INDIGENOUS NATIONHOOD MOVEMENT

SOLIDARITY IN STRUGGLE.

#WinterofResistance

The Indigenous Nationhood Movement Stands in Solidarity with Ferguson and All Our Relatives Fighting for Freedom from a Broken System.

#BlackLivesMatter #IndictTheSystem 

Celebrate PKOLS: One Year Commemoration Thursday, May 22nd at 5pm

(Victoria, BC)

W̱SÁNEĆ territory — Members of the W̱SÁNEĆ Nation and allies in the community will commemorate the one-year anniversary of the reclamation of PKOLS (the name of the mountain formerly known as Mount Douglas) with a community picnic on Thursday May 22, 2014.

The public is invited to gather at the base of the mountain (where Shelbourne meets Cedar Hill Road) at 5pm, walking to the summit for the picnic at 6pm.

“We want to make sure that people remember that the name PKOLS was put back on the mountain,” says Eric Pelkey, hereditary chief and treaty officer for the Tsawout Nation, part of the broader W̱SÁNEĆ Nation whose territory includes the Saanich Peninsula and southern Gulf Islands. “We want to keep it in the forefront of people’s minds. We don’t want it to be forgotten.”

“For us, it is the re-telling of the history behind the signing of the treaty. The treaty is still there. People still have rights under the treaty,” Pelkey says.

Members of the W̱SÁNEĆ Nation are working with other Coast Salish Nations and indigenous and non-indigenous allies to commemorate PKOLS and other indigenous place names in the territory.

“The thunderbird is a spiritual entity,” says Charles Elliot, an artist, carver and community activist from Tsartlip Nation who designed the thunderbird on the wooden sign installed at the PKOLS summit in a ceremony attended by 800 people on May 22, 2013. “It is a high-up symbol which we think is fitting for the action that we are taking. The thunderbird symbolizes the importance of what we are doing.”

People are welcome and encouraged to attend the community picnic on Thursday May 22nd.

For further information, please contact:

Eric Pelkey, Tsawout Nation, 250-480-8526 Charles Elliott, Tsartlip Nation, 250-652-9564

Download the announcement here and spread the word.

Use the #PKOLS hashtag on social media to share your photos, videos and solidarity!

Leanne Betasamosake Simpson

"Sister Round Dance Song (MMIW Honour Song)" - by Nikki Shawana

Honour song dedicated to Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women. Written and performed by Nikki Shawana.

Beautiful.

Support the Indigenous Nationhood Movement: Get an INM Logo Tee

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Taiaiake Alfred

#ItEndsHere: The Full Series

Over the past two weeks, we have been running a series of posts confronting the crisis of violence against Indigenous women and girls, to declare: #ItEndsHere. We are committed to eliminating all forms of violence within Indigenous communities, including violence based on gender and sexual identity and orientation. Please read and share these powerful words.

"First, I want to cite Susan Blight: 'It is not about you being inclusive,  [decolonization] is about you being included under our laws, relations, and ways of being'.  The killing of Indigenous women is an extension of the genocidal practices of the colonial mother country and it is intended to eliminate the decolonization of Canada as a mother country.   It is not simply about “ending violence”, the violation is the colonial order, that rests on our lands, our homes, our lives and kills either overtly [killing young women, slaughters our lineages forever] or covertly, assimilation, reconciling without restoring our nations.  The people in  this country need to own up: this is not Europe, Africa or Asia, it is Turtle Island.  Political struggle is the struggle of one set of laws versus another.  In this country that means our laws must prevail, our sensibility must prevail.  We are all about “all my relations”, this is the centre point of our legal systems, everyone in this country, in order to be a ‘decolonized’ citizen must ascribe to this and protect the mothers of our nations and the future mothers of our nations, so that we may live within and transmit to everyone our laws and our relational teachings, that we may all live in peace.  Anything else contributes to genocide." — Lee Maracle

READ THE SERIES HERE:

"Don't Be Tricked" - Tara Willamson

"I Am Accountable to Loretta Saunders" - Sarah Hunt

"She Carries the World" - Eva Jewell

"Not Murdered and Not Missing" - Leanne Betasamosake Simpson

"A Line in the Sand" - Adam Barker

"From Outrage to Radical Love" - Siku Allooloo

"Eyes Wide Open" - Jaskiran Dhillon

"In the Spirit of Our Ancestors" - Tasha Beeds

"Refuse to Live Quietly!" - Jana-Rae Yerxa

"Against the Crisis" - Jarrett Martineau

"Carrying the Fire" - Daniel Heath Justice

"It Starts With Us" - Native Youth Sexual Health Network, Families of Sisters in Spirit, and No More Silence

NEW POST: "#ItStartsWithUs - Supporting the Resurgence of Community-Based Responses to Violence"

This is a collaborative response from Families of Sisters in Spirit (FSIS), No More Silence (NMS) and the Native Youth Sexual Health Network (NYSHN) to the calls for a national inquiry by some family members of missing and murdered women. We come together here to name specific forms of state violence – as much of the violence we face as communities, nations, and families stems from colonial nation-states like Canada and the US and the laws themselves. Structures of colonialism (i.e. state governments, foster care, prisons, social services) are responsible for and contribute to ongoing violence against Indigenous women, girls, Two Spirit, and lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, transsexual, queer, questioning intersex, and asexual (LGBTTQQIA) people.

Gender based violence also impacts Indigenous women and Indigenous people who are part of the LGBTTQQIA community. LGBTTQQIA people often don’t fit gender binaries, or other Western categories of relationships and identities dictated by mainstream culture and as a result experience increased amounts of violence. This has resulted in the continuance of hundreds, if not thousands of disappearances and deaths across these lands.

As grassroots organizations, we have also provided some concrete suggestions about working collaboratively across Turtle Island towards the resurgence of Indigenous knowledge while supporting each other to address these issues.

State Responses and Inquiries

With the recent disappearance and murder of Loretta Saunders, a pregnant Inuk university student living in Halifax, support for a national inquiry has grown stronger than ever before.

During the past three years, FSIS has engaged with and appealed to state institutions and government bodies. This included providing testimonies at both the Senate Committee in 2011 (which did not result in meaningfully implemented recommendations) and the Special Committee in June 2013 (whose findings were released Friday March 7th). This past fall, FSIS and NYSHN also participated in meetings with the United Nations Committee for the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) and the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous People. We’ve gone through ”the proper channels” and it hasn’t got us any closer to justice that we are seeking.

“In my own mother’s case, I have been petitioning the province and federal government for an ‘independent investigation’; after 12 years I have gotten nowhere. So I did my own. The only way that I was going to find truth or answers about my mother’s death was to find them myself. It is what so many families across Turtle Island have been forced to do because they don’t have support from colonial agents in government, policy-making, media, police, and the legal systems. But as Indigenous women, the grief and trauma of experiencing crisis after crisis in our families and communities can overwhelm us; and the best we can do is just try to stay alive each day.” Bridget Tolley, Kitigan Zibi Anishinabeg First Nation – Co-founder of FSIS

Our concerns and responses as families and community based organizations regarding a national inquiry come from these types of experiences. It is not an endorsement of the federal government’s position to not have an inquiry, it’s exactly the opposite. It is because we are ourselves family members who are affected by disappearances, murders and violent deaths, as well as community organizers who have seen the harms of state-led interventions. We call attention back to ourselves: we have the answers and solutions. We always have. We are the experts in enacting those solutions too. Collaboratively we are interested in nurturing self-determined and community-led solutions to interpersonal and structural violence. This is where our hearts are; in resistance to colonialism and in fostering our solutions as Indigenous peoples with the support and consensual allyship of our non-Indigenous friends and family members in the struggle.

READ MORE: http://nationsrising.org/it-starts-with-us

NEW POST: "Carrying the Fire" - by Daniel Heath Justice

Lately, I’ve been worrying about my students. Not about their skills (which are impressive), nor their dedication (which is boundless), nor their generosity (which is expansive). I’m not worried about whether they can make it through their academic program, or whether they can make a positive contribution to Indigenous communities beyond the university, as I have every confidence that they can do both. No, I’ve been worried about them as people, as members of our diverse and multifaceted community, as radiant personalities in a world too full of wounding. And I worry that they push themselves too hard, and that those of us they look to for guidance aren’t doing what we could to help them learn the value of gentleness to self and others.

No doubt much of this recent worry comes from the murder of Loretta Saunders, a young Inuk scholar who was passionately committed to understanding and educating others about the hundreds of missing and murdered Indigenous women in Canada. Much has already been written about this horrific crime, and more will no doubt emerge as the motives and actions of the accused are analyzed through the court proceedings. But one of the most powerful and poignant statements in response was from Darryl Leroux, Loretta’s honours thesis advisor. His reflection on her murder reflects a kind of grief particular to teachers and mentors.

This is a nightmare scenario for any dedicated teacher, and it’s even more so, I think, for those of us from marginalized communities whose lived experiences are so fully embraided with our deepest intellectual, ethical, political, and pedagogical commitments. The classroom is more than just a place of learning for us; it’s a site of transformation and (re)discovery. Maybe we start in these strange, often bewildering places as students ourselves, looking for mentors and colleagues who understand something of what we’re going through, who inspire us to be smarter, more courageous, and more determined than we ever thought we could be, who work together with us to challenge the many forces of hate and separation in this world. Many of us are first-generation academics, and without the privilege of legacy family members to help us navigate this frequently hostile environment, we end up either creating finding our way into a community of support that can help us feel less alone and less unwanted in academia. But it’s not only people we seek out. We also look for the texts and stories that reflect something of our own complicated and often excluded humanity and give us the tools to engage, dismantle, disrupt, and deconstruct systems and narratives of oppression, as well as those that equip us to create, connect, and generate better, more just, and more loving alternatives.

READ MORE HERE: http://nationsrising.org/carrying-the-fire/

NEW POST: "Against the Crisis" - by Jarrett Martineau

"I have been disappointed by how few Indigenous men have been willing to speak out in support of this series—and how few have done so in public. I want to work toward eliminating all forms of violence in Indigenous communities, and I want to know that my brothers will have my back. Our sisters can't be the only ones doing the heavy lifting. They are already fighting. We need to fight with them."

Today, in Toronto. Organizers blocked a railroad demanding justice for all Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women.

Respect.

#ItEndsHere