- Editor's Note: The following Two Part interview with
Splitting the Sky aka John Boncore took place via telephone conversation
back in September of 2000. Due to the limited extent of the newspaper's
coverage back during that period the interview did not make it onto the
Internet. Today, with Splitting the Sky back in the news online after his
dramatic attempt this past September to make a citizen's arrest of the
War Criminal, ex-President of the USA, George W. Bush in Calgary, Alberta,
it seems appropriate to re-issue this dramatic activist's interview with
Radical Press.
-
- Readers are bound to find it an exciting, informative,
provocative, highly enlightening and spell-binding expose of a life of
one of today's foremost radical activists.
-
-
- A RadicalPress Exclusive Interview with Splitting the
Sky
-
- March 17th, 2010
-
-
- (Editor's Note: The following Two Part interview with
Splitting the Sky aka John Boncore took place via telephone conversation
back in September of 2000. Due to the limited extent of the newspaper's
coverage back during that period the interview did not make it onto the
Internet. Today, with Splitting the Sky back in the news online after his
dramatic attempt this past September to make a citizen's arrest of the
War Criminal, ex-President of the USA, George W. Bush in Calgary, Alberta,
it seems appropriate to re-issue this dramatic activist's interview with
Radical Press.
-
- Readers are bound to find it an exciting, informative,
provocative, highly enlightening and spell-binding expose of a life of
one of today's foremost radical activists. Ed.)
-
- ---
-
- http://www.radicalpress.com/?p=1189
-
- A Radical Interview with John Splitting the Sky, Gustafsen
Lake Defender
- Vol. 3 No. 3 The Radical October, 2000
- By Arthur Topham
-
- ©RadicalPress.com
-
- Part One
-
-
- (The Radical is most appreciative for having the opportunity
to present the following interview with John Splitting the Sky Hill. As
readers are about to realize Mr. Hill has led a most remarkable life; one
fraught almost from the onset with challenges, dangers and responsibilities
that the average person would cringe at the thought of having to endure.
-
- For all of John's trials though, he has emerged- tempered
by the fires of life- as a leading spokesperson for native sovereignty
issues and a living example of the persevzering spirit of resistance that
has kept the aboriginal people of this continent strong.
-
- This interview will be covered over the next two issues
of The Radical due to it's length.
-
- In short it's an abbreviated odyssey, an epitomizing
epic of one man's struggle to maintain his dignity and spirit in a world
where native traditional values are no longer given the respect and honour
that they once knew. John Splitting the Sky Hill's story of how he survived
a brutal prison system in New York state only to end up playing a major
role in the Gustafsen Lake Stand off during 1995 will surely come as a
major surprise to readers who only heard the one-sided reports that came
from the corporate press during that time.
-
- It's a riveting tale with a message as relevant today
as it was almost thirty years ago. Ed.)
-
- RAD: John it's now been almost 10 years since the Oka
uprising occurred and 5 years since the stand-off at Gustafsen Lake just
west of 100 Mile House, B.C. The incident at Gustafsen Lake in many ways
marked a turning point here in British Columbia for the manner in which
our provincial government conducted itself toward native disputes. You
and Wolverine, aka William Ignace or Jonesy were to play some major parts
at Gusfafsen Lake. Hopefully this interview will allow Radical readers
to gain a much clearer insight into what was going on behind the corporate
media's blockade of information that the general public were subjected
to back then. But prior to getting into that I would like to ask you if
you could talk about your own personal history and how it was that a native
rights activist like yourself, originally from New York state, USA ended
up running a Sundance ceremony at Gustafsen Lake.
-
- While in Vancouver for the Under the Volcano festival
in mid-August I heard
-
- you speaking in a workshop. At that time you mentioned
that you had been directly involved in the infamous Attica Uprising in
New York back in 1971 and ended up being the only player in that incident
that did time. Let's begin then with some background on how it was that
at the ripe old age of 19 you became involved in one of America's most
bloody uprisings of the last century.
-
- StS: Well, at the time of this talk I'm 48 years old
and I'll be 49 next January. I was born in Buffalo, NY. My mother is from
the Mohawk Nation in Branford, Ontario and so my roots are basically here
in Canada. As well my Grandmother was a Cree woman from Fort Qu'Appelle,
Saskatchewan. So like I said my roots are in Canada but my mother married
my father who was from Buffalo, NY. He passed away though in 1957. He worked
for U.S. Rubber and had been commissioned by the company, along with ten
other men, to spray paint one of their utility tanks, these massive tanks
that they had at the plant there. They had been told by the company that
they didn't need gas masks but all the eleven men ended up dying from toxic
inhalation.
-
- RAD: Oh, Christ!
-
- StS: And so eleven of them died and it wasn't too long
after that the child welfare department in Buffalo came and snatched up
me and my sisters and put us into the foster care system.
-
- RAD: How old would you have been then?
-
- StS: Well I was 7 years old then and my sisters were
like 6, 5, 4 and 3 respectively. And from that point on we were all separated
into different foster homes.
-
- I then went through a number of boarding school situations
and orphanages. The boarding schools were like the residential schools
here in Canada in fact the residential schools pretty much got their ideas
from the boarding schools in the states.
-
- So having gone through those schools for a number of
years and resisting the kind of abusive treatment and brutality that existed
within these joints I began to gain a reputation for being what you would
say was an "incorrigible" person. I detail a lot of this information
in my soon to be released Autobiography of Splitting the Sky Along With
My Wife Sandra Bruderer subtitled: From Attica to Gustafsen Lake.
-
- Read the rest of this entry » http://www.radicalpress.com/?p=1189
-
- ---------------------
-
- Arthur Topham is the Publisher and Editor of RadicalPress.com.
He is currently involved in a free speech battle with the League for Human
Rights of B'nai Brith Canada.
-
- He is also in extremely dire need of financial support
to sustain this battle with the forces of repression and censorship as
he is not able to work during this period of intense litigation with the
Canadian Human Rights Commission and the CHR Tribunal. Any donations therefore
would be most welcome. Please see the following url on the Home Page (upper
right hand corner) http://www.radicalpress.com/?page_id=657 regarding donations.
Also there is a "DONATE" button there for Paypal or here at https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=4466120
. Feel free to use any of them if you can help out. Thanks.
-
- Arthur welcomes all feedback to his articles and can
be reached at radical@radicalpress.com .
-
- For the Full Monty on the complaint case involving RadicalPress.com
and B'nai Brith Canada please see: http://www.radicalpress.com/?page_id=995
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