With the CDC estimating that between 2.4 to 21 million people in the US could require hospitalization due to coronavirus, instead of discussing if either would reinstitute the White House Pandemic Office dismantled by the Trump Administration, the moderators gave Sanders the floor to question Biden on “Simpson-Bowles,” the Obama-era National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility. Then, to highlight what defines leadership, Senator Sanders once again pointed to his vote against the Iraq War in contrast to then-Senator Biden’s vote to authorize President George W. Bush to use force in Iraq. Now, despite what former rival Andrew Yang sees as overwhelming delegate math against him, plus an unfavorable electoral map, Sanders has confirmed that he wants round two in April.

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In his 2007 book, Promises to Keep, Biden titled a chapter “My Mistake” which focuses on his Iraq War vote. In response to questions of foreign policy judgement, the former Vice President asked Sanders about his varying degrees of support for so-called far-left regimes with a semblance of Marxist-Leninist ideology. “The Sandinistas?” Biden asked Sanders twice without reply. The Sanders campaign took the same posture when asked to comment for this article on the senator’s stance toward the Ortega-led Sandinista government in the 1980s, which, with Daniel Ortega again president of Nicaragua, continues to impact indigenous rights in this hemisphere today; and if his positions then are a point of reference for his current inconsistencies?

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Still silent, the Sanders campaign was approached before the debate and did not respond when asked if Senator Sanders still considers it “nonsense” to “use the word genocide” to describe what the indigenous Miskito people suffered in the first years of Sandinista rule. Voices as diverse as the late Russell Means and Senator Edward Kennedy described the “concentration camps” the Miskito were “relocated” to. Those inspired by the Sandinista revolution justified the forced removals as being motivated by humanitarian concerns – the Sandinistas, they contended, feared the indigenous people would be marooned in no-man’s-land between US-funded paramilitaries and the revolutionaries. However, the Organization of American States (OAS) documented the “repeated human rights violations,” “illegal killings” and “torture” committed by the Sandinistas against the Miskito.

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The OAS report was dismissed as CIA propaganda by some on what then constituted the right’s “radical left” of the American political spectrum, who, justifiably, found cause for real “hope and change” regionally in the Sandinista’s revolution before that dream became a future slogan. Their theory was that the OAS had been co-opted by the Reagan Administration and the document was another plank in a false flag operation to discredit the Sandinistas. The OAS report was published in June 1984. Senator Sanders, then serving as Mayor of Burlington, Vermont, met with Ortega as a guest of the Sandinista-controlled Nicaraguan government in July 1985.  American Indian Movement (AIM) co-founder, Russell Means, went on what he called “a fact-finding mission” to Nicaragua three months later.

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Means’ support of the Miskito, their leader, Brooklyn Rivera, and factions of the MISURASATA indigenous alliance of the Miskito, Sumu and Rama in Nicaragua, created one more ideological fracture in AIM. The late Vernon Bellecourt, also an AIM leader but a rival of Means, represented AIM’s pro-Sandinista position. Means compared Rivera to Chief Red Cloud. Bellecourt accused Rivera of working for the CIA and Means of being a federal agent of some kind and a pawn of the Reagan Administration. In the last years of his life, Means still bristled at the accusation that he covertly worked for the US Government.

 

“They still deny and don’t recognize the Indian, our aboriginal rights for land, for self-government, for natural resources and so forth. Because of that, our people are still in the resistance,” Rivera explained during the conflict, encapsulating indigenous opposition to the Sandinistas.

 

Just weeks after Sanders met with Ortega, Russell Means described what he witnessed in Nicaragua. “In Ariswatla, Sandinista helicopters had landed troops who rounded up all boys between the ages of twelve and sixteen, herded them into a local schoolhouse, and set it afire, burning them alive. As I continued to ask about the absence of young men, I heard the same story, with minor variations, in almost every village.” Means had several close scrapes with the Sandinistas and bemoaned how “most of the depositions, the video and film” his party collected was lost when they were ambushed. In his autobiography, Where White Men Fear to Tread, Means wrote, “I didn’t need the film or notes to remind me of what I had seen and heard,” before he detailed some of the atrocities and concluded, “Those Indians were struggling to survive the same kind of genocide my own ancestors had faced.”

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While Means’ “fact-finding” party was dodging Sandinista patrols in a dugout canoe on jungle waterways, Sanders compared Oretga’s “suspension of certain civil liberties” to FDR’s treatment of “American Nazis” during World War II. “In fact, as you’ll recall – in a totally unconstitutional manner – thousands of Japanese Americans on the west coast were herded into concentration camps as a war time protection measure,” he wrote in a letter to Edward Pike, a Burlington resident who had questioned Sanders advocacy of the Sandinistas. So, did Ortega “herd” the Miskito “into concentration camps as a war time protection measure”? “They did not do the right thing in the right way at the right time. And they acknowledge this,” Sanders later conceded to his hometown newspaper on the Sandinistas’ persecution of the Miskito. “The Sandinistas make their share of mistakes,” he added. Ortega used the same language to mitigate reports of the Sandinistas’ campaign against the Miskito; these were merely “mistakes” born of “cultural insensitivity” he claimed.

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Upon his return from Nicaragua, Russell Means held a press conference in Albuquerque, New Mexico, covered by Action 7 News. “The Sandinistas, first of all, I want them to identify for the world community – for you and I – the ‘mistakes’ that they’ve made. I want them to detail and document how many massacres and tortures – and maiming – they’ve done of Indian people. And dislocating Indian people,” Means began. In the same timeframe, Mayor Sanders told the Rutland Daily Herald that he doubted his constituents “were staying up nights worrying about this.” In neighboring Massachusetts, Senator Edward Kennedy evidently was. In a New York Times op-ed he urged the Sandinistas to engage in peace talks with the Miskito and recognize their sovereignty and “separate cultural and ethnic identity.”

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Details make a difference as does context. Sanders was and remains a fervent critic of US intervention and policy in Central and South America in the Cold War era. In 1979, the Sandinista revolution ousted the US-backed dictatorship of Anastasio Somoza Debayle, a West Point graduate and member of Nicaragua’s four-decade ruling oligarchy. After Somoza’s overthrow, his loyalists launched the Contrarrevolución. Dubbed the “Contras,” they were supported by the Reagan Administration and trained by the CIA in Nicaragua’s civil war. By the mid-1980s, the Soviets were supplying the Sandinistas.

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Ted Kennedy, not known as a Reagan apologist, summarized the Sandinistas’ “unconscionable treatment of the Indians,” the “scorched-earth policy,” how “half of the 90,000 Indians on the coast” had been “displaced,” and the “forced labor camps – which resemble concentration camps.” Irrespective, the Miskito were conflated with the Contras as they opposed the Sandinistas. The Miskito, Sumu and Rama had been considered fodder by the CIA in Operation Red Christmas which launched the Contra counterassault in December 1981. A faction took up arms with the Contras. But many fought their own war, not America’s. The indigenous struggle for “aboriginal rights for land, for self-government, for natural resources and so forth” was of no consequence to the Reagan Administration.

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James Anaya, former UN Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, did not consider the Miskito “Contras.” In the intervening years, Anaya served as lead counsel for the Mayagna Community of Awas Tingni who prevailed over the Nicaraguan government in the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. A historic case that merits mainstream and not fringe attention, the Court, which has legally binding authority, found the State in violation of collective indigenous land rights.

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Human Rights Watch denounced heinous acts committed by the Contras and in 1984 the Democratic-led US Congress affirmed the Boland Amendment to halt military support to the Contras, which gave rise to the Iran-Contra scandal and the conviction of President Reagan’s Assistant Secretary of State, Elliott Abrams, for withholding evidence from Congress. Human Rights Watch accused Abrams of complicity in not only Contra atrocities in the US-Soviet proxy war in Nicaragua, but also those of US-supported forces in Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras where right-wing death squads routinely executed opponents of US surrogates and the Vatican. With the aid of his Attorney General, Bill Barr, President George H.W. Bush pardoned Abrams who later served as Special Assistant to President George W. Bush and influenced Bush’s decision to invade Iraq. As Attorney General for the Trump Administration, the next pardon Barr is expected to assist with is for General Michael Flynn. Abrams currently serves as President Trump’s Special Representative for Venezuela. The past is not so distant.

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Though the Sanders campaign didn’t respond to questions for this article, it previously informed conservative columnist Philip Wegmann that Senator Sanders was critical of Ortega’s policy of indigenous relocation in the 1980s, and that he supports treaty rights, tribal sovereignty, tribes’ opposition to pipelines, and that as president he would not allow “huge corporations to put profits ahead of the sovereign rights of Native communities.” Why then, as they were asked but didn’t answer, did Senator Sanders decline to meet with tribal leaders to receive the landmark “Declaration Opposing Oil Sands Expansion and the Construction of the Keystone-XL Pipeline” signed by some eighty tribal nations? As emails demonstrate, between October 2017 and December 2018, multiple requests were made to present the document to Sanders.

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Putting that aside, the campaign didn’t answer why, after almost three decades as a Member of Congress, no signature piece of legislation authored by Senator Sanders has reached a president’s desk which reflects his commitments to indigenous communities? Sadly, the Green New Deal isn’t arriving in the Oval Office anytime soon. For over half of his tenure on Capitol Hill, Democratic presidents have occupied the White House. During the Clinton Administration the Democratic Party controlled both chambers in the 103rd Congress, as it did in the 111th Congress during the Obama Administration. Though his surrogates point to the Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act (VAWA) of 2013 as one of his legislative achievements for Native America, Senator Sanders co-sponsored the Act with sixty other senators. Senator Patrick Leahy introduced the bill, and as President of the Senate, Vice President Biden was instrumental in ensuring that the provisions extending to indigenous women were added and retained. Biden co-authored and first introduced VAWA in 1990 before President Clinton signed it into law in 1994.

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Senator Sanders online campaign platform lists “Legalizing Cannabis” above his priorities for tribal nations, which languish at 30th on that list. The existential crisis in Indian Country before COVID-19 was the Murdered and Missing Indigenous Women and Girls (MMIWG) tragedy. It will remain so after the coronavirus has been contained. In 15-years of conflict in Iraq the US suffered 4,541 fatalities. In 2016 alone, there were 5,712 MMIWG cases catalogued by the National Crime Information Center, a figure widely considered to be low, due to underreporting and inadequate data collection. Of those 5,712 cases, only 116 were logged by the US Department of Justice. Specifically on the MMIWG crisis, Sanders cites, “Reauthorize and expand the Violence Against Women Act to provide critical resources to women in Indian country and allow all tribes to prosecute non-Native criminals.” And that’s it. A Biden legislative milepost. Sanders talks about “opposing pipelines” but gives scant attention to extractive industry “man camps” that house the pipeline construction workers and are the nitroglycerin to the MMIWG crisis due to the “supply and demand” for trafficked indigenous women and girls.

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Dr. Jane Sanders has been the senator’s principal surrogate on MMIWG, recently attending gatherings in Minnesota and Utah. Sanders spoke to victims’ family members at the Comanche Nation Fair in 2019. However, a month later, Senator Sanders was the only Democratic Presidential candidate who did not either send a surrogate or submit a statement that was read into the record at the first-ever MMIWG Tribunal held in the US which was hosted by the Blackfeet Nation, and Sanders remains the only top-tier candidate for the Democratic nomination who has not supported the indigenous-produced MMIWG documentary, Somebody’s Daughter, which has already moved the dial on securing meaningful federal legislation to combat the MMIWG tragedy.

 

Since its world premiere at the Four Directions Native American Presidential Forum in Las Vegas, January 15, Somebody’s Daughter has trended on YouTube, received strong reviews, and widespread support and testimonials within the indigenous community, from the likes of Poet Laureate of the United States, Joy Harjo, Oscar-winner Wes Studi, Native American Rights Fund (NARF) Founder John Echohawk and internationally renowned author and environmental defender of the sacred, Winona LaDuke. One of its first high-profile endorsements came from civil rights icon, Congressman John Lewis.

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Upon exiting the race for the White House, Mayor Pete Buttigieg stated, “I am so thankful for all of the work done to impact the MMIW crisis. It is an unconscionable human rights emergency that we must work together to end. Increased awareness created by Somebody’s Daughter is an important component of driving action to protect Native women and families.” An unconscionable human rights emergency. Senator Sanders and his campaign have remained mute, and like most everybody else are now “dealing with a fucking global crisis.”

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In an 8-page policy statement, Vice President Biden has committed to taking a “comprehensive approach” to the MMIWG crisis, “one that closes the data gap, increases funding and supports tribes in building their own programs, expands tribal authority, grows coordination among law enforcement agencies and provides additional resources to tribal enforcement, and expands access to culturally sensitive resources for victims and survivors,” all recommendations tribal leaders make in Somebody’s Daughter that have been advanced by the Global Indigenous Council, Rocky Mountain Tribal Leaders Council and Great Plains Tribal Chairman’s Association.

 

MMIWG is Hemisphere-wide. In Nicaragua today, “huge corporations” seek “to put profits ahead of the sovereign rights of Native communities.” In 1987, the Sandinistas recognized the rights of the Miskito under Law 28, but in 2016, Global Witness published its Defenders of the Earth report, which identified Nicaragua as “the most dangerous country in the world per capita” for indigenous land and water protectors. Cultural Survival contends that now as in the 1980s, “the ultimate prize was (and remains)” the Miskito’s “vast, lucrative natural resources and uniquely biodiverse rainforest – historically preserved through Indigenous stewardship and conservation.” To the Sandinistas, Nicaragua’s indigenous people are now an obstacle to the construction of a $50 billion shipping canal project to be undertaken by the Chinese-funded Hong Kong Canal Development Group, that would connect the Atlantic and Pacific.

 

Brooklyn Rivera, once maligned as a CIA dupe, is now a leader of the “Yapta Tasbi Masraka Nanih Aslatakanka” the “Sons of Mother Earth” political party. “Our Indigenous Peoples have continued to suffer under the Sandinista regime since the 1980s,” Rivera said recently. “But at the same time, we are still resisting all aggression and the policy of internal colonialism.” Rivera, too, has not been immune to controversies in the ensuing decades.

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After a hiatus, Ortega returned to power in Nicaragua. Senator Sanders apparently no longer thinks Ortega “a very impressive guy” and is now “very concerned about the anti-democratic policies of the Ortega government.” He does, however, continue to recognize the “good things” the Cuban-backed Sandinista revolution brought to Nicaragua, as he insists Castro did to Cuba – primarily healthcare systems and literacy programs. “The truth is the truth,” he stated at a CNN townhall. Floridians of Cuban heritage had the opportunity to cast their truth at the polls in the Democratic primary March 17. Despite the coronavirus crisis, voter turnout was up in Florida, and Senator Sanders didn’t carry a county in a state key to presidential aspirations.

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As his campaign wouldn’t answer the questions and he didn’t answer Vice President Biden during their first debate, we are left to assume that there won’t be a chapter on the Sandinistas in any forthcoming book from Senator Sanders titled “My Mistake.” We should pray that the country doesn’t pay for what would be another mistake, doing Donald Trump’s bidding by sustaining attacks on Biden through a protracted and now forlorn quest for 1,991 delegates. “Not me. Us,” Bernie. It may not be revolutionary enough for some, but COVID-19 permitting, if he attains what seems inevitable - 1,991 delegates - it has been predicted that Biden’s platform will be the most progressive ever campaigned for by a Democratic nominee in a presidential election. “We have to step up and care for one another,” Biden said after his primary victories in Florida, Illinois and Arizona, in not a victory speech but an expression of empathy with a worried nation. After “assessing” the state of his campaign Senator Sanders needed to step up by stepping aside from a race he now cannot win. The revolution begins by defeating Donald Trump in November.

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Information on the Murdered and Missing Indigenous Women & Girls crisis and the documentary Somebody’s Daughter can be found here: www.somebodysdaughter-mmiw.com

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Ari Amehae is a filmmaker and writer. Her byline has appeared in several indigenous media outlets, including Native News Online and Native Sun News.