Following Paul DeMain’s email comments about the Leonard Peltier Tribunal to be held October 2-4, 2013 at the Radisson Hotel & Conference Center in Green Bay, WI, some Oneidas pointed to this 2004 letter by DeMain and expressed their confusion:
Among those most confused (as usual) is Tribal Vice-Chair Greg Matson who issued a reply email containing DeMain’s 2004 letter and said this:
Mr. Demain, It is my understanding that the Tribunal will address the many injustices placed on all indigenous people not just Mr. Peltier. I must add that articles such as the following bring confusion to many and also I do not appreciate your insinuations about our Oneida community.
Greg Matson has no business criticizing anyone about “insinuations” whilst he acts like the same kind of goons whose paranoid lies resulted in Annie Mae Aquash being kidnapped, terrorized and murdered.
Greg has made multiple false accusations in writing and video-recorded at the public August 28, 2013 BC Regular Meeting that Oneida Eye is somehow involved in “terrorism” and “espionage” because we publish public documents and those given us anonymously by Oneida Tribe members who are sick of corrupt knuckle-draggers like Greg Matson.
Meanwhile, neither Greg nor his Executive Assistant, Charles F. ‘Chaz’ Wheelock, will address straightforward questions as to whether Chaz is banned from the Oneida Nation of New York’s reservation due to concerns by their leadership that he’s been involved in arson. It’s a simple question that even Greg should be able to answer.
It’s easy to dismiss Matson as an empty-headed, loudmouthed buffoon who’s a total embarrassment to many Oneidas, but he’s also a danger to those who speak truth to power in that his blatantly unjust public lies could incite real violence against others.
Is that Greg’s intent? To try to intimidate people and terrorize them into silence for speaking out? Or is Greg honestly so bereft of any rational conception of reality that he requires immediate emergency psychiatric intervention?
What is so difficult for Greg or others to grasp about Paul DeMain saying that someone he still considers guilty based on extensive research didn’t necessarily receive a fair trial?
The original lawsuit was filed by Leonard Peltier on May 1, 2003, based on statements published in News From Indian Country on March 10, 2003. Those statements included the following, “As editor of News From Indian Country, I stand by our credible and trusted sources, and my present belief, that the primary motive for the murder of Annie Mae Pictou-Aquash by other members of the American Indian Movement in Mid-December 1975, allegedly was her knowledge that Leonard Peltier had shot the two agents, as he was convicted.”
Those statements have not been retracted by Paul DeMain, or News From Indian Country as part of the agreement by News From Indian Country to allow Mr. Peltier to withdraw his lawsuit.
“From the beginning of this lawsuit, until its withdrawal, I have felt the lawsuit was frivolous and without merit, and represented an assault on the constitutional right to freedom of speech and the search for truth and justice in Annie Mae’s case,” said Paul DeMain.
In addition, News From Indian Country has published accounts aired by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation in which an interrogation of Annie Mae Pictou-Aquash was conducted by Peltier during June of 1975, and related the testimony of KaMook Nicols, at Arlo Looking Cloud’s murder trial on February, 4, 2004, in which Nicols testified that Peltier had bragged to her and Annie Mae Pictou-Aquash about shooting both agents at close range.
Even people who are properly found innocent don’t always receive a fair trial.
For example, it’s been suggested the Oneida Appeals Commission violated basic rules of evidentiary procedure by allowing Brian Doxtator to improperly introduce evidence at a removal petition hearing without having provided copies to Chairperson Delgado’s counsel prior to the hearing. Nevertheless, their decision to dismiss the removal petition was just even though the hearing was flawed.
Moreover, Greg Matson is perpetuating through his unrepentant, unethical misconduct exactly the type of bad-jacketing of indigenous people by indigenous people that resulted in the murder of Annie Mae Aquash and people believed to be buried at Wounded Knee.
And what about the injustices placed on Oneida people by other Oneidas via crimes of theft and misuse of Oneida housing funds for things like $200 manicures (Gina Buenrostro) and mysteriously receiving $10,000 for a quilt (Dorothy Ninham) such as people organizing the Leonard Peltier Tribunal have been involved in?
It’s a given that Greg will refuse to apologize for recklessly endangering an Oneida woman, Oneida elders and a non-Tribal member as he has already doubled- and tripled-down on his extreme dumbness and his dangerous lies and/or bigoted delusions.
One can only conclude from the deafening silence of other members of the Business Committee that they either share Greg’s delusions, appreciate his misguided malfeasance, or are fully aware that they are dealing with an irredeemably desperate nincompoop. Or maybe they’re just scared of, if not for, Greg.
Still, Oneida Eye must inform Vice-Chair Greg Matson that he is not going to intimidate us and he cannot stop us from exercising freedom of speech – including political satire – which is very different from his mistaken belief he has the right to jeopardize the safety of others with intentional bullsh¡t or irrational fear like someone yelling ‘Fire!’ in a crowded theater (even if they saw Chaz there.)
Greg Matson is a flaming hypocrite and a rabid jackass, and our guess is that deep down he knows it.
It’s time everyone else did as well.
[UPDATE: On September 12 Paul DeMain replied to Vice-Chair Greg Matson in part by saying…
I support a tribunal of responsible people to address the injustices heaped upon the Indigenous communities of North American. This can not be done if the people (like Clyde Bellecourt or Bill Means) hearing or presenting the evidence have engaged in murder, rape, drug dealing and other criminal activity that is currently part of a continued grand jury probe by US Federal Authorities in South Dakota.
As a member of the Oneida Nation, I certainly don’t want individuals from outside of the community to be given an opportunity to engage in titling an event after a confessed murderer attempting to frame his case of innocence with lies that fall in the face of the truth.
Oneida Eye appreciates and respects Mr. DeMain’s tenacity and courage as a reporter, a publisher, and a member of the Oneida Nation.]
