Plebiscite

Onaje Mu'id

MSW and CASAC (Credentialed Alcoholism and Substance Abuse Counselor) with the Practitioners Research and Scholarship Institute (PRASI)

Interviewed by Julian Portilla, 2003


This rough transcript provides a text alternative to audio. We apologize for occasional errors and unintelligible sections (which are marked with ???).

A: People of African descent and to some extent indigenous people have to be given the right to a plebiscite. Until we have a plebiscite everything is just pre-solution.

Q: A plebiscite for what?

A: A plebiscite to determine their relationship to this country, since we never agreed we have never given political consent to be governed by this country, even if they do treat us right, we're still oppressed. It begins with the principle of informed consent. We never were informed and we have never given consent to be controlled by this country. So until that's done, we can only have that done through an informed plebiscite. People being educated to what their human rights are, people given the protection and instruments to exercise those human rights, people of those nations to determine their relationship to the state -- until that's done all of this is just playing around with peoples' lives because you're not being honest in saying that these groups were oppressed and they were dominated by the state of America and they were never given the right to self-determination. You have to start with all the treaties that have been broken, so to talk about reconciliation is way ahead and you have to deal with political oppression in terms of people not having group rights.