Treaty Shirts. Gerald Vizenor

treaty, the first colonial empire to honor native sovereignty and continental liberty. She declared that native stories were survivance and diplomatic trickery, and our petitions to continue that peace treaty entailed ironic reversals of the colonial cession to Great Britain in the Treaty of Paris.

      La Grande Paix de Montréal has never been abrogated in tact or forsaken in diplomacy. Yet, that historical union and memorable peace treaty was directly connected to the decimation of totemic animals in the empire fur trade and has never been forgiven in the court of shamans, or revised with irony in the native stories of colonial enterprise and the shakedown of liberty.

      Come closer, listen to the steady crack of totemic bones, trace the bloody shadows and getaways, endure the steady wingbeats of scavengers, and count out loud the seasons and centuries of peltry stacked in canoes, the gory native trade and underfur treasure of two empires, and the everlasting agony of the beaver.

      The beaver and native totems were sacrificed once in the empires of the fur trade and orders of courtly fashions, and then totemic animals were converted into tawdry casino tokens, the new crave of peltry and games of chance.

      The animals of cagey casino cultures were considered more as a nuisance and the sources of new diseases than the traditional inspiration of survivance totems and continental liberty.

      Native storiers and artists portrayed the outrage and cruelties of cultural memory, and recounted in words and paint the ruins of native totems and haute couture of the fur trade, the fancy curtains, carpets, and maladies of casinos. Native creation stories were derived from totemic visions, and the course of our survivance must relate to that natural motion of continental liberty.

      Hole in the Storm painted a series of grotesque casino gamers aboard a giant luxury yacht on Lake of the Woods. The cheeky triptych, Casino Whalers on a Sea of Sovereignty, portrayed the great waves, backwash, and bloated gamers hunched over rows of watery slot machines with beaver and totemic animals in place of the cherries, numbers, and bars on the reels of regulated chance.

      Hole in the Storm was one of the seven exiles, and the nephew of Dogroy Beaulieu, the renowned native artist who was exiled almost twenty years earlier for his shrouds of totemic creatures and scenes of decrepit casino gamers.

      The White Foxy Casino commissioned seven original paintings by Auguste Gérard Beaulieu, or Hole in the Storm, a painterly native nickname, and at the same time casino curators organized an atonement exhibition to celebrate the distinctive and once traduced portrayals of his great-uncle Dogroy Beaulieu.

      Douglas Roy Beaulieu, a visionary artist, created a sense of native presence and abstract portrayals of animals, birds, and totemic unions of creatures. His avian shrouds were acquired by museums around the world. Yet, the revered painter was menaced by the tradition fascists and banished from the reservation because of the portrayals he created of casino gamers connected to oxygen ports on slot machines, and because of his evocative images of totemic visions. The miraculous traces of natural motion, the spirits and shadows of dead animals and birds were revealed on linen burial shrouds.

      The Midewin Messengers, a scary circle of blood count connivers, coerced several native legislators to disregard the specific article in the Constitution of the White Earth Nation that clearly prohibited banishment. The political ouster was reversed several years later, but the abuse and disrespect of a great native artist could not be undone with a customary tease, turnabout gossip, casino drumbeats, or generous waves of cedar smoke.

      Dogroy actually thrived as an artist in exile, and, with the mongrel healer, Breathy Jones, earned a prominence he could not have achieved in the crude casino culture on the Pale of the White Earth Nation.

      Dogroy connected with other painters and established the marvelous Gallery of Irony Dogs in the abandoned First Church of Christ, Scientist located near Elliot Park and the historic Band Box Diner, a distinctive native quarter in Minneapolis. Some fifteen years later a heroic bronze statue of the militant poseur Clyde Bellecourt was erected on the corner near the Gallery of Irony Dogs.

      The best native trickster stories were teases of creation, traditions, marvelous contradictions, and ironic enticements of weird and visionary flight. The stories were never about the abstract patois of treaties, entente cordiale, or native sovereignty. Now our stories must tease and controvert the capitol promises and betrayals as much as the sex, creation, and hardy escapades of lusty tricksters. Some stories were risky, erotic hyperbole, and with no sense of shame because the sex conversions, masturbation, and other seductive adventures started with our ancestors. Candor was natural and the fakery of literary denouement was not necessary.

      Newcomers, fur traders, missionaries, and the course accountants of reservation enlightenment seldom weathered the teases or survived the mighty twists of trickster mercy. Truly, the new sector governor deserved no greater standing in native stories than federal agents of the past century.

      The United States Congress abrogated more than three hundred native treaties in a special session that Sunday, October 22, 2034, and at once substituted federal sectors for reservations and state counties to manage the burdens of social security and hundreds of other national strategies, entitlements, and endorsements.

      The Congress considered but could not enact more reasonable measures to decrease the enormous national cost of covenants and entitlements, so the political outcome was only promissory, a compromise that ended native treaties, the entente cordiale of native sovereignty, and, at the same time, the legislators voted to commence with the national endorsement sectors.

      Congressional plenary politics once more downplayed and then abrogated as a mere compromise native egalitarian governance, continental liberty, and cultural sovereignty. The national political cuts, causes, and economic enactments were never more than the revels of dominion and monopoly agencies, and the remnants of treaty reservations were at most the caretaker remains of deceptive sovereignty.

      The poses of entente cordiale and native sovereignty were bureaucratic ruses, and yet some weary natives were encouraged, other natives, storiers, literary artists, and painters, resisted the political maneuvers, and many others capitulated, once, twice, more, and then came the inevitable reversal, the plenary abrogation of our continental entente, treaties, and native liberty.

      Godtwit Moon was nominated the sector governor straightaway and the very next day he posted an order to banish seven natives from the reservation and sector. The order indicated only our nicknames, Archive, Moby Dick, Savage Love, Gichi Noodin, Hole in the Storm, Waasese, and Justice Molly Crèche.

      The Constitution of the White Earth Nation, and other native nations, were denatured by the plenary abrogation of the entente and treaties. The territorial domain of native sovereignty had been erased, and the precise constitutional prohibition of banishment was not enforceable.

      Seven natives resisted the demise of governance, but we were immediately renounced and rebuked as extremists and exiled. The constitution was our only native trace of sovereignty, at the time, so we resorted to a diplomatic strategy of continental native liberty provided by the great and everlasting peace treaty with New France.

      Forty native nations were signatories to La Grande Paix de Montréal in 1701, and for about sixty years the treaty provided peace for natives, fur traders, and the citizens of New France. The exiles were eager to double back with stories of earlier treaties and continental liberty because our native constitutional governance had been denied by the plenary power of the United States Congress.

      The Great Peace of Montréal recognized by name and formal negotiations, empire cues, signatures, and totemic marks the unmistakable sovereignty of native nations in New France, New England, and the Great Lakes.

      Hole in the Storm seemed to envision scenes of native exile, but the situation of our banishment was not the same as Dogroy Beaulieu or the renunciation of the spectacular triptych. The Casino Whalers on a Sea of Sovereignty portrayed the mighty motion of waves, the sleaze of casino overseers, grotesque gamers over slot machines, and the catastrophe of native sovereignty.

      The abrogation of the reservation treaty, rescission of the constitution and native governance, and our exile that autumn resulted in an escape cruise on the Baron of Patronia,