https://www.democracynow.org/2021/9/14/fairy_creek_blockade_bc_canada#transcript
~~ posted for collectivist ~~
Showing posts with label Indigenous People. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Indigenous People. Show all posts
Thursday, September 16, 2021
Monday, August 16, 2021
Line 3 Drew Thousands of Protesters to Minnesota This Summer. Last Week, Enbridge Declared the Pipeline Almost Finished ~~ Kristoffer Tigue
https://insideclimatenews.org/news/11082021/line-3-protests-minnesota-enbridge-pipeline-2/
~~ posted for dmorista ~~
A group of Indigenous people and activists raise their fists as they pass Sections of the Enbridge Line 3 pipeline construction during the 'Treaty People Walk for Water' event near the La Salle Lake State Park in Solway, Minnesota on Aug. 7, 2021. Credit: Kerem Yucel/AFP via Getty Images
Activists say, ‘We have to stand strong’ and a tribe has filed a new lawsuit over the rights of wild rice. But the options are running out.
In the dense coniferous forests of northern Minnesota, they’ve shown up nearly every day to chain themselves to equipment and block traffic on roads, chanting “water is life.”
Not a week has passed this summer that activists haven’t used their bodies to stymie construction of Line 3, an oil pipeline that would deliver energy-intensive Canadian crude from the tar sands of Alberta to the Midwest. But those efforts don’t appear to be stopping the project, which has steamrolled forward since obtaining its final permits late last year.
All but the Minnesota section of Enbridge Energy’s 1,031-mile pipeline has been finished, and now the Canada-based energy giant says that that remaining work is 80 percent complete. The company said it’s on track to wrap up Line 3, including the 337 miles that run through Minnesota, by the end of the year.
Activists haven’t admitted defeat, at least not publicly, and press releases calling on people to join the frontline demonstrations continue to get widely disseminated among social media feeds and in email inboxes. “We have to be brave. We have to stand strong,” Tara Houska, a prominent Indigenous leader in the anti-pipeline movement, said in a July 30 press release. “We have to try. Actions, not words.”
And last Wednesday, in the latest attempt to derail the pipeline through legal action, the White Earth Band of Ojibwe tribe sued Minnesota’s Department of Natural Resources, arguing that when the agency granted Enbridge permission to divert nearly 5 billion gallons of water as part of Line 3’s construction work, it violated a 2018 tribal law that gives certain rights to wild rice plants.
But the lawsuit’s implications remain uncertain, and legal scholars said that tribal court cases affecting state law are quite rare. “Tribal court decisions are binding in the tribal nation they are decided in,” Kathryn Fort, the director of the Indian Law Clinic at Michigan State University’s College of Law, told Reuters. “Beyond that, it gets very situation specific.”
Once operational, the pipeline would pump 760,000 barrels of crude oil per day across 14 counties in northern Minnesota. And Indigenous activists say any spill from the pipeline could easily contaminate the hundreds of bodies of water it crosses, where local tribes fish, gather wild rice and perform cultural traditions.
Indigenous and environmental activists say the pipeline not only poses a grave risk to Minnesota’s environment but hinders the state’s transition to clean energy and violates the long-held treaty rights of Native tribes that depend on the land for their cultural identities and livelihood.
The new Line 3 would replace the original one built in the 1960s, something Enbridge says must be done to help prevent future spills while continuing to meet the country’s energy needs.
Both Minnesota and federal regulators have so far sided with Enbridge, granting the company the final permits to move forward with the Minnesota section of the pipeline last November. But the regulatory approvals have only further galvanized the thousands of protesters hell bent on stopping the pipeline, who call themselves “water protectors” and “land defenders.”
More than 700 demonstrators have been arrested this summer during acts of civil disobedience, according to the Pipeline Legal Action Network, an organization that coordinates legal support for Line 3 protesters. Those acts include incidents where protesters chained themselves to drills, climbed inside sections of pipe still waiting to be laid in the ground and blocked access to construction sites by hosting Indigenous ceremonies in the middle of roads used by Enbridge workers.
But as activists dug in their heels, they were met by equally increasing hostility from police, who say they’re simply carrying out the laws that have been put in place by the state’s elected officials and top regulators.
In June, protesters accused police of using a low-flying helicopter as a form of intimidation. In July, several demonstrators were sprayed with chemical irritants and shot with rubber bullets by law enforcement after the activists scaled a fence meant to keep people out of an Enbridge construction site. And last week, one demonstrator was reportedly knocked unconscious by police in Pennington County during a trespassing arrest, according to a social media post. The video on the social post showed the young activist being aggressively pulled to the ground by officers.
The aggressive tactics used by police against anti-pipeline protesters gained national attention during the 2016 Standing Rock protests, where vidoes spread on social media showed Indigenous and environmental activists being sprayed with fire hoses in below-freezing temperatures, attacked by police dogs and shot with rubber bullets. Some of the tactics being used by state law enforcement to police Line 3’s construction route, as well as actions by other northern Minnesota officials, could potentially violate protesters’ rights, said some legal scholars.
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An incident in July prompted a Minnesota district judge to issue a temporary restraining order against Hubbard County, barring its sheriffs from “barricading, obstructing or otherwise interfering with access” to the driveway of a private property that activists have been using as a base of operations for their protest activities. In her order, the judge wrote that police blocking the driveway was “a substantial violation” of the property owner’s right to use and enjoy the property.
Still, it’s unclear what options remain for activists, whose efforts have merely slowed construction of Line 3 over the summer. Many had hoped the Biden administration would intervene, as it did with the Keystone XL pipeline in January. Those hopes were dashed after the Department of Justice filed a legal brief in late June that defended the project.
“I drove people to the polls for you, Joe Biden. I drove people to the polls who had never, never voted in their lives,” Winona LaDuke, a longtime Native activist who has fought Line 3 since its replacement was initially proposed seven years ago, said in a July 7 press call. “We believed in you.”
Wednesday, August 11, 2021
Mexico: Indigenous communities take over water-bottling plant to use as a social centre ~~ Tamara Pearson
https://www.greenleft.org.au/content/mexico-indigenous-communities-take-over-water-bottling-plant-use-social-centre
~~ posted for dmorista ~~
'Land and liberty', reads the hat of this Indigenous leader. Photo: Tamara Pearson.
For four months, Indigenous and local communities in Mexico have managed to blockade and shut down the Bonafont plant in Cuanala in Puebla state. Bonafont is a bottled water brand owned by Danone, a Paris-based food corporation.
With large rocks blocking the main entrance, as well as tents, a cooking station and more, the communities have used their permanent blockade as a space to hold workshops, forums and cultural events.
317 - Bonafont cr Tamara Pearson img_7580.jpg
Communities blame the local and national governments, Bonafont, and other corporations for pollution, water scarcity, and other issues in their areas. Photo: Tamara Pearson
But on Sunday, August 1, they decided it was time to take over the plant and put it to better use. They called a public meeting with state authorities and Bonafont owners for Sunday, August 8. No officials showed up.
After putting the government and corporations on trial, with members of each community testifying to the abuse of land and water in their area, the 21 communities then entered the huge water-bottling plant and took it over on Sunday.
317 - Bonafont cr Tamara Pearson img_7632.jpg
Having broken into the Bonafont water bottling plant, communities chanted, 'Our water is not for sale'. Photo: Tamara Pearson
The action coincided with the anniversary of the birth of Mexican revolutionary Emiliano Zapata. Activists immediately disabled and destroyed security cameras within the plant and moved large structures to block other entrances. They shut down one of the wells within the plant that was used to extract water from the nearby Iztaccíhuatl volcanic springs, in the east of Puebla state. Bonafont had been extracting 1.4 million litres of water a day, in order to sell them for profit, while leaving locals without.
317 - Bonafont cr Tamara Pearson img_7650.jpg
Activists want the property to be run by the people, for the people. Photo: Tamara Pearson
The communities will now hold assemblies throughout Sunday night in order to decide what they will do with the giant water bottling plant, so that the space can be used to benefit the people.
317 - Bonafont cr Tamara Pearson img_7685.jpg
While some people marched within the plant, others got to work in the background, moving trucks and ensuring that security forces wouldn't be able to get it. Photo: Tamara Pearson
“We are open to dialogue, but not to negotiation. Our communities declare this looting company closed,” said one representative, who spoke anonymously. Activists fear criminalisation, imprisonment and murder for actions like the one taken Sunday.
“We have to defend what our ancestors left us with — this mother Earth,” said another community representative.
317 - Bonafont cr Tamara Pearson img_7687.jpg
Activists painted 'well of death' as they disabled this well, within the Bonafont plant. Photo: Tamara Pearson
The Bonafont plant has been in the area since 1996. There are 16,000 water purification and bottling plants in Mexico. Danone, Coca-Cola and Pepsico are the main companies profiting from the natural resource nationally, with 82% of the market.
317 - Bonafont cr Tamara Pearson img_7688.jpg
'Here, the people govern', was painted near the entrance. Photo: Tamara Pearson
In Puebla State, Nestle Water and US company, Keurig Dr Pepper are also bottling water. Nestle takes water from the springs of the Popocatépetl and Iztaccíhuatl volcanoes. These companies pay, on average, 2600 pesos (AU$168) per year for a concession to extract water.
317 - Bonafont cr Tamara Pearson img_7696.jpg
Now it's up to the Indigenous peoples to decide how best to use the space. Photo: Tamara Pearson
People from Almoloya, Tlautla, Colonia José Ángeles, Ometoxtla, Zacatepec, Cuanalá, Nextetelco, Coronango, Tepalcatepec, Cuachayotla, Cuapan, Xoxtla and Cuautlancingo say that while Bonafont has been taking their water and selling it in 19-litre bottles, they have been forced to buy their water from water trucks.
Friday, July 23, 2021
“We Can’t Make the Bleeding Stop on Our Own”: Interview with a Native Water Protector in Minnesota ~~ Sam Carliner
A Native water protector at the #StopLine3 actions in Minnesota spoke with Left Voice about
how fossil fuel extraction connects to the history of violence against Indigenous Communities.
~~ posted for dmorista ~~
Native-led water protectors have been fighting to stop construction on the Line 3 pipeline in Minnesota. Enbridge, the Canadian multinational behind the pipeline, is violating Native treaties and is already responsible for one of the worst inland oil spills in U.S. history. Line 3 now threatens spillage in Indigenous environments as well as the Mississippi River.
One Native participant in these actions, Jaike SpottedWolf, traveled from the Pacific Northwest
to Minnesota to support this fight, and spoke about this experience with Left Voice’s Sam
Carliner. The interview covers the character of the actions on the ground and how they connect
to the larger history of colonial genocide against Native communities, which persists today.
SC: What is Line 3 and why are there a lot of actions around it right now?
JS: Line 3 is a pipeline from Canada down into the Gulf of Mexico through the state of
Minnesota. And it’s a perpetuation of pipelines that run through key reservation land throughout
the United States. It’s like a new form of genocide. Every pipeline so far that has been
implemented in the United States threatens water. This is stuff that you can’t just clean up and
get back to normal in terms of resource extraction. For example, there are uranium mines in
Diné nation that poison the water so much that there’s not enough drinking water and there are
exorbitant cancer rates. So where pipelines and mines are concerned, people who live near the
m, i.e., Native Americans, are left with having to survive in those really hostile environmental
conditions. Minnesota is in a state of emergency in terms of drought because they don’t have
enough water. The Pacific Northwest, where I live, does have water. But we also have record
fire seasons. Small towns on reservations are literally burning up. So this is all oriented around
climate change and indigeneity.
SC: What is your background as an activist, and why is it important for you to show
solidarity with these protests in Minnesota?
JS: I am Indigenous. I grew up in southern Idaho and moved to Seattle, where I lived, in 1997.
And I guess my own connection is to generational trauma and what I’ve been exposed to in my
native family in terms of preventable deaths. Not to say that that’s necessarily related to the
environment, but when treaties are broken and the government comes in and says, “We don’t
care what the treaty said or what your tribe said about the treaty. We are going to let this
company do what it’s going to do anyway” — it’s violating that Indigenous person’s culture,
their tradition, and everything that they know. Poverty is extremely high because the economy
doesn’t exist the way it does in white America. So the depression, the anxiety, the mental health
issues lead to self medicating, which leads to the bigger picture, which is, you know, youth
dying, very young, suicide rates skyrocketing, and we’ve all lost our culture. Sorrow, heartbreak,
devastation exist in Indigenous communities across the United States, but again, the
surrounding culture isn’t even aware of it. So that’s what compelled me to become active in my
own circles. And then, of course, when the riots broke out last year, the protests, I found an
opportunity to expose more of what’s happening in indigeneity and begin speaking at a couple
of different marches. I couldn’t make it out to Standing Rock, so I saw this opportunity and I just
took it to come out and help.
SC: What type of response have you gotten from the cops, the state, and Enbridge
surrounding these actions?
JS: I’ve heard of an activist who was in the media recently who was taken out of a car, put into
a headlock, and had bruises on them. Their camera was confiscated for evidence. This is a
known media person with credentials that was videoing a different action. So they’ll go to those
lengths. On somebody’s private camp where they own the land, cops came in from Hubbard
County and kettled the protesters overnight. They restricted people from being able to come
and go, and they restricted food and drink from being brought into the camp as a means of
keeping people quiet. So it can be really violent. We had one sheriff, however, up in a different
county that honors the treaties. That is how we were allowed to create what they call Camp
Fire Light and hold a ceremony there for eight days. He allowed us — I shouldn’t even say he
allowed us. He didn’t abuse the law. And we were able to occupy a space Enbridge had built.
When we knew we were able to hold that space, we started a ceremony. Some ceremonies
lasted for days. We were able to be there for eight days until Enbridge delivered a letter of
eviction, saying that we needed to remove ourselves from the land.
They are hustling to build this pipeline on the ground because they know the deadline is coming
. They know we’ve been talking to the EPA. They know I flew down to Washington, DC, with
three other activists from Minnesota. We did speak with the head of the EPA. Biden was
supposed to be there. They know that we’re talking to these people and that they’ve got a very
short timetable. So we’ve got about two weeks before the pipe is laid, and then things are
closer to up and running than they ever have been within this particular pipeline.
SC: Biden painted himself as much better on climate issues, and there was a lot of hype
around him appointing Deb Haaland to his cabinet and his talk of actually discussing
racism. What do you think his response to Line 3 or perhaps lack thereof says?
JS: I mean, he lied. I’m not shocked. He’s another white male president. He’s another in a long
line of politicians who have had to say what they knew the United States needed to hear at that
time in order to get elected. He knew that he had to be the opposite of Trump, and that that
would mean protecting the climate. That would mean talking about race, electing people into his
cabinet, appointing them. But when we look at his history, he’s not a huge fan of critical race
theory or intersectionality or doing anything to benefit communities. So why would he change all
of a sudden? You know, like, I don’t really believe that somebody who’s as old as he is, who has
been in office as long as he has, is all of a sudden going to change. He still has to please a large
part of the House and the Senate. And he’s going to do that because politicians love to kowtow.
And I hate to admit that, but I see him as nothing but a complete fake and a liar at this point. And
if I could have him hear those words, I would be elated. He’s destroying Indigenous communities
by doing nothing.
SC: What is it like at the camp?
JS: Camp Fire Light was shut down by an eviction notice almost three weeks ago. But the other
camp still stands. So I’ve been a resident, if you will, of Camp Migizi since May 19. What that
looks like, you know, the people do tend to shift weekly, sometimes daily. Some people can be
there for Saturday and Sunday. Some people are able to stay for months. We’re bringing in our
own supplies and everything from tents to lanterns to bathroom supplies to aid, anything that you
know is essential for survival. And it looks a lot like Indigenous femmes running this movement.
Three of us are Two Spirit, that’s essentially what your nonbinary equivalent would be in
Indigenous circles. So these camps are being run by Indigenous people, so there’s that element
to it that’s very different from that white patriarchy that we’re used to seeing in boardrooms and
places of authority and politics. There’s no hierarchy in decision-making. It’s not up to one
person. There’s a lot of community hashing all this out with a lot of discussion. Depending on
what job needs to be done, people will show up and contribute. This community is coming back
to Indigenous roots where you’re trading again, you’re pitching in because the job needs to be
done, not because you’re making money for it. The labor is not exploitative. It’s whatever your
body is able to bring at the moment and within your abilities. And there’s no shame around what
you can or can’t do.
SC: Did some of the discussions of racism from last summer have an impact on some of
the people who are showing up to these actions?
JS: I do have to believe that, because it was long and ongoing and as much as, you know, Covid
devastated many, many communities, we would not have had long sustained protests without
being locked down. With all of that protest happening, all the education that was happening,
especially on social media, you couldn’t avoid the perspective. That allowed especially white cult
ure to finally put to use all that agony or despair that they were having about feeling hopeless
and helpless in this moment and gave them a direction, I guess, in which to run in order to be
able to better help these communities. So when they started touching base with housing and with
food insecurity and with poverty and mental health or the lack of health care in the country on a
really extreme level, because they finally had the time. They were able to investigate a little more
thoroughly, you know, not just Black issues, but Indigenous issues, Asian American issues. And
that’s what gave them this information that resource extraction is another form of genocide and
that genocide is still continuing in America today. So this was another way that they could show
up and help.
SC: What else can be done to raise awareness of and build solidarity with Native issues?
JS: It almost feels like people become paralyzed or they feel so guilty because maybe their
ancestors had something to do with genocide or maybe they currently are living on Native land.
Like, I lived on Duwamish territory, but now I live on Ojibwe territory out here in Minnesota. So
maybe they feel so guilty that they are currently existing on Native land that if they don’t say
anything at all, they won’t be at risk of losing what they have or they won’t have to reconcile what
their ancestors did. As much as we weren’t taught the true history of what they call the “Indian
Wars,” which were really cultural genocide and colonization, I think that still everybody knows
deep down inside that the Native Americans were murdered for land and resources. There’s no
way around that. So having to admit that on your own turf? I can’t get people to come to the table
to have these discussions and to own up to how we are still suffering in a genocidal way. That
has to be my biggest frustration and my own biggest heartbreak.
I do want to mention the residential school situation. Those stories broke before I came out here
in May. It is almost the middle of July, and the United States has not started their search. There
are over 300 schools in this country that held Native babies, children, teenagers, and on those
grounds, you’ll find dead bodies from all of the abuse, the sexual abuse, the physical abuse, the
starvation, lack of resources because they refused to treat these children like human beings,
and that isn’t being discussed. We need to pay attention to these schools. It’s really concerning
in terms of how Native erasure occurs and how we are always swept under the rug. And if this
was a white community and hundreds of bodies had been found anywhere, there would have
been a full-on search. The Catholic Church would have been brought to a fucking trial at this
point, and they would have pushed that along very fast and very hard. I don’t know that we’ll
ever see an actual investigation because America would have to reconcile its hands in genocide
against Native Americans.
Today it’s the pipeline, but 120 years ago it was that they just wanted our land. So they were
taking these children away from their families in order to assimilate them to American culture,
to Christianity. So it may not feel like it had a lot to do with climate change, but in a roundabout
way it does.
And pipeline construction is continuing Native abductions. Two pipeline workers were found to
have young children, teenagers, and women in their capacity for sex trafficking. This is very
current and not talked about. Native women, teens, and children are the most trafficked
demographic in the United States percentage-wise. We saw a lot of it in North Dakota. Pipeline
workers come out of state to work these jobs. They get lonely, they can’t handle their sexual
impulses, and they get involved in trafficking of these women and children. And they go off the
map completely because these areas are so rural, because oftentimes law enforcement is in on
it. And they’re turning their heads or sometimes taking hush money in order to keep the
trafficking going. This has been an epidemic in Indigenous communities for decades, where you
can look up a list of Indigenous people that have gone missing over the course of the past 50
years. Very few of them have been found, and many are found horribly mangled. It doesn’t
necessarily always have to do with pipeline work, but within the past 10 to 15 years, pipeline
owners bring in people that are making a lot of money that feel like it’s OK to exploit these bodies
and will pay a trafficker whatever it will take.
SC: What can people do to help those of you protesting Line 3?
JS: There’s ways that people can support in an auxiliary way, less physical than showing up at
camp. As much as we would love to see the bodies. The actual physical support of showing up
at a camp gives us the opportunity to share what’s going on in Indigenous communities. But if
you can’t come in person, because this is the middle of America and nobody wants to be in
Minnesota in July, I understand. And donate whatever you can to the cause, because we are
traveling all over the state all the time. Donate to a bail fund, because at one point or another a
Brown body is going to be arrested who should not be in jail. And for anybody who can’t do
those, get the word out. Whoever is paying attention and who has those networking connections,
please, please get the word out to people that can do something. Make it known to those people
in those circles that there is a human rights crisis here in America, and it’s not just Black lives.
I’ll support Black lives till the day I die. But Native communities also need help. We need help. It’s really severe, and we are dying every day, and we can’t make the bleeding stop on our own.
Sunday, July 4, 2021
Native Genocide, Native Liberation ~~ EVE OTTENBERG
https://www.counterpunch.org/2021/07/02/native-genocide-native-liberation/
~~ posted for collectivist ~~
Image from the cover of Red Nation Rising
The scope of violence against Native people in the United States is truly staggering. In fact, it would be safe to say the historical genocide never ended. It is ongoing. It is the violence of stolen lands, of stolen children, of dispossession, of police, of payday lenders, liquor stores and pawnshops, of fracking and mining in Native territory. And yet, despite this furious and barbaric onslaught, Native people persist – unbowed.
But the murder, torture and mutilation have been gruesome. Take one statistic, cited in the recently published Red Nation Rising by four writers and activists: the Indian Health Service “sterilized between 25 and 50 percent of all Native women between the years 1970 and 1976.” Can you imagine if this had been white women? Howls of outrage would resound from CNN and NBC. Tucker Carlson would scream that the white genocide had arrived. But it’s Native women, so there’s nary a peep.
The stealing of Native children has long been known to those who look into it. But it was in the news recently. That’s when the New York Times reported on June 24 that 751 bodies, mainly children, had been found in a mass grave at a former school for indigenous children in Saskatchawan, Canada. This was only weeks after the remains of 215 children were found at another of these former church-run schools, also in unmarked graves. On June 30, another 182 bodies were found near one of these schools in British Columbia. One wonders how many more will turn up. Certainly, the settler-colonial practice of stealing children was much more malevolent than what those who did it said at the time, namely, that they were helping these children “assimilate” to white society. Assimilate into the cemetery is more 
like it.
There were also such schools in the United States. This week, Interior Secretary Deb Haaland “said the country would search federal boarding schools,” the Times reported, “for possible burial sites of Native American children.” What these missionary assimilationists were doing in Canada, they were probably doing here too, namely, raping and killing indigenous children. Though it’s unclear how the children died, “some former students of the schools have described the bodies of infants born to girls impregnated by priests and monks being incinerated.”
Red Nation Rising touches on these notorious boarding schools, as one of many forms of barbaric cruelty inflicted on Native Americans. Why? To steal their land, in which Native people have such profound roots. This book also makes clear that Native culture is not capitalist. Indeed the basis of capitalism, private property, is alien to and has been used to dispossess Natives.
“There is now a monstrous disruption in the force of all relatives who live above and below the surface of the Earth. Today, in our era of life, this monster is known as capitalism, the most threatening and successful force of death and poverty,” this book’s forward announces. Capitalism wars against life, and one of that war’s frontlines is the bordertown. “Bordertowns, as with all imperial borders, are spatial expressions of an intent to murder,” this book says. “That is why, from Saskatoon to Santa Fe, bordertowns are always bloody killing fields.”
Red Nation Rising argues against defining the ongoing crime against the Indian as one of race. Racism is a problem, no doubt. But the real issue between imperial vigilantes and Natives is land. “The erasure and elimination of the Native…is simply to gain access to land,” the authors write. This is why the American 1776 war of independence was catastrophic for Natives, and for Blacks. The book argues that the revolutionary war “was actually a counterrevolutionary war to enslave Blacks and exterminate Indians.” All I can say is don’t tell this to the know-nothing GOP governors in such a tizzy over critical race theory that they’ve banned it from public schools. They’ll have a fit. In fact, this book is precisely the sort of clear-eyed analysis of power relations within the imperial core that right-wingers aim to eliminate.
The authors mention the arrival of fracking in Native lands and with it, man camps, citing former Congresswoman Deb Haaland voicing concerns about oil and gas workers soliciting Navajo women and girls for sex. Some considered this worry outrageous at the time. But such abuses, along with pollution and destruction of sacred sites, always come with man camps and flourish in bordertowns. “Wall Street is an advanced man camp,” the authors write. “The White House is a man camp in miniature. The Bakken oil field is an emergent man camp. The Sturgis Motorcycle Rally is an annual man camp. The Ivy League is a federation of man camps.”
The authors also critique those who decry police brutality. “Police are Indian killers,” they write. Police are per se violent. Lamenting police brutality assumes that there is some acceptable level of violence. Red Nation Rising argues that there is not, that Native people, Blacks and many, many others would be better off without police. “To call for an end of police brutality, therefore, is not to call for an end to police violence; rather it is to call for more ‘justified’ police violence.”
The “bad apples” excuse for police violence, this book argues, is simply a lie. Violence inheres in policing. Why else would cops sport enough military gear for an occupying army? And this occupation is most evident in how police attack and kill Native Americans. “All settler colonial policing begins with the idea that Native peoples have no claim to Native land and, equally important, stand in the way of settler claims to Native land.”
So the colonial project means extirpating the Indian; sterilizing women, stealing children and sending them to boarding schools where half of them perish (or maybe more, to judge from the aforementioned ghoulish discoveries of mass graves at such schools in Canada), “policing” men, especially those living on the street, with violence. That’s today. It comes after several centuries of outright slaughter and official trickery and machinations to abet that genocide. “The fact that the U.S. government broke every treaty it entered into with Native nations tells you all you need to know about settler law.”
And yet Natives survive and persist. This baffles the colonist, even those who claim concern for Native welfare. Indeed, “the ‘solutions’ the liberal capitalist state offers to white supremacy are the smallpox-infected blankets of ongoing settler colonialism.” This book calls for Native defiance, not just one Standing Rock, but many. It also calls for solidarity with others in similar struggles. It’s is not a history or anthropology. It is a call to action.
Friday, June 18, 2021
A Native-Led Fight Against Pipeline Construction Has Begun in Minnesota ~~ Sam Carliner
https://www.leftvoice.org/a-native-led-fight-against-pipeline-construction-has-begun-in-minnesota/
~ posted for dmorista ~~
Native Water Protectors In Minnesota Are Waging A Battle Against The Line 3 Pipeline Construction Which Violates Their Treaties And Threatens The Environment.
A native-led battle for the environment is being waged in Minnesota. On June 7, water protectors from the territories of the Anishinaabe tribes — which include members of the Odawa, Ojibwe, Potawatomi, Oji-Cree, Saulteaux, and Algonquin peoples — and their allies set up blockades to delay the construction of the Line 3 tar sands pipeline currently being built from Alberta, Canada to Superior, Wisconsin.
These protesters are pitted against Enbridge, a multinational Canadian oil company with a long history of building pipelines that have caused environmental destruction with spills. The current pipeline construction cuts through native lands protected by treaties signed in the 1800s.
Enbridge plans to use the pipeline to carry tar sands oil, one of the dirtiest types of fossil fuels. A Line 3 spill would threaten sensitive watersheds and traditional rice habitats in the region. Even without that environmental threat, however, the construction has already been terrorizing native communities: with the advent of construction camps and their workers, there has been an increase in sexual violence against the local native women.
The water protectors’ actions on June 7 and the days since have been peaceful, but the activists are uncompromising in their defense of the land. Several hundred people showed up on the first day of protests and blocked public roads with their own bodies, even placing a boat in one road leading to a construction site. Dozens of protesters also locked themselves to the boat and to Enbridge equipment at the construction site. It took the cops two days to “free” the equipment of protesters.
Many local police departments are coordinating their efforts to shut down the protests. These cops receive most of their funding directly from Enbridge, a perfect example of the real role of the police as an institution that exists to protect capital.
At first, the cops were somewhat passive in their repression, not having expected and prepared for so many protesters. But it did not take the cops long to become more aggressive. More than 100 protesters were arrested in the first few days of actions. At certain points cops used sonic weapons against the protesters, and a Department of Homeland Security helicopter flew close to the ground and swarmed protesters with clouds of dirt.
This violence succeeded at scuttling some of the more militant resistance to the pipeline, but the fight is far from over. Thousands of protesters have set up an encampment (Camp Fire Light) at a location near where the pipeline is slated to cross the Mississippi River sometime during its construction.
Though the Biden administration claims to take seriously the threat of fossil fuels, it has thus far ignored the protesters’ calls for an end to the pipeline construction. This should not be a surprise. The most famous native-led pipeline protest in recent history was the one at Standing Rock in North Dakota, which took place during the Obama/Biden administration. The Democrats in the White House then took no stand to defend the protesters, even when riot cops sprayed them with freezing water cannons, tear gas, and various other “less-than-lethal” munitions. Some activists involved in the protests now have cancer, possibly from the use of a crop duster at the protests, which sprayed activists with chemicals.
The water protectors in Minnesota likely have a long and difficult battle ahead. Their protests matter far beyond the native communities. All workers are affected by the destruction of the environment through capitalism’s extraction of fossil fuels.
Those seeking to shut down Line 3 before further destruction can be done deserve our full solidarity.
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