NO REST FOR THE AWAKE - MINAGAHET CHAMORRO

Democracy Now! is doing some great coverage of the protests over the North Dakota Access Pipeline in North Dakota. Here are some interviews and a column from Amy Goodman after a warrant was put out for her arrest in response to her coverage. If you are able, please consider donating in order to support their continuing efforts. ******************** Native American Activist Winona LaDuke at Standing Rock: It's Time to Move On from Fossil Fuels September 12, 2016 Democracy Now! While Democracy Now! was covering the Standing Rock standoff earlier this month, we spoke to Winona LaDuke, longtime Native American activist and executive director of the group Honor the Earth. She lives and works on the White Earth Reservation in northern Minnesota. She spent years successfully fighting the Sandpiper pipeline, a pipeline similar to Dakota Access. We met her right outside the Red Warrior Camp, where she has set up her tipi. Red Warrior is one of the encampments where thousan

When discussing the future possibilities for Guam in terms of political status change and decolonization, the talk inevitably turns towards the other islands in Micronesia as examples. They are invoked sometimes as cautionary tales, meant to frighten those interested in learning more into accepting less in political terms, and just embracing one's colonial status in order to avoid becoming a place such as the Federated States of Micronesia or FSM. At the same time, a place such as Palau/Belau, which has become a darling of international media lately, is often pointed to as providing a example for Guam to follow. One things that makes this sort of exercise intriguing is the fact that the islands surrounding Guam can all help us understand more about the nature of Free Association, both its advantages, but also its potential dangers. The CNMI to the north of Guam represents Free Association in the sense of intimately connecting oneself to their colonizer, perhaps in a way that re

Protecting Paradise on Pagan Island by Jerome Kaipat Aldan Earthjustice June 14, 2016 http://earthjustice.org/blog/2016-june/protecting-paradise-on-pagan-island I was eight years old when Mt. Pagan, one of two volcanoes that created Pagan Island, erupted. I have many precious childhood memories of that beautiful island. I remember going for swims in the ocean. Small houses made of wood and tin blended in with the natural beauty. To this day, Pagan remains a paradise, a place to go and be close to nature. The water is clean and uncorrupted. It is a pristine place, a natural wonder. The U.S. military wants to destroy that paradise, turning it into a live-fire training ground for sailors, pilots and Marines. In 2013, the Navy and Marines proposed expanding training activities in the Mariana Islands. In addition to expanding existing facilities on the island of Tinian, the Marines have set their sights on taking over the entirety of Pagan, displacing those who still c

I recently watched The Green Inferno from Eli Roth, which is a disturbing film to say the least. It follows in the vein of Cannibal Holocaust and other gore-filled flicks from the past. Many of these films have no real merit to them, as they are simply meant to shock or horrify. But in some rare cases there is the intent to have some real intellectual or political teeth behind them. In some cases films of this genre, which seem to only prey on the poorest instincts of people, end up making remarkably strong appeals to human ethics. They may do so in ways to appall us, but that on its own can be a good reminder about the flexibility of ideology. How one position, which may feel so secure and true in one moment can have the theoretical floor fall from beneath it the next. Eli Roth was heavily criticized for his portrayal of indigenous peoples as savages and evil, mindless cannibals. His response was to say that to worry about a movie and its portrayal of indigenous people while actual

This BBC article connects so many different things, I am tempted to write three pages linking everything together, but I also feel that the disparate parts also speak for themselves. How poetic is it that things like climate change, global warming and the rising tides in the Pacific become the means through which things long buried and denied like Japanese imperialism and American nuclear atrocities are brought to the surface? ************************** June 2014 Last updated at 01:59 Climate change helps seas disturb Japanese war dead By Matt McGrath Environment correspondent, BBC News     Rising sea levels have disturbed the skeletons of soldiers killed on the Marshall Islands during World War Two.  Speaking at UN climate talks in Bonn, the Island's foreign minister said that high tides had exposed one grave with 26 dead. The minister said the bones were most likely those of Japanese tr

Published on Wednesday, February 5, 2014 by Common Dreams Indigenous Groups: 'No Keystone XL Pipeline Will Cross Our Lands' Native American communities along proposed route vow resistance against 'black snake' pipeline - Sarah Lazare, staff writer  Native American communities are promising fierce resistance to stop TransCanada from building, and President Barack Obama from permitting, the northern leg of the Keystone XL pipeline."No Keystone XL pipeline will cross Lakota lands," declares a joint statement from Honor the Earth, the Oglala Sioux Nation, Owe Aku, and Protect the Sacred. "We stand with the Lakota Nation, we stand on the side of protecting sacred water, we stand for Indigenous land-based lifeways which will NOT be corrupted by a hazardous, toxic pipeline." Members of seven Lakota nation tribes, as well as indigenous communities in Idaho, Oklahoma, Montana, Nebras