Indigenous

Yeah. Yeah. It still has its own story. And even our species that have been either trafficked or traded elsewhere in the world, Indigenous peoples in other countries, they have their own story for our things. Their story for eucalyptus in Ecuador, for example, and they’ve made that part of their traditional medicine. So it’s been categorized that way. And also it has a lot to do with newborn babies. So there’s a special stone that they put in the navel of a newborn baby, and they use the eucalyptus bark as the belt to bind it there when they have a special ceremony for a baby.

...

At a time when democracy is something that everybody has to actually gather collective eyes and fight for, this becomes apparent. It becomes apparent when you see places with settler-colonial sort of communities— if not the state, certainly not the state— if they’ve allowed themselves to have the land and the First Law of the place influence who they are and how they govern themselves, like outside of the state, how people do their governance together, like in mutual aid, or in gathering, negotiating disputes, all these sorts of things.

And I think a really fricking good example right now is Minnesota. You ask people in Minnesota, particularly people who are gathering and doing their activist work and defending their entire state in defiance of federal law right now— yeah, the people I talk to, they keep telling me that they’re motivated and they’re guided first by the Indigenous laws, that they have a history of being first caring for the land, like understanding that, and second, caring for each other, which mirrors what Auntie Mary Graham was saying before.

The first relation is to the land. And then the second relation is— so the first relation is between people and land. Second relation law is between people and people, and that comes out of the first. And I’ve heard heaps of Minnesotans say that: that they have blended that with a kind of particular Scandinavian— ’cause they have a large Scandinavian sort of influence in that state, and particularly around Minneapolis— around that sort of democratic, kind of egalitarian ethos that sort of comes outta Scandinavia.

You don’t think of Vikings being like that, but Vikings are really into Viking culture. And yeah, there are a lot of egalitarian, but also ideas of people all having their voices and being able to take the law in their own hands if they’re following it properly, et cetera, et cetera.

So you can see those two really complementary political, moral, ethical systems coming together. And you can hear it expressed whenever you hear the activists right now talking about what guides them, what drives them, what they hold in common, what gives them the moral certainty that resistance against the fascist narratives that are coming into their place and followed by kinetic violence— ’cause the story, the wrong story of that fascism, that’s setting up the scaffolding for the permission structure for more state violence to be done, or in the name of the state, against all laws and against the constitution as well.

And so the people feel very grounded in the Indigenous and Scandinavian story stories, and the story of those things together. Yeah. story is how you do your border work, how you negotiate the boundaries between different kinds of people with different cultures. And men and women have different cultural responsibilities, different stories, different ceremonies. And then there’s the sort of Venn diagram in the middle, the stuff we all do together. Yeah, there’s lots of sacred things associated with that.

bababadalgharaghtakamminarronnkonnbronntonnerronntuonnthunntrovarrhounawnskawntoohoohoordenenthurnuk!!

On Wednesday, Torrez’s chief of staff, Lauren Rodriguez, said the office’s long-running investigation is complete and has found “troubling disciplinary practices.” She added that the agency’s “exhaustive” investigation calls for the state Public Education Department to enforce student discipline data reporting requirements and better track that information. Previously, the district’s former longtime Superintendent Mike Hyatt, had downplayed the amount of discipline Native students receive and pointed to poor data collection as an issue.

“It’s our kids, our students, who are suffering the consequences of entrenched racism,” Wendy Greyeyes, the chair of the commission that released the new report and an associate professor of Native American studies at the University of New Mexico, said in an interview

The project is part of ongoing efforts to strengthen infrastructure and improve energy security in Navajo communities while reducing long-term electricity costs for residents. The solar systems will be installed on homes throughout the Ojo Encino Chapter community as part of the chapter’s microgrid and powerline infrastructure project.

In a Prince Rupert board room in mid-January, the British Columbia-based Indigenous alliance Coastal First Nations-Great Bear Initiative (CFN), Lax Kw’alaams and the Haisla Nation met with Prime Minister Mark Carney and reaffirmed their opposition to a new oil pipeline to the northwest coast of the province.

“It’s loud and clear. That’s a no, and our interest isn’t about money in this situation. It’s about the responsibility of looking after our territories and nurturing the sustainable economies that we currently have here,” CFN President Marilyn Slett said at the time.

What was arguably most impressive about this historic win was the apparently mismatched nature of the contest: on one side were about 1,000 local river defenders, mostly from the Munduruku, Arapiun and Apiaká peoples, and on the other were some of the most powerful forces of global capitalism and climate breakdown.

It has been barely a month since the US military launched an attack across the border in Venezuela, its first overt strike on an Amazon nation. That was carried out with the clear intention of securing resources – in that case, primarily oil – and to impose US business dominance in the region.

Undaunted, the activists in Santarém took on one of the US powerhouses of world trade. Cargill generates revenues of more than $160bn (£119bn) a year, employs 155,000 people and accounts for more than 70% of the soy and maize shipped through Santarém.

Too often, people assume West Coast “native art” is all the well-known northern Indigenous style known as formline, he notes.

“So really,” he says, “every opportunity we have to talk about that and to name it and to honor it in a way that people can learn through — that is really important.”

An excerpt:

As the 2026 Winter Olympics in Milan Cortina unfold, the world is once again turning its gaze to the podium. But for most nations, the importance of the Olympics extends well beyond medals.

The Games are a place where nations tell stories about themselves: who belongs, who represents them and how secure that nation feels in the world. National sporting events offer a way to make abstract ideas like sovereignty and belonging visible.

As humanities scholar Homi K. Bhabha argues in his book on nationhood, nations are not fixed entities, but are continually retold, like stories. The Olympics provide one of the most visible stages for nations to shape narratives about themselves.

At a time when Canada and other countries are feeling pressure about their sovereignty, the Olympic Games are taking on heightened symbolic meaning.

But Indigenous athletes, in particular, reveal the limits of using sport to perform national unity, and show how multiple sovereignties continue to exist within “Team Canada.”

As I was reading these Coyote stories in these hundred-year-old ethnographies—because that truly is the state of this incredible body of oral literature, that is the only place they really exist anymore for my people—I started realizing that the trickster, this incredible creator, destroyer, survivor, deadbeat dad, looked a lot like my own dad, this incredible creator, destroyer, survivor, deadbeat.

Probably the most significant quality of the Coyote is that he dies and resurrects so many times that our people didn’t even bother to keep count—not that it’s a competition with Jesus or anything, but Jesus only did it once.

...

One thing that has always bothered me about the erasure and the invisibility of Native people is that we have some damn good stories. We deal with a lot of loss and death in our communities. Maybe that’s why we’ve gotten so good at telling stories, because we have to remember our loved ones? Otherwise, who else will? Clearly not this colonial society.

Are there any first nations groups that are hosting Lemmy instances? It occurs to me that, while repatriating land to first nations may be fraught, first nations-hosted fediverse servers would be at least be a straightforward path to "digital decolonisation," no?

"Flint And Feather" is a book of poems that I picked up when visiting the author's birthplace and childhood home on the Six Nations Reserve, near Hamilton, Ontario. The house, Chiefswood, still stands as a National Historical Site which gives excellent tours during the summer.

Johnson was born in 1861 to Mohawk Head Chief Onwanonsyshon (G.H.M. Johnson) of the Six Nations, and Emily S. Howells a British woman from an established family.

Her poems reflect this mixing of worlds. She was a prolific author, having published almost 300 poems from 1883 to 1913. She wrote about both her heritages, and about Canada, having travelled extensively across the country. Her writing is fierce about her indigenous roots, and evocative about the lands she visited. Though of course, her language is a product of the time, and her Christian upbringing features in some of her work.

Tekahionwake succumbed to breast cancer in 1913 at the age of 51, in Vancouver. Her public funeral was the largest in Vancouver history at the time. Her ashes were placed in Stanley Park, where a memorial still stands.

The poetry is now in the public domain, and available online: https://pressbooks.library.torontomu.ca/flintandfeather/

Her acrostic "Canada" still rings true.

"Canada" - Tekahionwake
Crown of her, young Vancouver; crest of her, old Quebec;
Atlantic and far Pacific sweeping her, keel to deck.
North of her, ice and arctics; southward a rival's stealth;
Aloft, her Empire's pennant; below, her nation's wealth.
Daughter of men and markets, bearing with her hold,
Appraised at highest value, cargoes of grain and gold.

An excerpt from the piece to give context to the title:

In 2021, the Williams Lake First Nation opened an investigation into missing students at St. Joseph’s Mission. The First Nation’s investigators found that under Father O’Connor, a member of the clergy who rose to the rank of bishop, as well as other principals at St. Joseph’s, babies conceived by students and nuns—including some fathered by priests—were aborted or adopted out. Witnesses as well as records in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police archives attested to something even darker: newborn babies cast into the incinerator to be burned with the garbage.

Sometimes, I wonder what Tony knew about men like O’Connor and what happened at his school after dark. It’s hard to imagine he spent all those years walking the mission grounds at night without hearing or seeing some of the things that students, prosecutors, juries, and even abusers themselves later acknowledged. But he did tell this story to the Williams Lake Tribune, where, seven decades later, investigators found the article and shared it with me.

Because that night, the night of August 16, 1959, Tony followed that wail, flashlight in hand. Sound and light led him inside the service wing to a garbage burner about the size of an office desk, where trash from the mission was turned to ash. He opened it, casting rays of light onto rubbish and soot. Somewhere near the top of the pile was an ice cream carton, repurposed as a makeshift wastebasket and discarded no more than twenty minutes before. Within was a newborn. The authorities called him “Baby X.” And he was my father.

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/6498963

About 100 people packed into the Smithers courthouse on Friday to show support for three Indigenous land defenders being sentenced for attempting to halt work on the Coastal GasLink pipeline in 2021 in defiance of a court-ordered injunction.

Sleydo’ Molly Wickham, Shaylynn Sampson and Corey Jocko will avoid jail time after B.C. Supreme Court Justice Michael Tammen handed the three suspended sentences, rejecting a Crown submission that they spend time in jail.

The trio were arrested, along with several others, along the Coastal GasLink pipeline route on Nov. 19, 2021.

The sentencing closes a chapter in the years-long conflict over construction of the Coastal GasLink pipeline through northern B.C., which sparked solidarity protests that shut down transportation corridors across Canada and made international headlines.

Construction on the 670-kilometre gas pipeline was completed in late 2023 after years of opposition by Wet’suwet’en hereditary leaders and several high-profile police actions. Earlier this year, the LNG Canada export terminal in Kitimat began shipping gas transported through the pipeline.

Inside the courtroom, some supporters became emotional as Tammen acknowledged the Wet’suwet’en hereditary leaders’ decades-long fight to affirm the nation’s rights and title — and the B.C. and Canadian governments’ failure to engage meaningfully in negotiations over the outstanding claims.

But instead of sending the three to jail, Tammen suspended the sentences on the condition that they complete 150 hours of community service work, abide by a court injunction issued to the pipeline company and be on good behaviour.

After the decision, Sleydo’ — a member of the Wet’suwet’en Gidimt’en Clan — thanked the Dini ze’ and Ts’ako ze’ (Hereditary Chiefs) who have stood up for the nation’s land rights.

“What they did and how hard they fought and the fact that we still have lands and territories... today, that really showed,” she said outside the courthouse.

“It feels really good today to not be going to jail,” Sleydo’ added, to cheers from those gathered.

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