500 Years of Indigenous Resistance, 2nd Edition

500 Years of Indigenous resistance

Indigenous Land Within United States, 1492-1977

were raised, meetings held, and petitions sent to Ottawa. In 1927, a spe-
cial Joint Committee of the Senate and House of Commons found that
Natives had “not established any claim to the lands of BC based on ab-
original or other title.”^41 That same year Section 141 was added to the
Indian Act prohibiting raising money and prosecuting claims to land or
retaining a lawyer.
While the European nations would lead the world into two great
wars for hegemony, political instability and economic depredations
formed the general pattern in South and Central America. Military
regimes backed by U.S. and British imperialism carried out genocidal
policies and severe repression against Indigenous peoples. As in North
America, Indigenous peoples were consigned to desolate reserve lands
where the state or missionaries retained control over political, economic,
social and cultural systems. However, in contrast to the colonization of
North America, where Native peoples were viewed as irrelevant to eco-
nomic expansion, the Indians of South and Central America remained as
substantial sources of exploited labour. With the large-scale investments
from the imperialist centres in the form of loans, the export of primary
resources took priority. The ‘rubber boom’ was one example, with tens of
thousands of Indians dying in forced labour, relocations, and massacres
carried out by major land owners, companies, and hired death squads.

In the wake of the rubber boom, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru

became battlegrounds for a war between oil companies. Sub-

sidiaries of Shell and Exxon fought for exploration rights in the

Amazon, even to the extent of becoming involved in a border war

41. Quoted in Wilson Duff, op. cit., p. 69.