Police attack Algonquin families

Police attack Algonquin families at peaceful blockade of highway 117 in northern Quebec from Barriere Lake Solidarity on Vimeo.

solid sampler - dizzy / astro / wire

SOLID TERRITORY ALBUM LAUNCH 08/08/08

click for a larger image

When: Friday 8th of August

Where: RISING SUN ¨C 373 Karangahape Rd

Cost: Koha

View the Solid Territory image gallery, video and artist links at http://www.conscious.maori.nz/solid.html

AMERICAN INDIAN MOVEMENT

In honor of A.I.M. Grand Governing Council and all Chapters. And thanks to John Trudell for the song and strong message of truth

1876

To celebrate and remember the Lakotah victory over Custer at the battle of the Greasy Grass, June 25th 1876. And to honor all the warriors who took part in that battle.

Thanks to LakotaRepublic

TE HAKI

Known as the Tinorangatiratanga flag it has been flying for 18 years around the country and especially at Waitangi. It symbolisies the resistance of Māori to colonisation but there is plenty of resistance to it being recognised.

See also:

Te Haki The Maori Flag

http://indigenist.blogspot.com/2008/02/largest-tino-rangatiratanga-flag.html

Lake Waikaremoana: Back in Tuhoe Hands

Waikaremoana are sacred waters of the Tuhoe tribe or Children of the Mist .During the colonial Land wars the region was the retreat of the rebel chief Te Kooti and his followers after the Hauhau resistance of the later Colonial Wars. In still later times Maungapohatu pa, north of the lake, was the home of the Maori prophet Rua Kenana and his followers.



The ten year celebration of the reclamation of Waikaremoana was important not only in the timing of being so short after the state inflicted terror against the Tuhoe peoples and other activists, but also ten years is a good measure of where Maori at at with the neo liberal attempt to squash our land rights ( the treaty settlement process), there were also numerous occupations at the time throught Aoteroa, Te Paatu, and Paikatore amongst others. Ten years on our people are still at the bottom of the heap of our our lands, living lives of poverty or greasing the wheels of the prison industrial complex. For those of us from the West Coast await Mining companies that are hell bent on ripping the life out of our foreshore & seabed. The "free" trade deal with china means that the settler govt have "free" access to our resources to continually squander and sell things that don't belong to them in the first place. Shawn Brant is right, those are our decisions and determinations to be made by ourselves.

Visiting Waikaremoana during this time was special to me. To give solidarity in person with those who had just experienced the viciousness of the nz settler state and to catch up with old comdrades that are still fight the good fight for our people and their lands. Witnessing one clear morning the beauty and majesty that is Hinepokohurangi. To the Wahine Toa (warrior women) I met and got to spend time with at Waikaremoana, you are my inspiration.


Val's article Lake Waikaremoana: Back in Tuhoe Hands follows video of the descendants and guardians of Waikaremoana telling us of their struggle to protect their lake for their generations to follow.

THE LAKE OF OUR TIPUNA - WAIKAREMOANA

A camping ground near Lake Waikaremoana in the Bay of Plenty has been polluted for years and a solution to the problem has been slow in coming.

view online

On 1 January, Tuhoe welcomed people from around Aotearoa to celebrate the 10 year anniversary of the occupation at Lake Waikaremoana. The celebration began with a powhiri at Waimako Marae and then moved down to the original lakeside site of the occupation, adjacent to the motor camp.

The celebration was attended by members of the Tuhoe nation from around the rohe and by anarchists and members of Conscious Collaborations, an indigenous collective striving for a world that acknowledges Papatuanuku (Earthmother) by building synergies between indigenous, activist, and creative communities.

The gathering was held in the aftermath of the police raids into Tuhoe country on 15th October 2007 resulting in the arrest of Tame Iti, spokesperson for Te Mana Motuhake o Tuhoe and 16 others. When the gathering was organised in mid-2007, it was certainly about commemorating this past struggle. However, the October raids had a profound effect on the gathering, and subsequent police disclosure of evidence reveals that one of the motivations for 'Operation Eight' was very clearly about who owns this lake and the water in it.

Ten years ago, there were two different groups that had longstanding issues with the management of the lake: Nga Tamariki o te Kohu (the children of the mist) and Ruapani, led by Waipatu Winitana. Their aims were complementary, but not identical. Nga Tamariki o Kohu was concerned about the proximity of an oxidation pond to the lake and the overflow hose, with its potential to leak; the decline of kiwi habitat and population in the areas around the lake; the impact of possums on native fauna; the impact of deer and pigs on forest regeneration; and finally, the impact of tourists on the ecosystem of the Lake.

On the other hand, Ruapani's primary issue concerned the Department of Conservation's (DoC) management of the lakebed. By a Deed of Lease signed on the 21st day of August 1971, nine leading Kaumatua: Sir Turi Carroll, John Rangihau, Wiremu Matamua, Turi Tipoki, Te Okanga Huata, Canon Rimu Hamiora Rangihu, Tikitu Tepono, William Waiwai, Kahu Tihi together with (now) Mr Justice Gallen signed a lease to the Crown of 5,210 hectares (12,875 acres) comprising the bed of Lake Waikaremoana, the islands in that lake but excluding Patekaha Island and including the present foreshore above the 2020 foot contour in terms of Kaitawa Datum. The lease provided:

• for an initial term of 50 years from 1st July 1967 with a perpetual right of renewal;
• rental at the rate of $5.50 per centum per annum on the rental value to be fixed by ten yearly valuation and, if necessary, arbitration;
• the lessee is to administer control and maintain the leased land in accordance with the provisions of the (now) National Parks Act 1980; and
• access from continuous Maori Reserves to the lake's waters was reserved at all times as was a right of access from the Maori Reserves to the Wairoa Rotorua Road at a point to be mutually agreed between the parties.¹

Under the terms of the lakebed lease, the Department was responsible for maintaining the lakebed in a pristine condition. Despite this clause, there were significant problems with giardia and invasive weeds in the lake.

After considerable discussion, members of Nga Tamariki o te Kohu decided that an occupation was the most effective way of getting these issues addressed. Many within Nga Tamariki o te Kohu felt that the Department of Conservation was not hearing their concerns. On the 31st of December 1997, approximately 20 people entered the site and prepared to occupy.

Some kaumatua had concerns about the way in which the decision to undertake the occupation was taken, e.g. that not all kaumatua had been advised that it was going to happen; ultimately, they were supportive of the aims of the action and keen to have the issues addressed. One elder, John Tahuri of Maungapohatu came from his hospital bed to support the occupation and subsequently left his tokotoko (talking stick) with the occupation as a sign of his support.

There were initial confrontations with police when they attempted to remove people from the site. Many of the younger members who provided security at the entrance to the occupation site simply told the police to bugger off as Tuhoe were on their own land.

During the course of the occupation, the then Minister of Maori Affairs, Tau Henare invited Tame Iti, who was the spokesperson for Nga Tamariki o te Kohu to Parliament in order that the issues of concern could be addressed.

Tame Iti travelled to Wellington in order to meet with Henare. He was, however, initially rebuffed when he arrived and was not given permission to enter the minister's office. Henare's actions were shameful and eventually Tame was successful in getting into see him. The minister agreed to hold a ministerial enquiry into the issues raised if the group agreed to vacate the lakeshore occupation.

After 67 days, the group decamped from the occupation site. The ministerial enquiry was held at Waimako Marae. It was, as can be expected from any such bureaucratic exercise, a total whitewash. "Nothing that we heard caused us to come to the view that the Department of Conservation was failing in its obligations to the two Trust Boards, as lessor, in its role as lessee in the management of the land as if it were a National Park."² Nevertheless, the occupation was considered a success. In spite of the total denial of the validity of the issues raised, the occupation achieved some significant changes to the Department of Conservation's management of the Lake including:

• an improvement of the relationship between tangata whenua and the Department of Conservation insofar as the Department viewed its responsibilities to Tuhoe more seriously
• the oxidation pond was decommissioned and as of 2007 a new one is being constructed with the input of local iwi
• management of kiwi habitat programme on Tapuna Reserve is completely controlled by local iwi

More significantly than the immediate results of the occupation was a strengthening of the iwi's desire for a return of control over the Lake. Naturally, Lake Waikaremoana forms a part of the Tuhoe claim under the Treaty of Waitangi settlement process. The occupation began a conversation about the need to have a permanent presence on the Lake again.

. . . . .

The last permanent settlement of Tuhoe on the Lake was likely at Tapuna Reserve in about 1940. The scorched earth policy where British soldiers invaded Tuhoe territory in the bitter cold of winter, burning crops, pillaging, murdering and leaving the people to starve in the 1860s was and is very much alive in the minds of Tuhoe people. Many members of the local iwi had left the Lake area fearing further Pakeha retribution. Te Ara, the Online Encylopedia of New Zealand, notes:

• Old enemies of Tuhoe fought on the side of the government; they carried out most of the raids into Te Urewera during a prolonged and destructive search between 1869 and 1872. In a policy aimed at turning the tribe away from Te Kooti, a scorched earth campaign was unleashed against Tuhoe; people were imprisoned and killed, their cultivations and homes destroyed, and stock killed or run off. Through starvation, deprivation and atrocities at the hands of the government's Maori forces, Tuhoe submitted to the Crown.³

Given this experience and the subsequent invasion of Maungapohatu by armed constabulary in 1916, it is hardly surprising that many Tuhoe people have been wary of reestablishing a presence on the Lake.

The people at the occupation and at this 10-year celebration have committed themselves to the construction of a marae at the Lake. Citing Te Arawa, Nga Puhi, and Tuwharetoa as examples, James Waiwai a member of the original occupation noted that most other iwi have a presence at their respective lakes. It is a natural place for the tangata whenua to be as kaitiaki (guardians) of the lake and the surrounding land. The exact location of the marae will need to be the subject of consultation with people around the Lake, but the celebration gave new impetus to the desire to get on with its construction.

The other result of the occupation was a cementing of the desire for a full return of the Lake to Tuhoe control. Lake Waikaremoana is Maori freehold hand and is acknowledged as such by the 1971 Lake Waikaremoana Act. It is for the moment largely under the control of the Crown. The Department of Conservation is aware of the desires of Tuhoe for return of control of the Lake.

. . . . .

The celebration of the occupation at New Year's 2008 was initiated by Tame Iti in mid-2007. He and other members of Nga Tamariki o te Kohu wanted not only to commemorate the struggle for Tuhoe control of the Lake, but wanted to share the history and expand the support for the independence of the Tuhoe people.

Initially, the celebration was received with support from the local Department of Conservation. However, following the nation-wide police raids on 15 October, the arrests of Tame Iti and other Tuhoe activists along with the allegations of terrorism, there was a decided cooling of support from DoC.

After a rousing call to action by Tame Iti in which he invited 'freedom fighters and comrades' to the celebration, the local organising group was told to shut it down. They took a decision that if the police or anyone else tried to intervene that they would again occupy the site.

Fortunately, the organising crew prevailed and managed to extract the provision of toilets, a generator, petrol and wood for a wharekai (kitchen) from the local district council for the celebration. Local farmers also contributed food for the celebration. Police did surveil the celebration from the motor camp next door, but were not seen otherwise.

Over the four days of the celebration, the discussion about anarchist support for Tuhoe began. This relationship, born largely as a result of the police raids, will take much more talk and action to manifest into genuine trust and solidarity. There are many anarchists who want that to happen. There is a need for much discussion in the anarchist community of Aotearoa about what such support and solidarity actually means.

The achievement of tino rangatiratanga (translated here as 'sovereignty') for Tuhoe will happen and with it, will be the return of the Lake to their guardianship, from their ancestors and for their children.

Endnotes

The text of this article is based on an interview with James Waiwai (Ngati Hinekura, Te Whanau Pani of Tuhoe) on 4 January 2008 at Lake Waikaremoana.

1. Ministry of Maori Affairs: Te Puni Kokiri. 1998. Joint Ministerial Inquiry Lake Waikaremoana: Report to Minister of Maori Affairs, Hon Tau Henare, Minister of Conservation, Hon Dr Nick Smith. (http://www.tpk.govt.nz/publications/docs/lakewaikare.html accessed 7 January 2008)
2. ibid
3. 'Resistance: 1866 to 1872.' Te Ara: the on-line encyclopedia of New Zealand. (http://www.google.com/gwt/n?u=http://www.teara.govt.nz/NewZealanders/MaoriNewZealanders/NgaiTuhoe/5/en accessed 7 January 2008)

A Place Called Chiapas

1 hr 32 min 23 sec

Documentary about the Zapatista movement in Chiapas, Mexico.

No Justice No Peace-Hone Harawira Talks @ Parihaka 2008

thanks to Tinorangatiratanga TV

Waitangi Day Protest in Melbourne

Tena koutou nga Tangata e tautoko ana te kaupapa Tino Rangatiratanga me te Mana Motuhake o Aotearoa

To show our solidarity for the kaupapa of Tino Rangatiratanga we will be assembling outside the NZ settler consulate this Waitangi Day where we will proudly display our Tino Rangatiratanga (Maori Sovereignty) flag.

• The Treaty of Waitangi still remains to be honoured 168 years after its signing

• The NZ Settler Governments refusal to sign the Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous peoples.

• The recent human rights abuses of the peoples of Tuhoe by the NZ settler state.

Nau Mai Haere Mai

Consulate-General of New Zealand

Suite 2, North Level 3 350 Collins Street
Melbourne VIC 3001

1pm Wednesday 6^th of February 2008

Ka Whawhai tonu matou ake tonu atu !!!!!

contact Sina on 9504 8449 for more info
or mail

uriohau@gmail.com

Stray Alien Invasion Day /Aboriginal Sovereignty 08

“The British colonisation of Australia began at Botany Bay in 1788. It was soon met with stiff resistance from the people of the Eora Aboriginal nation, the first people to be confronted by this invasion of ‘settlers’. Led by Pemulwuy, a clever strategist, they outfoxed and outwitted the colonist for several years.

When Pemulwuy was finally captured he said in his language: ‘You’ll never make me a white man you scum!” According to the Aboriginal history of the invasion, which has been handed down by word of mouth from generation to generation, these were Pemulwuy’s last words. A British soldier summarily shot him dead. After he was shot, his head was severed from his body and sent to England to be examined, measured and analysed according to commonly accepted theories fashionable at the time.

About Aboriginal Sovereignty
Waratah Rose Gillespie

Because the invasion was illegal at international law, all white people are here illegally. Through recognizing Aboriginal sovereignty, their presence in this country can be legitimised.

Isabell Coe –Wiradjuri Nation

Was hot for sure 220 years after the genocidal, land thieving, boat people landed and invaded Aboriginal Nations. It was a day to remember & honour those who had fallen in the struggle. It was a day to remember the the current reality of colonial invasion was genocide and theft, and what thats means to us on a daily basis. Pretending that it didn’t happen is some form of pathological denial, but settlers are great at re-working history and settler state myth making.

Our whanau will refuse to take part or be silent beneficiaries of Aboriginal genocide any longer. The spirit of the day we had in Melbourne was fierce, Aboriginal people are on the move, Maori, Mohawk indigenous people around our planet are standing up. The recent cessation of the
Lakotah Nation from Amerikkka has given heart to Indigenous nations in struggle all over the world.

Catching up with and hanging out with the mob, hearing some choice sounds and other whanau was awesome.

Looks like we gonna have a busy year this year.

"Every breath we take is a breath of survival, every breath we take is the breath of resistance."

Mauri Ora

Ana

Sacred Fire and deadly speeches at Gertrude Street Fitzroy, urban Aboriginal heartland.

Front of the hikoi

Indigenous Solidarity

Mapuche & Maori sista’s

Unity Against colonialism in the Pacific

EZLN - Our Word is our Weapon

Montage of pictures from the Zapatista struggle in Chiapas, Mexico, with remarks read by Subcomandante Marcos in English.

Revoluutionary Theory #5-Zapatista

The time of revolution has not passed. Despite celebrating the collapse of Soviet-style communism and promising yet another social and economic renaissance, the world capitalist system is in deep trouble: East and West, North and South.

If you listen carefully to the celebrating voices, those of the rich and the powerful in their corporate offices and government buildings, you can pick up a nervous undertone. If you watch the policy-makers closely, you may notice that the smiles are often thin and the hands that hold champagne glasses sometimes twitch, involuntarily.

If you listen even more carefully, you can discover why. In the background you can hear another set of voices--those from below--far, far more numerous. These are voices the powerful do not want to hear, but they are having a harder and harder time ignoring them. Some of these voices are quiet and determined, talking together in bare tenements. Some are singing and reciting poetry in the plazas, or stirring young hearts with old tales deep in the forests. Some are discussing, planning their future, inventing new worlds. Many are angry, increasingly impatient, sometimes shouting on picket lines or chanting in the streets. All are talking about revolution, whether they use that term or not. The policy- makers of capitalism have good reasons to worry.

The Zapatistas

The voices and writings collected here come primarily from the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN), the army that woke up the world on January 1, 1994 by seizing four towns in Chiapas, the southern-most state of Mexico.

The EZLN has organized itself among some of the most dispossessed people of the world. Its composition is almost as diverse as the outside world to which it speaks. Its soldiers are drawn from the forests, mountains and small towns of the region, both from the Indigenous and linguistically diverse Mayan population, and from immigrants from Central and Northern Mexico. Its soldiers have been subsistence cultivators and landless wage-laborers; they have grown and marketed their own export crops and they have worked on the plantations and ranches of others. They have cultivated their milpas (corn plots) on rocky hillsides and sought temporary manual work in the towns. They have toiled as unskilled laborers and skilled artisans. A very few are intellectuals drawn to the area over a decade ago by their ideals and hopes.

For those of us outside this movement, these de-
professionalized intellectuals serve as mediators to help us understand the larger political processes out of which the EZLN has emerged, and within which it continues to operate. They have drafted many of the communique's and served as the public voice for both the Army and the wider community. They speak our language and speak to us in words that are familiar. We can understand them easily because we all share the forms of discourse common to Western political traditions.

But, the words they speak, and the way they speak them, are translations of other words and discourses rooted in other, much less familiar languages and ways of being--the diverse Mayan cultures of the region. Fortunately for us, the Zapatistas are very self-conscious speakers, and often speak to us about their own speaking, so that we will understand the words that come to us through their mouths. They are the words of those who have gone before us to the people of Chiapas; they are the voices of people who have learned to listen.

As some of the statements you will find in this book make clear, the spokespersons who speak to us today are different from the urban intellectuals who went into the mountains years ago. Those intellectuals carried with them a whole left-wing baggage of theoretical and political preconceptions which proved totally inadequate for communicating with the local population.

In the confrontation of those preconceptions (which they now call "undemocratic and authoritarian") with the collective decision-
making traditions of the people living in Indigenous communities, those intellectuals were transformed (as were, undoubtedly, the locals). In these documents we only get glimpses of this transformation, but it seems to have been remarkable--one in which the authoritarian relations of the Zapatista Army came to be subordinated to the democratic processes of the communities. In the process the interlopers seem to have learned to see things with new eyes, to do politics in new ways.

Along the way they seem to have acquired a simple, vernacular way of speaking which makes reading their communique's and their interviews refreshing in comparison with the familiar, jargon-laden political diatribes of old-left guerrilla groups. It is probably this quality which has made the motivations, hopes and aspirations of the EZLN and the Chiapanecos so accessible to the wider Mexican community and beyond. The Mexican state's efforts to portray the EZLN as a group of outside agitators, of "professionals in violence," quickly collapsed in the face of the obvious: Theirs were not old voices but new voices, and their language was not that of ideology but of frustrated desires, urgent needs and committed determination.

Their words, the spokespersons tell us quite explicitly, come from the collectivity, not just the individuals. This, they say, is one reason why they wear ski-masks--so our reception of their voice can be divorced from the face, the personality of the individual. The desire to avoid caudillismo (someone being singled out, or even putting themselves forward, as "the leader" of the revolution) is quite explicit. This approach, of course, is primarily symbolic, as the individualities of the speakers inevitably do come through, as in the best-known case of Subcommander Marcos.

Thus formed through a political process of dialogue and collective struggle, the voices in this book articulate two fundamental messages. First, they explain why they reject the current institutions and development projects of Mexican business and government. Second, they explain their own new political synthesis and their own political proposal for the future of Mexico.

Zapatistas!

Documents of the New Mexican Revolution

Revolutionary Theory #4 Andrea Smith-Indigenous feminism without apology

Native feminism is not simply an insular or exclusivist “identity politics” as it is often accused of being. Rather, it is framework that understands indigenous women’s struggle as part of a global movement for liberation. As one activist stated: “You can’t win a revolution on your own. And we are about nothing short of a revolution. Anything else is simply not worth our time.”

We often hear the mantra in indigenous communities that Native women aren’t feminists. Supposedly, feminism is not needed because Native women were treated with respect prior to colonization. Thus, any Native woman who calls herself a feminist is often condemned as being “white.”

However, when I started interviewing Native women organizers as part of a research project, I was surprised by how many community-based activists were describing themselves as “feminists without apology.” They were arguing that feminism is actually an indigenous concept that has been co-opted by white women.

The fact that Native societies were egalitarian 500 years ago is not stopping women from being hit or abused now. For instance, in my years of anti-violence organizing, I would hear, “We can’t worry about domestic violence; we must worry about survival issues first.” But since Native women are the women most likely to be killed by domestic violence, they are clearly not surviving. So when we talk about survival of our nations, who are we including?

These Native feminists are challenging not only patriarchy within Native communities, but also white supremacy and colonialism within mainstream white feminism. That is, they’re challenging why it is that white women get to define what feminism is.

DECENTERING WHITE FEMINISM

The feminist movement is generally periodized into the so-called first, second and third waves of feminism. In the United States, the first wave is characterized by the suffragette movement; the second wave is characterized by the formation of the National Organization for Women, abortion rights politics, and the fight for the Equal Rights Amendments. Suddenly, during the third wave of feminism, women of colour make an appearance to transform feminism into a multicultural movement.

This periodization situates white middle-class women as the central historical agents to which women of colour attach themselves. However, if we were to recognize the agency of indigenous women in an account of feminist history, we might begin with 1492 when Native women collectively resisted colonization. This would allow us to see that there are multiple feminist histories emerging from multiple communities of colour which intersect at points and diverge in others. This would not negate the contributions made by white feminists, but would de-center them from our historicizing and analysis.

Indigenous feminism thus centers anti-colonial practice within its organizing. This is critical today when you have mainstream feminist groups supporting, for example, the US bombing of Afghanistan with the claim that this bombing will free women from the Taliban (apparently bombing women somehow liberates them).

CHALLENGING THE STATE

Indigenous feminists are also challenging how we conceptualize indigenous sovereignty — it is not an add-on to the heteronormative and patriarchal nationstate. Rather it challenges the nationstate system itself.

Charles Colson, prominent Christian Right activist and founder of Prison Fellowship, explains quite clearly the relationship between heteronormativity and the nation-state. In his view, samesex marriage leads directly to terrorism; the attack on the “natural moral order” of the heterosexual family “is like handing moral weapons of mass destruction to those who use America’s decadence to recruit more snipers and hijackers and suicide bombers.”

Similarly, the Christian Right World magazine opined that feminism contributed to the Abu Ghraib scandal by promoting women in the military. When women do not know their assigned role in the gender hierarchy, they become disoriented and abuse prisoners.

Implicit in this is analysis the understanding that heteropatriarchy is essential for the building of US empire. Patriarchy is the logic that naturalizes social hierarchy. Just as men are supposed to naturally dominate women on the basis of biology, so too should the social elites of a society naturally rule everyone else through a nation-state form of governance that is constructed through domination, violence, and control.

As Ann Burlein argues in Lift High the Cross, it may be a mistake to argue that the goal of Christian Right politics is to create a theocracy in the US. Rather, Christian Right politics work through the private family (which is coded as white, patriarchal, and middle-class) to create a “Christian America.” She notes that the investment in the private family makes it difficult for people to invest in more public forms of social connection.

For example, more investment in the suburban private family means less funding for urban areas and Native reservations. The resulting social decay is then construed to be caused by deviance from the Christian family ideal rather than political and economic forces. As former head of the Christian Coalition Ralph Reed states: “The only true solution to crime is to restore the family,” and “Family break-up causes poverty.”

Unfortunately, as Navajo feminist scholar Jennifer Denetdale points out, the Native response to a heteronormative white, Christian America has often been an equally heteronormative Native nationalism. In her critique of the Navajo tribal council’s passage of a ban on same-sex marriage, Denetdale argues that Native nations are furthering a Christian Right agenda in the name of “Indian tradition.”

This trend is equally apparent within racial justice struggles in other communities of colour. As Cathy Cohen contends, heteronormative sovereignty or racial justice struggles will effectively maintain rather than challenge colonialism and white supremacy because they are premised on a politics of secondary marginalization. The most elite class will further their aspirations on the backs of those most marginalized within the community.

Through this process of secondary marginalization, the national or racial justice struggle either implicitly or explicitly takes on a nation-state model as the end point of its struggle – a model in which the elites govern the rest through violence and domination, and exclude those who are not members of “the nation.”

NATIONAL LIBERATION

Grassroots Native women, along with Native scholars such as Taiaiake Alfred and Craig Womack, are developing other models of nationhood. These articulations counter the frequent accusations that nation-building projects necessarily lead to a narrow identity politics based on ethnic cleansing and intolerance. This requires that a clear distinction be drawn between the project of national liberation, and that of nation-state building.

Progressive activists and scholars, while prepared to make critiques of the US and Canadian governments, are often not prepared to question their legitimacy. A case in point is the strategy of many racial justice organizations in the US or Canada, who have rallied against the increase in hate crimes since 9/11 under the banner, “We’re American [or Canadian] too.”

This allegiance to “America” or “Canada” legitimizes the genocide and colonization of Native peoples upon which these nation-states are founded. By making anti-colonial struggle central to feminist politics, Native women place in question the appropriate form of governance for the world in general.

In questioning the nation-state, we can begin to imagine a world that we would actually want to live in. Such a political project is particularly important for colonized peoples seeking national liberation outside the nation-state.

Whereas nation-states are governed through domination and coercion, indigenous sovereignty and nationhood is predicated on interrelatedness and responsibility.

As Sharon Venne explains, “Our spirituality and our responsibilities define our duties. We understand the concept of sovereignty as woven through a fabric that encompasses our spirituality and responsibility. This is a cyclical view of sovereignty, incorporating it into our traditional philosophy and view of our responsibilities. It differs greatly from the concept of Western sovereignty which is based upon absolute power. For us absolute power is in the Creator and the natural order of all living things; not only in human beings… Our sovereignty is related to our connections to the earth and is inherent.”

REVOLUTION

A Native feminist politics seeks to do more than simply elevate Native women’s status — it seeks to transform the world through indigenous forms of governance that can be beneficial to everyone.

At the 2005 World Liberation Theology Forum held in Porto Alegre, Brazil, indigenous peoples from Bolivia stated that they know another world is possible because they see that world whenever they do their ceremonies. Native ceremonies can be a place where the present, past and future become copresent. This is what Native Hawaiian scholar Manu Meyer calls a racial remembering of the future.

Prior to colonization, Native communities were not structured on the basis of hierarchy, oppression or patriarchy. We will not recreate these communities as they existed prior to colonization. Our understanding that a society without structures of oppression was possible in the past tells us that our current political and economic system is anything but natural and inevitable. If we lived differently before, we can live differently in the future.

Native feminism is not simply an insular or exclusivist “identity politics” as it is often accused of being. Rather, it is framework that understands indigenous women’s struggle as part of a global movement for liberation. As one activist stated: “You can’t win a revolution on your own. And we are about nothing short of a revolution. Anything else is simply not worth our time.”

Andrea Smith is Cherokee and a professor of Native American Studies at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and co-founder of Incite! Women of Color Against Violence and the Boarding School Healing Project.

thanks to

http://www.newsocialist.org/newsite/index.php?id=1013

Indigenous Gathering of the Americas -statement of the north

Introduction to the closing declaration of the pre-gathering at the Rancho Penasco , from October 7-9, brought to the attention of thousands of people at the first indigenous encounter of the Americas, hosted and called for by the National Indigenous Congress, the Zapatista Army of National Liberation, and the traditional yaqui authorities.

Rua kura-hikoi in Whakatane

Watch More Videos Uploaded by www.bebo.com/Fattyboy03

This was a awesome response from the youth of Tuhoe, responding to the police and political terrorism that had been spitefully inflicted on the Tuhoe peoples of Ruatoki.

I know for sure our Whenua( lands) and future is in safe hands with awesome young warriors like this.

Tātou katoa. Tātou kā toa
A united front. Liberation for all.
http://tuhoe.net/

STOP THE ONGOING GENOCIDE IN VICTORIA

The Old Victorian Aboriginal Health Service at 136 Gertrude Street Fitzroy is a site of Historical Significance to the Victorian Aboriginal Community and an invaluable symbol of Community Control and Self Determination.

Founded in 1973, the Victorian Aboriginal Health Service (VAHS) moved from 229 to 136 Gertrude Street in 1976 after signing a 99-year lease for the premises with the State Government. Many Aboriginal People were dying in the streets due to prolonged oppression and denial of basic human services. As staff worked without pay due to lack of funding, Aboriginal Elders including Alma Thorpe and Dr. Bruce McGuinness pioneered to establish critical community controlled preventative health care to ensure the survival of Aboriginal Communities in Fitzroy and nationwide.

In 1991, VAHS lodged an official complaint to the Minister of Police and Aboriginal Affairs regarding 'ongoing brutalisation' of Aboriginal people in the community, which continues to this day. Since the official opening of the new VAHS at 186 Nicholson Street in 1993, the old Aboriginal Health Service in Gertrude Street has been left abandoned and derelict for 15 years. Mission Australia recently won a tender to redevelop the site into a 'bush tucker' restaurant where Kooris would be trained to 'serve' as waiters under the Mission banner. How much more insulting and low could the system go in trying to extinguish Victoria's history of Aboriginal struggles for self-determination and human rights? With no Community Cultural Center in the vicinity of Fitzroy, the local Aboriginal community want to see this site resurrected as a crucial Community Meeting Place for healing, traditional culture, and in honor of the many brave Aboriginal Ancestors and Elders who fought for so long to live and die with dignity.

Following the National Weekend of Action (Nov 16 –17) members of the Fitzroy and Victorian Indigenous Communities and supporters will stage a week-long vigil outside 136 Gertrude Street to bring overdue attention to these injustices at 07' Election time. Each sundown the Sacred Fire Traditional Smoking Ceremony is being reignited across the road in Atherton Gardens for community healing and to pay respect to all who have not lived to see the struggle for justice end.

• Statistics published by the Australian Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission on Indigenous child abuse show Victoria has the worse track record of abuse, with nearly 5 times more cases than anywhere else in Australia.

• The Australian Bureau of Statistics recent census revealed that the Victorian Koori population suffers the highest rates of recent and chronic illness in the country.

• The 2004 United Nations Human Development Report exposes that Aboriginal People in Australia have the second worst quality of life on the planet. With China ranking last and Australia's general population coming fourth, the UN study measured areas of education attainment, life expectancy and median income levels.

• Another recent report by the World Health Organisation states that Indigenous Health in Australia is 100 years behind the rest of the whole population.

• Such shameful genocide continues as the Australian government invades Aboriginal communities in the NT, intervenes by force in Aboriginal affairs country-wide, and refuses to sign the UN Declaration on Indigenous People's Rights because of the word "self-determination."

United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide

• Article II...genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such :
  (a) Killing members of the group;
  (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
  (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
  (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
  (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group

For further information email; robbiethorpe@gmail.com

RISE UP

Kings Arms, Dec 7th

Cornerstone Roots, Batucada Sound System, Unity Pacific, Dam Native + Lots more

Conscientising and Mobailizing the masses: A fundraiser event for those effected by events post Oct 15th

Please forward to your networks

Mauriora!

Kiritapu Allan
Conscious Collaborations
www.conscious.maori.nz
+64 21 0256 5068

--

"Acts of resistance in the past were steps on a journey. That journey is
not easy but when our tipuna decided to sail across the greatest ocean in
the world to get here, that journey was not easy.

"Constitutional resistance is a journey to towards hope."

INDIGENOUS ANTI-OLYMPIC MOVEMENT IN SOLIDARITY WITH TYENDINAGA MOHAWKS

Speech given by Angela Sterritt as part of a panel in support of the
Tyendinaga Mohawks. (Details on the panel are at
http://noii-van.resist.ca/?p=558)

Ange is a Gitxsan woman who lives and works on Coast Salish Territory. She
is a grassroots indigenous organizer, an advocate for indigenous women and
girls, as well as an artist and writer.

****************

I would like to thank Sue Collis for coming here today to talk to us about
Shawn Brant as well as express my gratitude and honor for those like Shawn
Brant whom have risked their freedom and lives for the freedom and lives
of others and for the future generations.

I also want to acknowledge that what happened to Shawn Brant, Harriet
Nahannee, John Graham and others is not only a terrible abomination and
explication of the tyrannical nature of the justice system but
representative of the refusal of the Klanadian government to remove itself
from its perpetuation and implication in the occupation and theft of
Indigenous lands.

As the Olympics draw closer, we are seeing an acceleration of this
repression and criminal behavior from all levels of government. In the
same way that Mohawks have opposed corporate invasion and government
terrorism in Tyendinaga, there has been resistance in the occupied
Indigenous territories of BC from many Indigenous nations.

The Olympics- whose budget is close to 30 billion dollars for a 2 week
spectacle- acts as a microcosm for the way in which Klananda has oppressed
Indigenous people in order to gain access to rights and title to
Indigenous lands. It also asserts itself as a real threat to
Indigenous people and our lands, and likewise sees Indigenous people as a
real threat to its very existence.

On December 3, 1998, The Canadian Olympic Association chose Vancouver as
its candidate city. Vancouver was posited as the "security and safety"
candidate - ironic and insulting since most people know by now the large
number of Indigenous people imprisoned and killed by police; not to
mention the reality that over 60 women, many Indigenous, were taken from
the downtown eastside, murdered or never to be seen again.

As well, how secure do Indigenous people feel now that over 30 Indigenous
women and girls have gone missing or been murdered along highway of tears
in northern British Columbia? It is often the case that the Justice System
has protected the predators and killers of these women, while Indigenous
women have been ignored and over-policed. The Justice system has since its
inception of settler/colonial society used police forces, courts and
racist civil society to undermine and outlaw our Original sacred systems
and laws. It continues to imprison and kill our people to gain access to
our lands.

It's also insulting to promote Vancouver as the security candidate given
the 'insecure' and uncertain nature of Indigenous lands and resources
targeted by corporations to be privatized.

Indigenous Resistance to the Olympic hegemony has been greatly
criminalized, in hopes to reassure the hungry visitors, or the tourists
that their stay will be safe. The attempts to silence us in jails and
through our death are cross-country efforts.

Like Shawn, Harriet Nahannee stood up against the theft of the land and
was punished greatly.

Harriet was a Pedechat Elder who had married into the Squamish Nation and
was protesting an infamous Olympic development, the Achilles heal of the
Olympics, the Sea-to-Sky Highway. She was sentenced to a provincial jail
for criminal contempt of court for her part in the Sea-to-Sky
Highway-expansion protest at Eagleridge Bluffs. She died of pneumonia and
complications at St. Paul's Hospital in Vancouver on February 24 2007,
just one month after her original sentencing. Nahanee had been weak from
the flu and asthma in January, and it was widely suspected that Nahanee's
condition worsened during her incarceration at the Surrey Pre-Trial
Centre, a facility set up predominantly for housing male criminals.

An independent public inquiry into her passing was called for in the
Legislative Assembly of British Columbia on March 5. Solicitor-General
John Les said the provincial government expressed "regret" for the passing
but denied any government responsibility and refused opposition requests
for an inquiry.

The expose of Harriet's plight helped to catapult many Indigenous people
in the city to act to oppose Olympic atrocities against our people and
compelled us to organize, educate and mobilize each other.

One of the more significant Indigenous struggles people in the city have
been working in solidarity with is the plight of the Secwepemc and
St'at'imc people to resist the expansion of ski-resorts on their lands.

Just last week The Austrian ski team arrived on Secwepemc lands to train
for the 2010 games. They will be the first to train on the new 3 million
dollar Nancy Greene International Race Centre at Sunpeaks built this
summer. Phase 1 has recently been completed and once phase 2 and 3 are
completed Sun Peaks will be able to boast a new dedicated lift and an
additional snow making capacity. The fake snow is made with reused sewage
water that pollutes Skelkwek'welt waters and depletes underground
Aquifers. Sunpeaks corporate mega-development development also continues
to destroy Secwepemc Land by clear-cutting whole mountainsides and
valuable hunting grounds, berry picking and medicine harvesting areas. Now
the Austrian Ski Team is at Sun Peaks promoting and training for the 2010
Winter Games!

Not only does this kind of destruction of the land destroy Indigenous
cultures and relationships to the land by displacing Indigenous people, it
also has an impact on our identity as Indigenous people. The Olympikkks
like the Klanadian government uses Indigenous identities for their
expediency. They want the public to "imagine" a bourgeoisie's playground.
They use and abuse our cultures for entertainment, but our sovereignty is
simply an annoyance.

For example, a walk known as the "People walk together", which was
ceremonial blessed earlier this month, will showcase Aboriginal people to
walking across the Burrard Bridge in September 2008 to show off our
"color, culture, and vibrancy" under the umbrella of "reconciliation" as a
lead up to the 2010 Olympics.

Knowing that cultural genocide, land theft, criminalization and murder of
our people happens daily at the hands of Klananda, it seems far-fetched to
most that reconciliation is possible at this point. This tactic of
assimilation, with the use of culture as a cover, is text book
collaboration and utilized in an attempt to demand the "undivided
attention" of ALL to the 2010 games whereas the reality is they simply
divide oppressed communities more.

Optics and imagery are also used in other communities, namely poor and
marginalized women's. The Olympic city brothel was proposed as a co-op
brothel under the guise of making it safe for sex workers working in
Vancouver in 2010. When I first saw this I thought of predatory
capitalism. The trafficking of women, in which Indigenous women and
immigrant women are overrepresented, is one of the easiest illegal
"commodities" to move. A pimp makes about 250,000, per women or girl in
the illegal trafficking of human flesh.

The Olympics is infamous for utilizing the sex trade to accommodate
investors ,business men and other hungry visitors. An estimated 10,000 sex
workers plied their trade during the 2000 Olympics in Sydney, many
imported from abroad. More than 40,000 women and girls were brought to
Athens for the 2004 Summer Games. For the 2006 World Cup in Germany, more
than 20,000 women were imported. Investors and Business men who come to
the 2010 games are inevitability on the look out for cheap lands,
resources, and women.

Some may defend the sex trade saying it's the oldest profession, but like
many parts of colonization and capitalism it presents itself as the oldest
oppression and one that needs to be ended, along with poverty, greed,
hatred and suffering.

These are some of the issues Indigenous Anti-Olympic Organizers have been
working on in the city and some of the ways in which we have shaped our
actions and campaigns. We urge you to learn more and take actions. The
Olympics destroys Native lands, Indigenous women, Indigenous communities,
and human dignity. The Olympics creates homelessness, abject poverty,
further violence and racism. End the Olympikkk Oppression Now!

http://harrietspirit.blogspot.com/2007/11/honor-dead-fight-for-living-shawn-brant.html

Tautoko Tuhoe

Kia ora koutou katoa

Kei a mātau ētahi haki, bumper stickers hoki hei hoko atu. Ko ngā whaihua i hao mai hei pūtea tautoko mā ngā tāngata e mauheretia ana me ō rātau whānau hoki.

(We have flags and bumper stickers for sale to raise money to help support those who have been arrested and their whānau.)

Please visit our new merchandise page for more details.

http://tuhoe.net/merchandise/

Mauri ora

Tuhoe Hikoi Arrives at Grubbyment

beautiful to see Aboriginal, Mohawk & Maori flags flying

A diverse crowd of people from various tangata whenua iwi, and tau iwi, began gathering outside parliament ground at 10am this morning, and swelled to around 500 by midday, when the Tuhoe hikoi arrived to a boisterous welcome. Two groups joined into one for a march down Lambton Quay, stopping to cry 'shame' at various government targets. A number of Tuhoe and others, including Te Kupu from Upper Hutt Posse, addressed the crowd at a brief rally at Midland Park.

Te ihi, te wehi, te mana

The march then returned to parliament grounds where MPs from the Maori and Green Parties spoke against the Terrorism Suppression Act (TSA) and in support of the marchers demands for justice, and two of Labour's Maori MPs were shouted down by demands to know which way they voted on the TSA ammendments recently passed in parliament. The march continued up Molesworth St to National Police Headquarters, where a line of police were confronted with a powerful haka expressing the anger of the Tuhoe nation at police behaviour in the dawn raids of October, and subsequent actions. Many of the Tuhoe and supporters, both Maori and paheka, carried on to a powhiri and hakari at Pipitea Marae.

Assimilate this poaka

mean maori mean-Chur

Thanks to:
http://indymedia.org.nz/feature/display/71738/index.php