If we were playing a word association game and I said "Freemen." not many people would respond with "Indian." But the modern patriot movement and the ongoing struggles of indigenous people are closely linked; the word "sovereignty" is an example of a shared value heard often in both camps. It goes deeper than that, though. It reaches into the fundamental concept of Common Law.

Frazzled journalists must find it difficult to grasp the essence of the patriot community's discussion of Common Law, so they lapse instead into simple demonization of the Freemen, a treatment the latter may well deserve—but not in the media. Mindless sensationalist sound bites are cheating the people out of one of the more interesting cultural discussions to come along in a while.

It's true that most of us have no idea what Common Law is supposed to be. Our Constitution says it's the law of the land—except when replaced by statutes. Some patriots say it has its foundations in the Bible. But even a cursory excursion into the vibrant venue of the Common Law court phenomenon currently sweeping the patriot community will reveal fundamental disagreements over details about how to revive the Common Law in our nation. There is a consensus, however, that it must be revived, which is only natural.

The popular support the militia patriot movement has been enjoying (despite media attempts to make it look stupid) is due to a common sentiment that a fictitious (i.e. corporate) entity is encroaching on people's liberties by leaps and bounds. Some have already been choked by it; their traditional lifeways and beliefs have been threatened and disrupted. They have been colonized, so to speak, by an invading power—the corporate/political/global elite. It occupies with force of rules, regulations, tribunals and an army of officers.

The Founding Fathers of America knew that the right of the people to live, move and have their being was rooted in their own natural law. They also knew if people were to lose touch with that natural law, the country would be vulnerable to invasion from armies without, or an incursion by a corporate state from within. So they wrote documents and set up a government designed to preserve the natural relationship of the people to each other. They relegated the federal government to 10 square miles and a few outposts so that it was prohibited from interfering in that natural relationship. It was a wise arrangement.

At the heart of the Common Law the people carried across the sea two universal principles, that when ignored, always cause hardship and sorrow. These are: 1) Do all you agree to do; 2) Do not encroach on other people or their property. It is a cruel paradox of history that many of the colonizers forgot to apply these lofty principles to everyone. There is another fundamental principle in Common Law, that of restitution.

AU people share the fundamental characteristics of identifying with their groups which are described by language, culture, tradition, beliefs, morals and relationship to property. The Common Law springs from spiritual morals and philosophical principles and it preserves the sphere of common interaction for all societies. This is as true for white patriots in Montana as it is for the brown Ye'kuana of Venezuela, who incidentally are very unhappy about a UN biosphere reserve being foisted upon them.

The conversations of colonized people tend to resonate from nation to nation and tribe to tribe as they strive to hold on to the things that uniquely identify them. Note for example the similarities between the following statements taken from the Abya Yala News, the journal of the South and Meso American Indian Rights Center, and the often repeated comments of the radical patriot community:

"They have superimposed artificial and arbitrary borders over a cultural and historical geography; they have tricked us into thinking we can obtain justice in their courts; they have undermined the people's justice systems; they define us with legal language that does not define the nature of our character; democratic fictions ... enable(d) the oscillation between democracy and dictatorship; true Indian liberation will begin when we assume our condition of immemorial identity, when we abandon the entities of the national states that dilute and disavow us"

Only those who have been thoroughly re-educated by the occupying powers insist on perpetuating the illusion that the corporate state represents the interests of the people and their commons.

Estar Holmes is a contributing editor to North American News Service For a free catalogue contact: NANS, c/o PO Box 5290, Eugene, Oregon state, Postal Zone: 97405