The assumption of right to ownership saturates everything that westerners do. Witness the endless litany of tribally associated appellations that have gone the way of trademarked logos and product names in a questionable display of "honour": BlackHawk, Kiowa, Comanche, Apache, Cherokee, Pontiac, Crazy Horse (beer), Redskins, Chiefs, Braves, Winnibago, Navajo, even the Touareg from Africa are not safe from the unimaginative minds of corporate leeches who respect nothing but paper money and coercive applications of power.

"Trademarks"
"Cree, the Cree Logo, Cree Research, Cree Lighting, G-SiC, MegaBright, MegaBright Plus, SuperBright, XBright, XBright Plus, RazerThin, UltraBright, Zero Recovery, and SuperBlue are trademarks or registered trademarks of Cree, Inc. in the United States and/or other countries. Other trademarks, product and company names mentioned in this website are the property of their respective owners."

The assumption of right to ownership saturates everything that westerners do. Witness the endless litany of tribally associated appellations that have gone the way of trademarked logos and product names in a questionable display of "honour": BlackHawk, Kiowa, Comanche, Apache, Cherokee, Pontiac, Crazy Horse (beer), Redskins, Chiefs, Braves, Winnibago, Navajo, even the Touareg from Africa are not safe from the unimaginative minds of corporate leeches who respect nothing but paper money and coercive applications of power.

Witness the appropriation of the word Cree and how its use has become legal property of some corporation off in North Carolina. Notice the terms of the trademark: registered trademarks in the US or other countries...

Talk about hedging your bets.

I admit it, I am bitterly resentful of what I see as simply another arrogant presumption of a bunch of parasitic and disrespectful corporate capitalist driven moniyaws who assume that because their white courts and white laws approve of their appropriation that it is right. That just because they got a piece of paper that says "Cree" now belongs to them, that it does.

I am Cree. Only I and all my kin in the Cree Nation have sole ownership of the word Cree, not some company in the US. If anyone owns the name, it is us, and our "ownership" of the name predates any company now and a hundred years in the past from now and a hundred years into the future from now.

What are they going to do next? Start charging us a fee everytime we use our own tribal name? Make us change our name from Cree to something else? Given the track-record of the way it has gone with our dealings with moniyaws, I wouldn't be surprised if this is the way it goes.

We have to do something. We have to take a stand to reclaim our tribal name and protect it from being used as a corporate trademark. We have to because we need to draw a line in the sand and say "This is it. This is where you do not cross," to anyone who would appropriate what is ours by rights far older than the white man's business law. We have to because if we don't then giving in will just get easier and easier and before you know it we will have given in so much that there will be nothing left.

We have to do something, we Cree, we have to protect what is ours, ALL that is ours, whether it is our tribe name, our Ancestral homelands, our language, our cultural and spiritual beliefs... The world needs to learn that some things ARE sacred and not for sale. Our people need to see that we can and always will fight for what is truly right, in tribal solidarity, forming a united front against the forces that would try to harm us in any way.

The Cree have a history of being a warrior people. We still are, only the battle fields have changed; we do battle now in the white man's courts and with his weapons---but we are still a Warrior People and this fight is simply another skirmish in our long history.

They say that you have to pick your battles -- I don't see that we have the luxury or room to do that: all of our battles are equally important and inter-related -- political, legal, cultural, spiritual. They all are interwoven and a loss in one field impacts another area just as a victory in one field impacts another area. It is all the same struggle for the same ends: cultural integrity and the right to self-determination.

I can only speak for myself when I say that I don't want my children to grow up seeing the name of their Nation reduced to the selling and marketing tool of a foreign culture. We have enough obstacles to remove so that they can grow up healthy and with their self-esteem intact in a country that derides us for our tribal roots without having to worry about another one that is unnecessary.

Help me to take a stand. There is power in numbers, in the unity of many voices lifted up into the roar of a single song to shake the very foundations of the would-be corporate conquistadores who sit smug and distant in their glass and steel mountains.

Nehi Katawasisiw
Pihpikisis Cree Nation
nehikat@hotmail.com