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Tag Archives: indigenous

“Red Nation” in New Mexico: “Native Lives Matter”

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Cowboy, Rabbit and Border Town Violence

By fnsnews | July 21, 2015

Most people probably don’t think of Albuquerque as a border town. But Dine (Navajo) Melaine Yazzie squarely defines the central New Mexico city as a classic one.

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Anniversary Vigil and Memorial for Allison “Cowboy” Gorman and Kee “Rabbit” Thompson. Albuquerque, New Mexico, July 19, 2015. Photo: Andy Beale

Surrounded not only by Native and trust lands, Albuquerque and its suburbs are built on an old indigenous land base that now hosts geopolitical and economic powerhouses such as Sandia National Laboratories, Kirtland Air Force Base and Intel Corporation.

“There’s the contradiction,” Yazzie told FNS. “Border towns are established on Native land but power and money is not with Native people.” Although more than 50,000 Native Americans reside in the Duke City, the indigenous community does not possess local political representation, Yazzie added. Continue reading →

Australians March to Save Aboriginal Communities

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By on 03/19/2015 

By Matthew McLoughlin  @soit_goes – Australia – On March 16, 2015, thousands took action across dozens of cities & smaller regional communities in Australia demanding the government abandon its plan to evict 150 Aboriginal communities in Western Australia. Major city centers in Brisbane & Melbourne were shut down by massive sit-ins while Perth marched on Parliament. Online people used the hashtag #SOSBlakAustralia to show their support for those taking the streets. The day’s actions were organized by a vast group of Indigenous peoples, community organizations, spear-headed by a small collective going by SOS Blak Australia.

This latest attack on Australia’s Aboriginal communities will create up to 20,000 refugees & add another chapter to the history of the Australian government’s attempted genocide of Indigenous peoples. The closures are being done under the guise of budget cuts, Australia’s racist Prime Minister Tony Abbott has gone as far as saying that the government can no longer fund a “lifestyle choice”, referring to Aboriginal people living on their traditional lands. Truth be told it is Aboriginal people who are being forced to fund the government’s “lifestyle” which continues to rely on exploiting stolen land and resources, including fossil fuels. The price they’ve paid includes not only their land but the attempted destruction of their culture. Continue reading →

Oakland to Palestine Solidarity Mural

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The Oakland Palestine Solidarity Mural adopts the image of the tree as a central motif and global visual signifier of life and resilience to link seemingly disparate issues and distant locations. Spanning 157 feet and reaching 22 feet high, the mural is comprised of nine separate panels, where each artist or team has painted his or her own interpretation of a tree to address social and political issues. These issues include the shared histories of colonization, environmental exploitation, internal exile of indigenous peoples, resilience and resistance to these injustices. The result is a stunning public tribute to the human spirit and its unassailable right to thrive in spite of political oppression and injustice–wherever it is taking place in the world.

The twelve participating artists come from a wide array of backgrounds, ethnicities and cultures. They include from left to right, Nidal El Khairy (Palestinian); IROT (Native American); VYAL (Chicano-Native American); Emory Douglas (African American); Chris Gazaleh (Palestinian American); Erin Yoshi (Japanese American); Deadeyes (African American); SPIE (Asian American); Susan Greene (Jewish American); Dina Matar, who is participating virtually (Gaza); with support from Fred Alvarado (Latino American) and text by Miguel Bounce Perez (Chicano-Pacific Islander American).
Continue reading →

Ferguson is Familiar to Indigenous Australians

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Indigenous Australia knows the cynicism exposed by Michael Brown’s killing in Ferguson
Larissa Behrendt, The Guardian , Tuesday 25 November 2014

Watching the events in Ferguson, Indigenous Australians will immediately draw a parallel with Australia’s response to black deaths in custody‘redfern riotWatching the events in Ferguson unfold raises similar questions about Australia’s own legal system.’ Riots in Redfern, 2004. Photograph: AAP

After a Missouri grand jury declined to indict police officer Darren Wilson for the killing of Michael Brown, prosecuting attorney Bob McCulloch said that the decision was based upon physical and scientific evidence, not “public outcry or political expediency”.

This call for objectivity does little in a situation where autopsies show Wilson had shot Brown at least six times, twice in the head. McCulloch seemed to compromise his own objectivity by blaming social and news media for beating up a story, rather than acknowledging that when a young person is shot by law enforcement, people expect a level of accountability.

 

Watching the events in Ferguson unfold raises similar questions about Australia’s own legal system. The parallel is immediately drawn with the failure to secure a conviction in the case of 36-year-old Cameron Mulrunji Doomadgee, who died in a Palm Island lockup over 10 years ago.

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The Wars At Home: What State Surveillance of an Indigenous Rights Campaigner Tells Us About Real Risk in Canada

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DESMOGBLOG, NOVEMBER 2, 2014, a guest post by Shiri Pasternak.

 

Recent revelations that the RCMP spied on Indigenous environmental rights activist Clayton Thomas-Muller should not be dismissed as routine monitoring. They reveal a long-term, national energy strategy that is coming increasingly into conflict with Indigenous rights and assertions of Indigenous jurisdiction over lands and resources.

A “Critical Infrastructure Suspicious Incident” report was triggered by Thomas-Muller’s trip in 2010 to the Unist’ot’en camp of Wet’suwet’en land defenders, where a protest camp was being built on the coordinates of a proposed Pacific Trails pipeline.mikmaq

The Unist’ot’en clan continues to hold their ground along these GPS coordinates today. Not coincidentally, they are members of a nation that took its assertions of jurisdiction to the Supreme Court of Canada in Delgamuukw v. British Columbia in 1997, establishing in Canadian case law the underlying proprietary interest of Indigenous peoples to their unceded lands.

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Chile: Thousands March for Mapuche Resistance Day

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Santiago: Thousands of people gathered yesterday in the Plaza Italia to march through the Alameda in support of the Mapuche resistance. The march ended in a violent police repression.

The demonstration was called by leaders of groups in conflict zones such as Maule, Arauco and Osorno. The main demands of the marchers were the end to the militarization of their territory, to stop the criminalization of the Mapuche movement and freedom of Mapuche political prisoners.
The march also coincided with the anniversary of the arrival of Christopher Columbus in Chile – a day that indigenous communities do not think should be celebrated as a holiday.
 

Today They March, For Their Land, For Their Freedom of Their Indigenous #Mapuche People in #Chile on #ColumbusDay

Tensions have been mounting in Chile amid recent repressions and detentions of Mapuche activists. Mapuche José Mauricio Quintriqueo Huaiquimil was killed on October 1st after being run over by a farm worker on a tractor during a peaceful occupation of their ancestral land. Mapuche responded by setting up improvised roadblocks which prompted a militarized mobilization of local police working with special forces. Continue reading →

Police Repression of Indigenous Protest Against Brazil’s World Cup

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05/27/2014

The whole area around the stadium is isolated from nearby roads and traffic was diverted; rubber bullets, sound bombs and tear gas were released
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BRASILIA – Hundreds of indigenous people and thousands of supporters peacefully marched towards the National Mane Garrincha Stadium in protest of the upcoming World Cup in an effort to block the roads. 

They were met by riot police and Military Cavalry Police of the Federal District on the afternoon of Tuesday the 27th. The demonstration, which had the support of hundreds of Indians left the Pilot Road, but was surrounded by police personnel about 100 meters from the arena to receive seven games of the World Cup 2014.

Police blocked the march and soon were using tear gas, sound grenades and rubber bullets on people to violently disperse the protest march.indio-flecha-andre-dusek-292

The march was peaceful, the protesters chanted slogans and carrying signs against FIFA’s World Cup until, by being surrounded by police on the horses that blocked lanes of the Monumental Axis. Riot police then responded with rubber bullets, tear gas and sound grenades.

The whole area around the stadium is isolated from nearby roads and traffic was diverted. There were reports of injuries, but no confirmed information at time of publishing.

Continue reading →