“[D]ecolonization, in its fullest expression, is a future beyond capitalism and beyond the liberal nation-state. Decolonization is a future-oriented project that requires imagining, building, and fighting for forms of nationhood and self-determination not premised on the relations of exploitation, dispossession, elimination, and extraction that define liberal nationalisms and capitalist, imperial, and colonial formations. Decolonization requires forms of nationhood and self-determination based on relationality of a different kind…”
A mural of Native freedom fighter and political prisoner, Leonard Peltier, appears alongside several murals of imprisoned revolutionaries from Palestine, Ireland, Turtle Island, and other liberation struggles. The murals feature prominently in the blocks-long Falls Road murals that line this major thoroughfare in West Belfast. During my three days in Belfast, almost every male advocate for Irish liberation I met–regardless of his generation in the struggle–had spent considerable time in prison for his political activity. State repression of Irish self-determination, and the targeted criminalization of Republicans and anti-imperialists more broadly, is an everyday reality in Northern Ireland. There is thus a profound public consciousness about the issue of political prisoners and widespread support for campaigns to free political prisoners like Peltier elsewhere. Credit: Seamus McHenry
This talk was delivered at the Royal Geographical Society’s International Conference in London, England, August 28, 2017
by Melanie Yazzie
Good evening. I want to…
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