. government report claims that "in each school year from July 1, 1992, to June 30, 2000, youth ages 5–19 were at least 70 times more likely to be murdered away from school than at school" (p. 6).(8) In fact, between July 1, 1999 (after the multiple killing at Columbine High School), and June 30, 2000, the total number of "school-associated" homicides and suicides involving school-age youth "translates into less than 1 homicide or suicide of a school-aged youth at school per million students enrolled during the 1999–2000 school year. Away from school, during roughly the same time period, there were 2,124 homicides and 1,922 suicides of youth ages 5–19." Bullying rates among 8-12-year-old children did not change significantly between 2001 and 2003, but fights among students in grades 9-12 declined steadily between 1993 and 2003. There were 34 homicides at school of youth ages 5-19 in 1992-93 (p. 60), but only 10 in 2000-01 and 14 in 2001-02 according to preliminary figures.
The trend in fights involving "American Indians" is not so clear for the available data between 1999 and 2003 (p. 80). However, between 1999 and 2003, the percent of "American Indian" students "grades 9–12 who reported being threatened or injured with a weapon on school property during the previous 12 months" increased from 13.2 to 22.1.
The overall decline in school violence and even school homicides specifically is no longer controversial except to the completely ignorant. What does remain controversial is whether there has recently been an increase in the number of school multiple or "mass" killings and whether that constitutes an actual trend. However, even looking at school homicides (not just multiple homicides) in general, the less than one school-associated homicide/suicide per million school-age youth in the united $tates suggests that violent deaths of students at school do not really constitute a phenomenon. It is such a low-frequency event. It is difficult to explain something that happens so infrequently, and this is why even the u.$. government with all its resources still has had difficulty studying adult serial killers for instance as well as adults who abduct and kill children.
MIM could get on the bandwagon and suggest reasons for why school multiple killings in particular happen, but that might be presuming that school multiple killings were actually a phenomenon in their own right. True, the united $tates has more of these incidents than most countries that are smaller in size, but the more or less scattered "pattern" of school multiple killings in the united $tates (the distribution of non-multiple homicides at school is another issue) suggests a deeper underlying cause with more effects than just school multiple homicides or school homicides in general.
The principal contradiction within the Euro-Amerikan oppressor nation is in age. The Red Lake Band of Chippewa is part of a First Nation, not the white oppressor nation, but the patriarchal oppression of children impacts First Nations children, too, and is a context for understanding school multiple killings. It is interesting for example that in the 1999-2000 school year, there were almost as many suicides as homicides among youth 5-19 years old away from school.(8) But the media typically focuses on the homicides, not the suicides, in school "massacres." It neglects youth suicide and then it wonders where all the youth anger is coming from. The point here is not that the gender oppressors could end youth suicide without ending patriarchy, but that they contribute to violence among and against youth.
Not to mention the number of parents who kill their children is far greater than number of children who kill each other or adults, but parents' and other adults' killing children is apparently things as usual to the media and not worth reporting, like violence among and against oppressed nationalities. It was shocking when children "suddenly" "started" shooting up schools in white neighborhoods. Now, it shocks the white man's media to find out that First Nations reservations (or territories that need expanding) aren't as idyllic as the media itself has made them out to be. Or as affluent with casinos as the media, such as Ann Coulter, has portrayed them to be.(9) The oppressors only care about violence among youth when it disturbs their assumptions about where, and to whom, violence normally happens.
Inevitably, their understandings of "youth violence" are irrational. For example, they will suggest that 14-year-olds deserve to be executed for killing their school bus drivers, and then in the same breath suggest as a solution that "parents need to get closer and more caring . . . [t]eenagers need to feel loved and nurtured to make this a better society."(10) It is just stupid gender-oppressor adult irrationality saying that children are competent enough to be executed but so incompetent as to need intensive and prolonged "nurturing" by parents. Others claim that genes predispose certain people to committing acts of violence, which shifts the focus away from what causes violence to what precipitates it in the short run.
It is also a fallacy to think school violence can end when children as a group are subjected to various threats of violence on a daily basis. This isn't just about children being forced to go to school, bussed to school, scrutinized and reported by other students, searched, interrogated, harassed and humiliated, forced to go to p$ychologists, drugged and monitored, and so on. All that's real, but the repression of children is more widespread than just schools. Age hierarchies pervade every institution in patriarchal society. Children are subordinated everywhere. Children are forcefully confined to the sites of patriarchal oppression called "homes" and "schools," and then when the sh*t hits the fan somewhere, the oppressors act like they don't know what hit them.
The specific repression that children experience in schools isn't unimportant, however. Recently, Japan starting tagging some school children with radio frequency identification (RFID) chips, which really cements the repression of children in schools.(11) Lately there is a discussion of youth violence in Japan too.(12)
Last month, ImCorp introduced RFID tagging to school children in Sutter, California.(13) Conceivably such technology could reduce fights (which is not the main goal of the RFID tagging), but that will only make school "massacres" more surprising when they still happen. Imagine the headlines: "Student with perfect attendance goes on a rampage."
Weise was a youth oppressed under patriarchy. Various people have described Weise as being "anti-social," but anyone who resists "developing" or being "socialized" in the way that the imperialist-patriarchy wants them to risks being labeled in the same way. Weise was not "angry" at things at general, but responding to his specific situation. A so-called "Red Lake" could not have happened anywhere, anytime. Yet, the media will inevitably portray the Red Lake shootings as a sort of resource issue, saying that First Nations children are just like other children, that they need p$ychologists, and so on, and intensify the surveillance and control of First Nations territories.First Nations youth a Nazi-sympathizer?
Red Lake High School certainly was not using RFID last Monday, when the shootings happened, but it is not clear what measures the high school had taken before Monday to prevent violence. MIM does not claim to have the inside scoop on what happened on a certain First Nations reservation, but MIM would not mind pointing out some things about the media coverage of the Red Lake shootings.
First of all, it is interesting that media coverage of Ward Churchill took a nose dive recently (when it got closer to the removal of Terri Schiavo's feeding tube on March 18). It's like Ward Churchill is last week's indigenous news, and this week it's the Red Lake "massacre," with nothing else happening in First Nations, such as the lawsuit against the University of Illinois Board of Trustees for the university's use of Chief Illiniwek's image for a sports mascot. That's right: Ann Coulter and other white nationalists only pretend to care about the misappropriation of indigenous culture when the real issue is a witch hunt against a certain anti-imperialist professor. Shocking.
The Red Lake shooter was not European, but he reportedly posted on Nazi message boards on the Internet.(14) The fact that the Red Lake Reservation shooting suspect himself had indigenous ancestry is something that the media has been strangely slow to report even after finding out the shooting suspect's name and relatives' names. This awkwardness is not surprising after the same media has paid so much attention to, and itself scrutinized, embattled University of Colorado professor Ward Churchill's indigenous blood quantum . This writer does not understand exactly how an indigenous youth on Red Lake Reservation could come to associate with such transparent white nationalist ideology, but the media and the reactionary blogosphere need to own up to something: they are guilty of contributing to the perception that blood quantum, not culture, is decisive in the formation of indigenous identity.
When the white man tries so much to pressure First Nations into abandoning culture as an anchor for indigenous identity, he can hardly pretend to be shocked when an indigenous persyn drifts away from First Nation culture, by developing a Nazi persona on the Internet for instance. On the one hand, the media want to pretend shock about the possibility of a Jeff Weise Nazi paradox. On the other hand, like the Nazis, the same media is jumping all over Ward Churchill for its speculations regarding his supposed lack of indigenous blood. They call him a "fake Indian" with no proof.
The fact that culture is at some points more decisive than blood quantum or even ancestry in general is difficult for the white man to comprehend, so there is this awkward silence, puzzlement at most, in several news articles that mention Jeff Weise's alleged participation on Nazi message boards, but do not identify Weise as being either indigenous, white, or of any other nation. All those who fail to combat actively the bloodline theory and eugenics are ideologically complicit in the Red Lake murders.
This writer does not know what was Jeff Weise's own blood quantum, but his tribe appears to have a 1/4 blood quantum requirement for membership.(15) Minimum blood quantum requirements do not necessarily reflect notions of racial purity, but as it turns out Weise believed in "racial purity."(16) It is not clear in these news stories, and even after reading Weise's message board posts, whether Weise actually believed in eugenics or was just against future "racial" mixing, but he evidently upheld the strictest blood quantum requirement possible. There is no other way to create a nation with pure blood but to set the blood quantum requirement to 100% and exclude everyone who has a lower blood quantum. Any other definition of blood purity would be arbitrary. Far from benefiting First Nations, such a policy would liquidate the majority of First Nations in North America if implemented today. In fact, the purity of all nations in the world is a myth: they would all perish if someone in a time machine were able to go back and remove certain "impure" ancestors. Inter-racial mixing has always gone on.
According to the Census 2000 American Indian and Alaska Native Summary File, Red Lake Reservation with about five thousand people is the 89th (of 424) most populous indigenous "area / home land" (not the same thing as a nation or First Nations territory) within u.$. borders. In contrast, the smallest indigenous area / home land, the Stillaguamish Reservation in Washington State, has only about a hundred people. Assuming, wrongly but for the sake of argument, that the Stillaguamish Tribe had an average blood quantum of 100%, a 100% blood quantum requirement might prevent the tribe's population from dispersing, but it could also be a barrier to much-increased membership. That's an example of the kind of complication caused by white genocide that causes MIM to support various approaches by the world's smallest nations. At the same time, it is criminal for larger nations to raise the "blood" question at all, especially when, as in the U.$. case, the white nation caused the "blood" so-called problem in the first place.
The real problem is loss of culture and thus cross-cultural marriages when a nation is so small that it may cease to exist, as in the case of some First Nations but not the vast majority of the world's people. If people are not clear about this, they clear the way for Nazi and neo-Nazi inspired "solutions."
There is a difference between blood purity as a policy in the form of blood quantum requirements, and 100% blood purity as an ideal. Unfortunately, the white man's notion of race has pervaded the internal semi-colonies and does not need to take the obvious form of Hitlerism, but it is telling that Jeff Weise's ideas about racial purity apparently developed in the context of a certain form of Euro-Amerikan nationalist ideology on the Internet. David Duke did say that all people have a right to preserve their national heritage. That does not mean reactionary narrow nationalism works for First Nations or any other oppressed nation within u.$. borders.
It is ironic that the Red Lake multiple killing resulted in an immediate decrease in indigenous blood, but unsurprising because the same violence wouldn't have been able to achieve Jeff Weise's alleged goal of racial purity. The bloodline theory, which MIM has dealt with and opposes, debunked itself in a big way on Monday, and the white man's media should own up to its responsibility for making blood quantum principal and perpetuating the bloodline theory that motivated the shooting suspect. The various white nationalists pretend to protect the blood purity of First Nations people and then put on these angel faces when people start expressing hatred for the "half-bloods."
Superficially, there appears to be no connection between the Red Lake shooting suspect and recent news coverage of questions pertaining to Ward Churchill's indigenous ancestry, but Jeff Weise's racialist nationalist ideology needs to be dealt with politically, not psychologically. There is a reason why we never hear about communist or anti-imperialist discontented youth shooting up schools in the united $tates. Not only does fascism have a larger mass base in the united $tates: revolutionary science does not lend itself to irrational attacks such as what happened at Red Lake.
"NativeNazi" (username "Todesengel"), alleged Internet handle of Jeff Weise, claims in one post in the Nationalist Forums that the Soviet Union killed more people "than the 3rd Reich." Believing in this lie did not stop Weise from killing people himself in an irrational way. Apparently believing Black Book of Communism garbage enabled him to carry out a mass murder and believe he was still better than the communists.
We would say that the mass murder was irrational even within the most short-sighted form of Weise's own ideology because he reportedly shot indigenous youth at Red Lake High School at random. On the other hand, capitalism is the incarnation of short-sighted economics and with the Anglo-Saxon emphasis opposing disciplined organizations in the name of individualism, we can see in some ways that Weise took up an All-Amerikkkan view.
Weise's failure to understand that genetic mixing does not itself cause cultural mixing (and that cultural mixing does not translate into decadence in culture), combined with his perception of the real problems that First Nations people face trying to overcome the colonialism- and now imperialism-caused devastation of their nations, may have motivated his actions on Monday.
The u.$. government had already set its sights on the Red Lake Reservation before the recent shootings.(18) At the same time, the oppressors will take advantage of the Red Lake shootings as another excuse to further the control of youth on reservations and in the united $tates more broadly. The white man's shoot-em-up mentality founded on the genocide of indigenous peoples is not only playing itself out among white kids as at Columbine. The white man's various ideologies have infected the First Nations as well.
Notes:
1. Dan Olson, "Searching for reasons behind school shootings," March 23, 2005, http://news.minnesota.publicradio.org/features/2005/03/23_olsond_teens/
2. Dave Cullen, "Who said 'Yes'?" September 30, 1999, http://www.salon.com/news/feature/1999/09/30/bernall/
3. Associated Press, "A look at Minn. shooting suspect, victims," March 22, 2005, http://www.myrtlebeachonline.com/mld/myrtlebeachonline/news/nation/11204611.htm
4. "A grim reminder for schools," March 22, 2005, http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/2005-03-22-red-lake-edit_x.htm
5. Finvola Drury, "Children have no freedom. they are property just like a book," Social Text, no. 9/10 (1984): 263-267.
"Arville Garland went to jail, but there was tremendous sympathy for him. Today he could be the patron saint of the organization calling itself TOUGHLOVE. Back then, the Detroit Free Press account told us that 'Many people say that Sandy and Scott and Greg and Tony deserved to be punished for the way they lived.' Deserved to be punished " (p. 264).
6. "Joe and Arville," Times, December 7, 1970, http://time-proxy.yaga.com/time/archive/preview/0,10987,877135,00.html
7. Mara Gottfried and Shannon Prather, "Classmates recall shooter's violent drawings, frightening behavior," http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/news/nation/11204307.htm
8. National Center for Education Statistics et al., "Indicators of School Crime and Safety: 2004," November 29, 2004, http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2005/2005002.pdf
9. Ann Coulter, "Not Crazy Horse, just crazy," February 17, 2005, http://www.townhall.com/columnists/anncoulter/ac20050217.shtml
"I forgot Auschwitz had a casino."
10. "Teenagers know right from wrong," March 22, 2005, http://www.fortwayne.com/mld/journalgazette/news/editorial/11199706.htm
11. "Schoolchildren to be RFID-chipped," July 8, 2004, http://networks.silicon.com/lans/0,39024663,39122042,00.htm
12. Anthony Faiola, "Youth Violence Has Japan Struggling for Answers," August 9, 2004, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A50678-2004Aug8.html
13. "U.S. School Children to be RFID-tagged," February 11, 2005, http://www.rfid-weblog.com/archives/us_school_children_to_be_rfidtagged.html
Greg Lucas, "Students kept under surveillance at school : Some parents angry over radio device," February 10, 2005, http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/02/10/BAGG0B8I4D1.DTL
14. Daffodil Altan, "American Indian Media Grapples With Red Lake Shootings," March 23, 2005, cificnews.org/news/view_article.html?article_id=8bed71a6775975806bc68903e66d12d6
15. "Tribal Government: Teacher Background Information," http://www.cri-bsu.org/IA_web/htdocs/resources/govbkgnd.html
16. "Massacre at Native American Indian Reserve : Baby-faced killer admired hitler," http://newpaper.asia1.com.sg/top/story/0,4136,85173,00.html (That photo is not current. See the second MSNBC article below.)
"Details emerge on tragedy at Red Lake Reservation," March 23, 2005, http://indianz.com/News/2005/007192.asp
"Teen who killed 9 claimed Nazi leanings," March 23, 2005, http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7259823/
"Teen who killed 9 was 'not the boy I knew'," March 24, 2005, http://msnbc.msn.com/id/7275159/
17. Steve Martinez, "LNSG condemns modern society in school shooting," March 22, 2005, http://www.nazi.org/nazi/policy/weise/
/community/forum/YaBB.cgi?board=News;action=usersrecentposts;username=Todesengel
18. Dawn Walton, "Life on Red Lake Reservation marred by decades of unrest : Murder rate called 'staggering' on reserve plagued by poverty, drugs and crime," March 23, 2005, obeandmail.com/servlet/ArticleNews/TPStory/LAC/20050323/SHOOTSIDE23/TPEducation/