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Labour’s voice should be heard on Mideast

The explosion in the occupied Arab ter-
ritories in the Middle East is not a matter
to be left exclusively to the people who live
in the area. It is a matter for the world,
Canada included.

The scenes coming across our television
sets are horrifying, showing Palestinian
youths being beaten and shot by an arro-
gant, self-righteous government practising
state terrorism. But the drama in the
Israeli-occupied territories is but a grim
foreboding of what this ticking device,
with its potential for escalating into some-
thing much bigger and ultimately uncon-
trollable, holds for the entire globe.

Today, the contest pits the children of
Palestine, armed with whatever comes to
hand together with their unshakable belief
in their right to a homeland, against an
occupying state armed with the most
sophisticated offensive weapons and a
credo of vengeance.

Tomorrow, if decisive and correct
action is not taken, the entire world could
be dragged down.

So far the Canadian government has
evaded its responsibility. External Affairs
Minister Joe Clark, while deploring the
Israeli’s use of food as a weapon, has
pathetically called for restraint on both
sides of an unequal struggle. Ottawa fears
upsetting its cozy relationship with the
U.S. State Department which happens to
be Israel’s chief ally, if one discounts racist
South Africa.

It is therefore the people of Canada, the

Labor in action

labour movement in the first place, who
must make their voices heard.

For a start, we need to get in tune with
the overwhelming sentiment of the inter-
national community which calls for an
international conference on the Middle
East, sponsored by, and involving the
Security Council of the United Nations
and ensuring participation of both Israel
and the Palestine Liberation Organiza-
tion.

Such a conference would have as its
primary aim (as a means of bringing peace
in the region) the guaranteeing of Israel’s
security and the establishment of a home-
land for the Palestinian people. Without
such a concept, peace will be elusive, the
outrages against humanity will continue
and the danger of war, including world
war, will escalate.

The idea of such an international con-
ference is gaining ground. Many of the
U.S. allies in Europe have spoken in
favour.

To win such a conference, international

pressure will need to be applied to turn
both the United States and Israel from
their path of aggression and state terror-
ism. Just how difficult such a task will be is
demonstrated by the fact that it was the
U.S. and Israel, who preach the loudest
about international terrorism, who alone
opposed the UN resolution on the subject.

International pressure coincides with
new possibilities for lessening world ten-
sions, brought about by the Washington
summit and the signing of the INF agree-
ment. It also coincides with a growing
body of new thinking inside Israel itself.

__ An excellent start in the new interna-
tional atmosphere was made by the visit of
Canadian Labour Congress president
Shirley Carr to both Washington and
Moscow where she put forward Canadian
labour’s position on world peace.

Of particular note was the CLC’s wel-
coming of the INF treaty and its call for
extension of the peace process to include
all nuclear weapons. More specifically,

Carr called for the creation of a nuclear
weapons free zone in the Arctic, a demand
which coincides with both the needs of
world peace and Canadian sovereignty.
She also indicated to the U.S. administra-
tion the disapproval of the Canadian
labour movement for continued U.S.
interference in Nicaragua.

Canadian labour is stepping up its sup-
port for the workers and people of south-
ern Africa in their struggle against racism
and apartheid.

But a major blank spot in what is oth-
erwise is becoming a consistent interna
tional affairs policy by the CLC is its lack
of a coherent and forward-looking policy
on the Middle East.

There are still strong forces within the
trade union movement who would con-
tinue to drag official labour policy back-
wards. Nevertheless, the time has come for
Canadian labour to add its voice to the
growing demand of the international
community for a just settlement in the
Middle East.

It is heartening to see growing numbers
of Canadian trade unionists of Jewish
background who are demanding just such
a policy switch.

That is the spirit required to turn
around the “open-minded” Joe Clarks
and ultimately the Ronald Reagans and
Yitsaks Rabins, so that the Middle East
can ultimately be a zone of peace, har-
mony and justice rather than a powderkeg
for war.

i Sasa

Boycott hits museum display

By PAUL OGRESKO

While crowds continue to greet the Olympic torch
runners as they make their way across the country towards
Calgary, growing numbers of people have come out to
“share the shame.”

Protests have greeted’ the torch relay in cities from St.
John’s, Newfoundland to Calgary, Alberta as demonstra-
tors show their support for the Lubicon Cree and their
50-year struggle against the government of Canada, the
Alberta government and the major oil companies for recog-
nition of their land claim.

As the torch nears its destination, the focus has shifted to
the Glenbow museum and its display of Native artifacts,
entitled The Spirit Sings. Shell-Canada has invested $1.1
million in the display — ironically about the same amount
of profit that Shell and another torch relay sponsor, Petro-

- Canada, pump daily in oil and gas revenue from Lubicon

land.

A slick advertising campaign has promoted the exhibition
as a tribute to Native culture — but there is no mention of
the bleak reality facing aboriginal people in Canada today.

The Lubicon Cree have carried on an international boy-
cott of the exhibition, citing the hypocrisy of an exhibition
being sponsored by the same corporations responsible for
the destruction of the Lubicon people. Letters were sent to
all the museums invited by Glenbow, asking them not to
participate in the exhibition.

The boycott met with a positive response. Thirty of the 94
museums that Glenbow had invited refused to lend artifacts
to the show, including the prestigious Museum of the Amer-
ican Indian in New York, home of the largest collection of
North American Indian artifacts in the world.

Spokespersons for the museum stated that they were
concerned not only with the past Native heritage but also
with contemporary Native culture and its survival.

The debate has raised moral questions about the role of
museums and their responsibilities. On one side are such
museums as Glenbow which insist that exhibitions such as
The Spirit Sings are outside the realm of politics and that
campaigns such as that mounted by the Lubicon undermine
the independence of museums.

But participating museums have chosen to ignore a reso- _

lution passed at the 15th General Assembly of Museums
(ICOM) in Buenos Aires in 1986 which stated that ethnic
artifacts should not be used against the interests of the ethnic
groups that produce them.

_ The government-corporate assault on the rights of the

fe =v erty a

Luk‘con supporters greet the Olympic torch relay in
Regina last week. The Regina protest was sponsored by
the Fedration of Saskatchewan Indian Nations, Cana-
dian Labour Congress, Saskatchewan Federation of
Labour, Saskatchewan Action Committee on the Sta-
tus of Women and many others.

Lubicon and the apparent willingness of many museums to
align themselves with this attack has angered Native organi-

‘zations and their supporters across Canada.

Bruce Trigger, former honourary curator of ethnology at
the McCord Museum of Canadian history in Montreal, and
Joan Ryan, formerly an anthropologist with Glenbow, are
among those who have resigned to protest their respective
museums’ support of The Spirit Sings.

The Spirit Sings exhibition has also focussed attention on
the moral right of museums to hold and display sacred
native artifacts. There remains a bitter aftertaste of the past.
The paternalistic attitude that Native people and their cul-
tures were little mor than guinea pigs for science to dissect
and interpret at will.

There is little of the contemporary in The Spirit Sings
exhibition. Most of the items were pillaged and stolen during
colonialization. Native people have never asked the partici-
pating museums to be the legal custodians of their heritage
and while the pst cannot be undone many anthropoligists
elieve museums have a responsibility to deal with the pres-
ent.

The slick radio promotion for The Spirit Sings claims the
exhibition is “an exploration of the spiritual strength of
Canada’s aboriginal people.” The ad is inadvertently
correct — the past strength is to be found in the museum,
but the contemporary strength is in the protests taking place
outside.

TRIBUNE PHOTO —JANE BOUEY |

CPC urges:
‘Speak out for
Mideast peace’

Charging that continued Israeli occupa-
tion is “directly responsible” for the out-
burst of anger among Palestinians on the
West Bank and Gaza, the Communist Par-
ty’s central executive committee called on
the federal government Jan. 14 to “speak up
for an end to the violence and a just a lasting
peace in the Middle East.”

And the way to that peace is the estab-
lishment of an international conference
including Israel, the Palestine Liberation
Organization, all the Arab countries of the
Middle East as well as members of the UN
Security Council, the CP said.

“Instead of recognizing what is at issue —
the right of the Palestinian Arab people to
self-determination, the Israeli government
has responded to this just demand by carry-
ing out wholesale arrests, by killing Palesti-
nians and by deporting a number of them,”
the CP statement, issued by leader Bill
Kashtan, declared.

“This is the way the Israeli government
proposes to solve the Palestinian problem.”

The CP emphasized that the Palestinian
Arab people “have a right to a land and an
independent state of their own.

“Until this basic right is achieved,” it said,
“there will be no peace in the Middle East.”

It called on the working class and demo-
cratic movement in Canada to “speak up in
support of this right and to demand an end
to the government’s support of policies
which threaten peace and security. They
should also come out in support of the
demand for an international conference
which could lay the foundations for a com-
prehensive, just and lasting peace in the
Middle East.”

PACIFIC TRIBUNE, JANUARY 27, 1988 e 5