In 1992, I had the privilege of meeting the notorious Mohawk War Chief Louis Karoniaktajeh Hall in Kahnawake shortly before he passed away. (This man is the reason any of the Iroquoian nations have Warrior Societies at all.)

In one of his books he made some statements I thought curious at the time:

“What can the warrior societies do? If the struggle for survival takes a drastic turn and the Indians have to take physical action in self defense, they will have to hit the immigrant-turned-colossus where it hurts the most, in the pocket book. They can dump bridges into rivers which are now sewers and into the seaway cancelling all traffic, knockout powerhouses, high tension power lines, punch holes in the reactors of nuclear powerhouses. The forests belong to the Indians but they cannot get at it to use for themselves so they may as well burn them down. Struggling for survival can be fun. In one year the white man shall be as poor as the Indians, because he now lives on technology and when you knockout electricity you knockout technology. All industry stops, all money making stops, all eating stops because food is refrigerated. Indians don’t need electricity.”
(From “Rebuilding the Iroquois Confederacy.”)

Of course, he forgot to mention flying planes into buildings. I remember talking to others about this, suggesting that maybe he’s right — maybe a small group of determined men with the right equipment and know-how really could do serious damage to this country and our economy. Naturally, I was laughed to scorn for taking such a preposterous notion seriously, though I wonder how many of them would still laugh after 9/11, (or the NE Power Outage, or these fires…)

As Chief Hall also said in his “Warrior’s Handbook” — “If they want a professional opinion, the governments should ask their war department, “What can the Warrior Societies do?” They’ll be told the Warrior Societies can do plenty.”

Chief Hall was right. We are vulnerable, much more so than we’d like to believe.