“Our task, for this generation and all those who follow us, has just begun.”
The recording ended and the horses began to trot up the road. Gabriel turned to his daughter. “Hah! That was pretty darn good, don’t you think?” Gabriel was very pleased with himself. “Maybe I have a career in the movies.” His horse pranced on for a moment, apparently caught up in the cinematic moment.
Snowfeather spurred Wind 2 until she was alongside her father. “Ah, Dad… Didn’t you forget something?”
“What?” Gabriel said, still imagining his movie debut.
“Sorry I’m late!” Another horse and rider had appeared at the bend in the road. The figure clopped toward them, backlit against the glare of sun on snow.
Gabriel squinted at the approaching figure. It was John. Gabriel coaxed Fool into a brisk trot.
Snowfeather smiled and waved at John. “Is that your new horse?”
“Snowfeather, meet Prince!” John shouted. When Fool pulled up next to Prince, Dr. Owen added quietly. “Gabriel—maybe you should go back and pick up your fancy new broadcast equipment before somebody runs off with it. You might need it, in case you don’t land that movie contract.”
The End
Author’s Notes
…as long as the rivers run…1
“All Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the Supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding”. [US Constitution, Article Six]
Yes, that’s what the US constitution actually says. Anyone who blithely maintains that a mere treaty can never override a free country’s basic constitutional guarantees—like the right to a jury trial or the right against self-incrimination or freedom of speech or protections against unreasonable searches and seizures—should reread the original language from Article Six.
From time to time we are reminded that the US Constitution means ONLY what a majority of the Supreme Court say it means.
The use of the Treaty Clause of the US Constitution as a means to override the Bill of Rights is now a distinct possibility because the very function of international treaty relationships has been changed. Until the end of World War I, all treaties fell into three broad categories: (1) military alliances, (2) special trade arrangements, and (3) surrender conditions after defeat in war.
The first two treaty categories describe mutually beneficial agreements; the third—not so much. A surrender treaty—by that or any other name—is a wildly asymmetric outcome: The winner asserts sovereignty over the defeated nation and the defeated party just submits. If a defeated sovereign is a free country, one that has guaranteed certain rights and privileges to its citizens, those rights and privileges can be taken away as well. This is what would have happened to the Allies had we lost World War II.
Since World War II, a number of international treaty regimes have been created for altruistic reasons. This has gone on with little discussion of their most obvious feature: The signatories to these treaties have been giving up bits and pieces of sovereignty for “the greater good.” This is the voluntary surrender of sovereignty without a fight, without a defeat in war.
For example there is an International Criminal Court, (the ICC), a tribunal that was established in 20022 by the so called Statute of Rome. This court normally sits in The Hague, but is free to hold court elsewhere. The prosecutable offenses assigned to the ICC are vaguely defined. They include “war crimes”, “crimes against humanity”, “genocide” and “aggression”. Individuals, including ordinary soldiers and citizens, can be called to account—whenever the accused is a citizen of a state party, or is in a non-party state that has accepted ICC jurisdiction.
If you are—heaven forbid—ever are brought to trial at the ICC, you will discover, as Dr. John Owen did, that you no longer have the right to a jury trial, protection from double jeopardy or even the right to confront your accusers.
China, India, Russia and the USA have so far refused to join the ICC. China’s reservations were based on the vagueness of the laws being enforced, and the USA’s objections were based on the failure to protect basic constitutional rights.3 This should leave little doubt in anyone’s mind that a treaty like—say, The Earth Restoration Treaty—could actually override the Bill of Rights. It is fair to assert that joining such a treaty regime would be “prosecution without representation.”
How many votes does it take to get the United States of America firmly into the legal nightmare described in Gabriel’s Stand? Sixty seven plus five. That is two-thirds of the US Senate (the House need not be consulted) and a five vote majority on the Supreme Court.
If we ever do something so suicidally foolish we will not have lost a war—it will just feel like it.
Native Americans tend to look at the subject of treaties with well-founded suspicion. The following line is attributed to Isaac Ingalls Stevens, the US government’s lead treaty negotiator with the Pacific Northwest tribes in 1855. He eloquently promised the Indian signatories eternal access to their beloved ancestral game rights- “…this promise will be kept by the Americans as long as the sun shines, as long as the mountains stand, and as long as the rivers run…”
Looking Glass was a famous Nez Perce Chief, not a party to the negotiations. He arrived after the fact and is quoted as saying, “My people, what have you done? While I was gone you have sold my country.”
Please allow me a final word for those who think that my portrayal of the genocidal-minded Gaia cultists was based on pure fantasy. When I first researched this topic back in 1999, the cultists depicted in the Gaia Coup were just barely plausible. That has changed.
The “Gaia hypothesis” is credited to Dr. James Lovelock, who first advanced it in the late 1980’s4. Initially it described a feedback relationship between the climate, the oceans and the biosphere, a complex of interrelated systems that sustains an equilibrium-state favorable to life.
But Dr. Lovelock chose Gaia, the Greek earth-goddess, to describe a homeostatic feedback relationship. Was this romantic hyperbole? In later writings he has actually described Gaia as a “living organism.” Then, in a 2006 book, Lovelock called our current ecological troubles, Gaia’s Revenge.
Unsurprisingly, in certain New Age circles Gaia is seen an actual living consciousness, even a modern deity. As of this writing, some of the ecological and psychological crises that preceded the events in Gabriel’s Stand have already taken place. The ongoing trends are ominous.
Dr. Warren Hern, an American physician-anthropologist, has seriously advanced the idea that humanity is a “planetary malignancy.” When I first encountered this notion, I thought that “Surely Dr. Hern is using a shocking idea as a rhetorical device.” But then I read his early paper, published in 1989: “Why Are There So Many of Us? Description and Diagnosis of a Planetary Ecopathological Process”. This remarkable piece, written when Dr. Hern was at the University of Colorado, has never been repudiated by him. Under the subheading, MALIGNANT CHARACTERISTICS OF THE HUMAN SPECIES, Dr. Hern argued that “the malignant lesions and human communities are highly similar, even indistinguishable.”5 He predicted that “while the human species is capable of … non-cancerous activities and even occasionally displays them, it will continue to behave overall as a cancer on the planet.” Hern even proposed that our species’ new name will be “homo ecophagus”, i.e., “the man who devours the ecosystem.” Dr. Hern concluded this article, now twenty-one years old, with this observation: “The idea that the human population is a planetary cancer is a profoundly disturbing conclusion, but the observations of the scientific community over the last 20 years have provided massive support for this hypothesis and little, if anything, to refute it.”
My point here is not to claim that academics like Lovelock or physicians like Hern are terrorists, but to point out just how thin the line is between views and practices like these and the Gaia ideology that animated the loosely h
inged characters on my novel.
With power goes responsibility, and with intelligence goes the obligation to behave intelligently. As the earth’s most powerful intelligent species, our task remains that of a good steward: we are charged to preserve, protect and defend our biosphere…but not to surrender our lives to it.
Given the bloody track record of the 20th century’s murderous mass movements, we can reasonably expect some unbalanced individuals to take the perverse notion of a human malignancy to the extreme level described in this story. Lovelock and Hern may well be hailed by them, posthumously, as their heroes.
As Walking Wolf said, “Many of the ‘white eyes’ are unbalanced. It has always been that way with them.” The notion that our species is an ecotumor and the New Age doctrine that Gaia is a deity—together make a truly dangerous synergy. This may yet become the 21st century’s most lethal mass movement.
I believe that our optimum relationship with nature is balance. Those of us who love both the natural world and people should never give in to the unbalanced souls among us. I must believe that we will not fall into that trap…at least not while people like Gabriel are still standing.
As John Owen says, “bad ideas never die, they just go into remission.” Edmund Burke said that “the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” Unfortunately, the human capacity for doing nothing is well documented. Intelligent vigilance is warranted. I can still hear Fred Loud Owl: “Waiting and watching is the game of the hunter.”
~ Jay B Gaskill
1 Historians of the tragic betrayal of Native Americans through the exploitation of Treaties often cite this phrase with deep irony. As part of the US Indian Removal Act of 1830, certain land guarantees were made for the Indian peoples, typically phrasing the promise of certain land “as long as grass shall grow and rivers run.” These promises tended not to be kept.
2 “The Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court was established on 17 July 1998, when 120 States participating in the ‘United Nations Diplomatic Conference of Plenipotentiaries on the Establishment of an International Criminal Court’ adopted the Statute. The Statute entered into force on 1 July 2002. Anyone who commits any of the crimes under the Statute after this date will be liable for prosecution by the Court.” [From the
ICC’s self-description]
3 President Bill Clinton actually signed the ICC Treaty in 2000, but it so far has not been ratified by the US Senate.
4 The scientist James Lovelock is credited with the Gaia hypothesis. His books, “Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth” and the “Revenge of Gaia” have sparked a kind of New Age cultic gloss on the science, a view that echoes the early Greek origin of the term, Gaia as the earth Deity.
5 Hern’s paper is still available on line at http://www.drhern.com/pdfs/humancancerplanet.pdf .
Acknowledgments
To Robyn Gaskill, my spouse and favorite librarian; and to Michelle Halket, the creative director of Central Avenue Publishing, for their invaluable editorial assistance; to my readers, among them Dr. Trevor Melia, philosopher of science, and Attorney George Benatatos, defender of liberty, each of whom provided critical support and encouragement; and to my astute readers, among them Ellen Ekstrom, (author), Dr. Gwen Dewar, (anthropologist), Alexis Stephens, Lisa Key and Renee Early, and to the many other valued readers who must remain unnamed here - you know who you are: Thank you for reviewing the early manuscripts of this book with me.
To William H. D. Fernholz of Boalt Hall Law School , my alma mater; and to the other organizers, scholars, lawyers and jurists who joined with me as I participated as a judge in the Jessup International Law Competition a few years ago. That experience prompted my own research into the scope of the Treaty Power of Article VI of the U.S. Constitution. The Treaty Clause contains a loophole, one never closed by the Supreme Court. The realization that some group, country, international agency or movement (like the Gaia fanatics depicted in Gabriel’s Stand) might someday exploit Article 6 to attain a vise grip on political power and public policy is a scary prospect. U. S. Senators take heed.
To the Shoshone-Bannock Indian Festival, sponsored the Shoshone-Bannock Tribes in Fort Hall, Idaho, a wonderful annual event that has deepened my respect and affection for our Native American brothers and sisters over several decades. …And to the Idaho Museum of Natural History in Pocatello, especially for its role in hosting and augmenting the Smithsonian traveling exhibit, Native Words, Native Warriors by adding the names and stories of Native American Fort Hall residents.
I make no claim to a unique standing with our Native American neighbors, just a great admiration for a great people. I have even greater expectations for their future contributions to this country. Gabriel Standing Bear may be a fictional creation (as are some of the evolving Native American customs that my novel depicts), but men and women of Gabriel’s character are real. Brave people, imbued with sturdy moral integrity, are standing among the Native Americans1 right now - examples to us all.
Jay B. Gaskill, From Idaho & California
1 The U.S. population consists of about 1.4 percent Native Americans, but the population of Native American men and women serving in the US military is significantly higher - 1.7 percent. Overall, less than one half of one percent of the entire US population serves in the military. “Currently, nearly 20,000 native American and Alaskan native people are in uniform.” http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0820/p20s01-usmi.html. By any measure, Native Americans have the highest per-capita commitment to defend the United States of any other ethnic subpopulation. http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2012/05/28/brief-history-american-indian-military-service-115318
Gabriel's Stand Page 45