In one of his last official acts before leaving the White House, President Joe Biden released Leonard Peltier from prison. The action is an extraordinary move that ends a decades-long push by Indigenous activists, international religious leaders, human rights organizations and Hollywood insiders who argued that the 80-year-old Native American activist was wrongly convicted.

The commutation was widely opposed by law enforcement who insisted that Peltier’s actions were cold-blooded, and he should remain imprisoned for the rest of his life for murdering FBI agents Jack Coler and Ronald Williams in 1975. The agents’ deaths came at a time when tensions were high over a nationwide struggle between the U.S. government and activists for Native American civil and treaty rights.

“Tribal Nations, Nobel Peace laureates, former law enforcement officials (including the former U.S. Attorney whose office oversaw Mr. Peltier’s prosecution and appeal), dozens of lawmakers, and human rights organizations strongly support granting Mr. Peltier clemency, citing his advanced age, illnesses, his close ties to and leadership in the Native American community, and the substantial length of time he has already spent in prison.” said Biden in a statement today.

Nick Tilsen, the executive director of NDN Collective, an Indigenous led non-profit, says Peltier’s release is a historic moment that comes after many years of organizing and lobbying across the globe.

“Leonard Peltier now gets to go home. Every Indian person ever, ever wanted to do, was go home and back to their people. And now he's going to have an opportunity to do that,” Tilsen said.

Full article

Support for comrades in Aotearoa this David guy seems like a total dropkick

Celebrations have erupted across Gaza after a ceasefire in the war-ravaged territory came into effect on Sunday morning.

The ceasefire was announced more than two hours later than scheduled due to a dispute between Israel and Hamas over naming the captives to be freed under the deal.

Earlier on Sunday, Hamas named three captives it plans to release later in the day.

Israel’s cabinet approved the ceasefire on Saturday in a rare session during the Jewish Sabbath, more than two days after mediators Qatar, Egypt and the United States announced the deal.

full article

Text courtesy of Tjen Folket https://tjen-folket.no/2022/02/06/ein-eigen-samisk-stat/

You can read the whole issue of Røde Fane in Norwegian here and in North Sámi here.

I may have made mistakes in this translation, so you may wish to compare and contrast with a machine translation. If there are any Norwegian or North Sámi speakers who might suggest changes to the translation, I'd be glad to hear them. I have also changed the formatting to hopefully read better.

A Sámi State of Our Own

What is the significance of the establishment of a popularly-elected Sámi parliament? Is it a recognition of Sámi rights? A step towards Sámi self-governance?

"Quite the contrary," Niillas A. Somby asserts in this interview.

— "The Sámi parliament is simply an attempt to legalize the Norwegian colonization. It's the crown at the top of the system of colonization," Niillas says, pointing to how similar institutions are now being established by many colonial powers.

Niillas A. Somby (age 37) lives in Sirbmá in Deatnu, known in Norwegian as Tana. He is a photographer and has among other things contributed to the book Finnmarksbilder (Images of Finnmark). Niillas was one of the Sámi who went on hunger strike outside the Storting [Norwegian parliament] during the Alta controversy. He later lost an arm when he and John Reier Martinsen attempted to blow up a bridge in Alta. After half a year in custody, Niillas fled to Canada where he and his family lived with Indians [Natives], until they were deported from Canada and sent back to Norway.

In the 1981 Storting election, Niillas was in second place on the Red Electoral Alliance's list in Finnmark. Today he says he wishes to focus on the struggle for Sámi liberation, rather than participate in Norwegian organizations.

Niillas: The Sámi Rights Committee is completely ass-backwards. Here we have the Norwegian government setting up a committee to determine which rights Sámi have in the part of Sápmi which is being colonized by Norway. It should instead be a Sámi committee determining what sorts of rights Norwegians have in our country. Our rights are here, it's just that we have for generations been kept from exercising them.

Interviewer: What do you expect will come out of the Sámi Rights Committee's findings?

Niillas: We'll probably get a Sámi parliament, such that the colonization can be legalized, turned into a formal system. This wouldn't be something unique to Norway. They have a Sámi parliament in Finland, in Sweden they're considering something similar. In Canada we're seeing the same process with the establishment of Indian Government [sic]. Even if the Indians in Canada have more rights than the Sámi in Norway, this will be an institution with minimal say. I expect no future political changes that will give us more say in our affairs. What we'll get is an institution to feed us crumbs of autonomy.

Interviewer: What do you think about the Sámi organizations' work in relation to the Sámi Rights Committee?

Niillas: I think they're acting on the premises of the powers that be. They're discussing the electoral system and census results without asking questions about what the Sámi parliament will actually be. I have in any case more important things to do than vote for a representative in a political sandbox. I'm worried that many Sámi with many resources to work with will end up throwing their power away for this sandbox.

Interviewer: But who should in your opinion uphold the Sámi people's rights? The Sámi parliament?

Niillas: If we Sámi are to acquire political power to rule our own lands, we must look away from the colonial power's institutions completely. We must not build Sámi institutions based on the blueprints of Norwegian institutions. I cannot give any sort of complete recipe on how our institutions should look. Their form must be determined by the Sámi people by ourselves on the basis of the Sámi democracy that existed before. The Sámi parliament cannot have power both locally and centrally, we must have Sámi institutions of power on a local level.

I think we can build on much of the old siida system. Around these parts, for example, it was the Buolbmát (or Polmak) siida and the Ohcejohka (or Utsjok) siida in the old days that determined the use of resources in this area. We must rebuild what existed of Sámi organization before the colonial powers tore these institutions down. The old siida system was built on collective property rights, on a sort of socialist foundation.

This means we must have our own Sámi legal apparatus and Sámi police. If one must go to the Norwegian courts every time a problem arises, one won't find any solutions there. The whole Norwegian legal apparatus was built up during the heyday of colonization and still serves the colonizers' ends. We Sámi must also have laws to be able to rule our own country. This is to say we need our own Sámi constitution, our own Sámi legal code.

Interviewer: But what you're saying now, that would mean a separate Sámi state, right?

Niillas: Yes, of course.

Interviewer: But what about a form of self-governance within the Norwegian state, a so-called autonomous area?

Niillas: That would be a sort of Indian reservation, something I think most in Sápmi and in Norway would distance themselves from.

Interviewer: What's being discussed right now is a Sámi parliament based on the Sámi population. But if a Sámi parliament is to steer a Sámi state, can one then build on such census figures?

Niillas: I cannot think of any state established on an ethnic basis. That would be a sort of racial segregation like in South Africa. If the Sámi parliament is just for divvying up stipends and money for cultural purposes, then that's fine to restrict voting rights to just the Sámi population. But in a Sámi state or autonomous region, anyone living in Sápmi must be able to demand and receive the rights of citizenship.

Interviewer: Do you then see no advantage to establishing a Sámi parliament?

Niillas: Well, it's clear that it can be useful to have a popularly elected Sámi institution. Today just about anybody at all can claim to represent the Sámi. When we went down to Oslo and set up lavvus in front of the Storting back in 1979, we said we represented the Sámi. Meanwhile the Labor Party mayors of the Sámi municipalities came down and said that they represented the Sámi.

Rights and duties

Niillas: You're only asking about Sámi people's rights. Everybody's talking about Sámi people's rights, but not about our duties. I find that it goes without saying that one must also have obligations or duties owed to the society one lives in. The greatest of these duties we have is to take care of our land and water and natural resources. Here we see that indigenous peoples have a common foundational attitude. We understand humans as a part of nature. We must make use of nature, not overexploit it. When one overexploits nature one will end up with nowhere to go. So now that we're seeing environmental catastrophies like Chernobyl, I'd say it's high time that we revise our attitudes on who is civilized and who isn't.

Between east and west

Niillas: Something the Sámi Rights Committee hasn't dared to consider is the military aspects of the situation. Sápmi is split between four countries, and on each side of each border, Sámi youths are forced into militaries that aren't our own, and which have no background in Sámi culture whatsoever. Our people is divided between NATO and the Warsaw Pact. We know that Finland can be pulled to the Soviet Union's side in a war. We don't want to fight a war against those on the other side of the river.

From the Somby family's kitchen window, we can see Deatnu — the Tana River — and over to its opposite bank. On both sides of the river the same Sámi dialect is spoken, and many Sámi have relatives on the opposite side of the river, yet there the Finnish state holds sway. It is then perhaps not too strange that not everyone on Norway's side of the border feels very Norwegian.

Niillas: But Norwegian nationalism has influenced the people here as well. The war was especially influential. That's when we got a whole generation who became more Norwegian than any Norwegian. Everyone was in the same boat against the Germans. The burnings and evacuations very effectively hastened the Norwegianization process. The only ones who were spared were those who lived in the mountains and had with them enough to take care of their reindeer herds. They saw everyone as an enemy, whether it was Norwegian rulers or the German occupation. The war also Norwegianized those among the Sámi who became Nazis. Today they are, as a rule, supporters of Norwegianization and the SLF (Sámi National Association / Samenes Landsforbund). This phenomenon is as always about hiding behind the great power — a desire to be the rich man's servant.

The special position of reindeer herding?

Interviewer: The reindeer herders are now demanding their own representation in the Sámi parliament because of their industry's special role as a bearer of Sámi culture and rights. Do you believe it's right to say that reindeer herding has this sort of special position?

Niillas: It's always been the state's policy to restrict Sámi people's rights to participate in reindeer herding. In that way they pit the reindeer herders and the non-herding Sámi against each other. Those who don't have reindeer are then not seen as really Sámi. If one has gotten through this [?], then it's just a matter of killing the reindeer herding [practice], then the state's got rid of its whole Sámi problem. Through that lens, Chernobyl came exactly as ordered. I'm afraid forces in the reindeer herding industry are playing into this division. I'm almost unsure if I dare to assert this, but the reindeer herding industry has in large part sold itself to the state. They get money from the state through their agreements with it. As a result they've found themselves facing new restrictions from the state through the new law on reindeer herding — among other restrictions, herders' cooperatives must now be approved by politically appointed regional councils. Such a system is completely contrary to Sámi tradition. The right to participate in reindeer herding isn't something we got from the state, but something we've always had. The same applies to other rights which have been taken from us. The right to land and water are something we have as people, one industry or source of sustenance isn't better than the other.

The Sámi authorities

Niillas: Before it was dážat (Norwegians) who were the typical authorities in the Sámi municipalities — mayors were as a rule teachers from the south. For hundreds of years we've been taught that those who know what they're talking about are those with a gray suit and tie. Now it's a new type [of authority] which has taken over: the Sámi bureaucrats. They're often more bureaucratic than their Norwegian counterparts, in the same way as Sámi Christians are more Christian than the Pope himself. We see the same happen in other indigenous communities. The Sámi authorities today are people with a good education from a Norwegian university. It's clear that although they wish to serve Sámi interests, that they can't avoid being colored by the system. I don't think one could manage to stay in school for many years, if one didn't believe any of what one was learning. I worry it'll be these types who will come to dominate the Sámi parliament.

I've been binging the hell out of this channel recently, it seems pretty well-researched and sourced, with collaboration from indigenous historians for things like pronunciation and for translation of more prosaic texts.

Guest Opinion. As a Karuk Tribal member from the Klamath River, my heart goes out to everyone in Southern California who has been displaced or devastated by the recent wildfires. Our communities know this pain all too well—we, too, have seen homes reduced to ash and sacred lands scorched by wildfires. Fire, which can be a source of renewal, has become a destructive force, intensified by years of mismanagement, climate change, and systemic disregard for Indigenous knowledge.

The Klamath River region has faced its own wildfire crises. From these struggles, we’ve emerged with solutions rooted in Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK). Cultural burns—practices our ancestors used to prevent catastrophic fires and maintain ecosystem balance—are now being recognized by public agencies charged with wildfire management as a key strategy in building fire-resilient landscapes. These controlled, low-intensity burns reduce fuel loads, promote healthy forests, and protect our homes and waterways.

Unfortunately, hateful rhetoric is now circulating that distorts the fact, not only about the cause of the wildfires that are ravaging Los Angeles but also about a recent win for the environment: the removal of four aging hydroelectric dams from the Klamath River. These claims ignore the reality that the removal of these dams, which are more than 600 miles from LA, is a hard-fought victory for Indigenous communities who have battled for over 20 years to see them come down. These dams had been producing stagnant, toxic waters that nearly depleted our rivers of salmon, with the devastating 2002 fish kill being one of the most tragic outcomes. With the dams now gone, the river is flushing itself clean, and for the first time in 100 years, salmon are spawning above the former dam sites. This restoration is a major step toward healing both our land and our people, and in no way impacts water supplies in the rest of California.

Full article

Western ‘psychedelic renaissance’ is partly to blame for dwindling supplies of peyote, which produces mescaline

Aldous Huxley wrote about the spiritual visions he had while taking the drug mescaline in The Doors of Perception, while Hunter S Thompson wrote of driving at 100mph while under the influence of it in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

But now a growing number of western spiritual seekers dabbling in psychedelics are accused of causing a shortage of the plant that produces mescaline.

Experts warned last week of a shortage of peyote, a sacred cactus used by Native Americans in religious rituals, which produces the hallucinogenic drug and only grows in limited range across south-western US and northern Mexico. They blame a psychedelic renaissance taking off in wealthy western societies, as well as overharvesting and land development.

Demand for the psychedelic drug, which became popular during the counterculture hippy movement of the 1960s, has surged alongside ayahuasca, a South American psychoactive compound, traditionally used by Indigenous cultures and folk healers in the Amazon and Orinoco basins, and also now widely used by the alternative healing industry.

The shortage is concerning for members of the Native American Church of North America who practise peyotism, a synthesis of traditional Native American beliefs and elements of Christianity that considers peyote a sacred sacrament and has about 350,000 adherents.

“This is a Native American sacred medicine and we don’t want people messing around with it,” said a Navajo member of the church from a congregation in Rio Grande City, Texas, who asked not to be identified. “The Natives people don’t like it. White people shouldn’t mess around with it.”

Full article

Greenlanders do not want to be American or Danish, the Arctic island’s prime minister has said, after US President-elect Donald Trump refused to rule out using military force to acquire the territory.

Prime Minister Mute Egede, who had insisted the territory was “not for sale” after Trump flagged his “ownership and control” intentions last month, expressed his openness to engage with the United States at a news conference in Copenhagen on Friday

However, he also underlined Greenland’s independence aspirations, which have gained momentum in recent years as Danish colonial abuses against the predominantly Inuit population have come to light.

“Greenland is for the Greenlandic people. We do not want to be Danish, we do not want to be American. We want to be Greenlandic,” he said at a news conference alongside Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen.

“We have a desire for independence, a desire to be the master of our own house … This is something everyone should respect,” said Egede.

“But that doesn’t mean we are cutting all ties, all cooperation and all relations with Denmark,” he added.

He also noted that Greenland is part of the North American continent, and “a place that the Americans see as part of their world”. He said he was open to holding talks with Trump about what “unites us”.

“Cooperation is about dialogue. Cooperation means that you will work towards solutions,” he said.

Full Article

Six years ago, Rocky Bay First Nation — an Indigenous community of more than 1,000 people just north of Lake Superior — began to study the health of their food and water.

Worried about the impacts of paper mills, mines and other industrial activities on the water systems that lead to the world’s largest freshwater lake, fishers from the community collected fish for food and to test for contaminants, particularly mercury.

Ray Nobis was one of them. As a kid, he was taken out of school to learn how to trap and hunt. When he grew up, he became a commercial fisherman, “living off the land and guiding, you know, all the normal stuff that we grew up loving my dad for.”

“And then everything changed,” Nobis, now economic development manager for Rocky Bay First Nation, told The Narwhal. “The environment changed.”

Commercial fishing wasn’t viable anymore, “or magnificent,” Nobis said. The “culprit,” as he described it, was industry setting up on the north end of Lake Nipigon, a large lake just north of Lake Superior, that was polluting the water and impacting fish spawning habitat. In recent years, mining, hydro and nuclear projects, lithium battery factories and biomass operations have been proposed around the lake. That spurred Nobis and others in the community to learn how to test the waters and the beings in them.

The nation partnered with Lakehead University in Thunder Bay, Ont., to secure technical expertise — or “non-Native assistance of technology and education and scientific knowledge,” as Nobis called it — to conduct the testing and share its findings. The nation has also secured federal funding for Indigenous Guardians to continue the study for several years. Initial results show elevated levels of mercury in samples of walleye, northern pike, lake trout and sucker. The community developed consumption guidelines for these species indicating the maximum number that can be safely eaten each month, but further analysis is needed to determine whether other fish types are safe to eat.

But to get a fuller understanding of the risks to Lake Superior and by extension their food and water, the nation sought to get six of their neighbouring First Nations on board.

Full article

Indigenous languages across Latin America are under threat of disappearing.
Activists are calling for more government support, especially in schools. But some are resorting to new trends to revive dying languages.

HONOLULU (KHON2) — Pilar Hererro, a senior staff attorney at the Center for Reproductive Rights, has dedicated her career to advocating for reproductive autonomy, particularly after her own experience as a young mother.

Her personal journey encompassed navigating pregnancy and motherhood while also contending with external pressures. These experiences helped Hererro realize just how vital reproductive choices are for an individual’s future.

Hawaiʻi is facing the same issues that other U.S. states encounter, including systemic failures in the healthcare system that disproportionately affect Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander women.

According to Hererro, these women are not only less likely to receive adequate prenatal care, but they are also at greater risk of pregnancy-related death.

Unfortunately, Hererro pointed out that “stories about coercion and mistreatment in the healthcare system are far too common” and have a particularly damaging impact on Native Hawaiian peoples.

Full article

The totem pole stands in the entryway of France’s Musée du Quai Branly, tall and elegant but somewhat out of place — the contours of its weathered exterior in stark contrast with its clinical surroundings.

Known as the K’ëgit pole, it stands 15 metres tall, rooted in the museum’s lower level and extending into the main-floor foyer. Strangers entering the museum breeze past, often without a glance. Its grace is paired with a loneliness. For nearly a century, the pole has been separated from its people.

But the pole’s family recently came to visit.

In October, members of the Wet’suwet’en Nation travelled to Paris and gathered around the K’ëgit pole for the first time since it was removed from Hagwilget Village in 1938. The visit marked the beginning of what is likely to be a years-long process to reconnect, educate and discuss what comes next.

“It was emotional,” Ron Austin says, pausing to remember the moment he first entered the museum and leaned over the railing to take in the full height of the pole.

“I shed tears for our ancestors,” says Austin, who holds the traditional Wet’suwet’en name Tsekot. “My grandfather was one of them that was in the group that was selling it. They didn’t want to sell it. But they had to let it go.”

The K’ëgit pole was carved in the mid-1800s for C’idimsggin’ïs, at the time Likhsilyu Clan’s highest-ranking Chief and a member of the House of Many Eyes. For the better part of a century, it stood overlooking the Bulkley River, Wedzin Kwa in Wet’suwet’en, at Hagwilget Village.

At the base of the pole is K’ëgit, a mythical shaman whose story tells the origins of the Wet’suwet’en clan system. It also bears an otter, tsantiy, another supernatural being and one of the clan’s crests. Austin believes a human figure perched at the top represents C’idimsggin’ïs, although it’s unclear who held the hereditary title when the pole was carved.

Austin, a master carver and member of the Likhsilyu Clan, is next in line to take the name C’idimsggin’ïs. The title has been vacant for years.

Full article

The Hopi tribe is on the path to regain up to 20,000 acres of land near Winslow that will end years of checkerboard ownership and allow the tribe to pursue new development.

A new agreement will initiate the first in a series of condemnation actions to transfer a total of 110,000 acres from Arizona to the United States to be held in trust for the Hopi Tribe. Tribal leaders said they were eager to develop infrastructure to support long-term development plans.

The lands, scattered among Hopi-owned areas, have been leased to the tribe for ranching for many years. Once the Hopi Tribe deposits $3.9 million, representing estimated compensation for the state of Arizona, the land will become U.S. property and immediately placed in trust for the Hopi Tribe.

"December 20 is the historic day that this all came together when the Governor concurred with the land condemnation," Hopi Chairman Timothy L. Nuvangyaoma told The Arizona Republic. "I am thankful for everyone who had a hand in this. Everything is in place. We should be realizing the transfer of condemnation of the first set of acreage turned over to Hopi any day now."

full article

The date marks the slaughter of hundreds of Lakota, including women and children, in the snow at Wounded Knee Creek by the 7th Cavalry on Dec. 29, 1890.

“I have never heard of a more brutal, cold-blooded massacre than that at Wounded Knee,” Maj. Gen. Nelson Miles, who took over the 7th Cavalry after the noncombatant deaths came to light, wrote in a private letter.

Earlier this year, the Pentagon announced it would review 20 Medals of Honor awarded to soldiers who took part in the massacre as the military continues efforts to acknowledge the role that racism may have played in its past and that not all of its awardees meet modern standards of heroism.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin directed a five-member panel to present recommendations by Oct. 15, but those recommendations have yet to be announced.

As the last decade of the 19th century began, the Indigenous Lakota Sioux people of the Great Plains had been put in government reservations, according to History.com. Their culture and hunting livelihoods were destroyed as white settlers seized their lands and pursued fortunes of gold in the Black Hills of what had become South Dakota.

As noted by History.com, the year 1890 would only compound their despair, bringing prolonged drought and outbreaks of measles, influenza and whooping cough. As their world crumbled around them, many found hope in a dance ritual that adherents believed would ultimately spark an upheaval in which their enemies would be ousted and their once-free existence restored.

White settlers, however, viewed the growing Ghost Dance practice as a harbinger of insurrection. President Benjamin Harrison dispatched the 7th Cavalry to the area, where growing tensions would culminate in the slaughter of hundreds of Lakota at Wounded Knee Creek on Dec. 29, 1890.

Full article

Osceola was named Billy Powell at his birth in 1804 in the Upper Creek village of Talisi, which means "Old Town". The village site, now the city of Tallassee, Alabama, was located on the banks of the Tallapoosa River about 20 miles (32 km) upstream from Fort Toulouse where the Tallapoosa and the Coosa rivers meet to form the Alabama River. His mother was Polly Coppinger, a mixed-race Creek woman, and his father was most likely William Powell, a Scottish trader.

In 1814, after the Red Stick Muscogee Creeks were defeated by United States forces, Polly took Osceola and moved with other Muscogee refugees from Alabama to Florida, where they joined the Seminole. In adulthood, as part of the Seminole, Powell was given his name Osceola (/ˌɒsiːˈoʊlə/ or /ˌoʊseɪˈoʊlə/). This is an anglicized form of the Creek Vsse Yvholv (pronounced [asːi jahoːla]), a combination of vsse, the ceremonial black drink made from the yaupon holly, and yvholv, often translated "shouter" but referring specifically to the one who performs a special whoop at the Green Corn Ceremony or archaically to a tribal town officer responsible for offering the black drink.

In April 1818 during the First Seminole War, Osceola and his mother where living in Peter McQueen's village near the Econfina River, when it was attacked and destroyed by the Lower Creek allies of U.S. General Andrew Jackson that were led by William McIntosh. Many surviving Red Stick warriors and their families, including McQueen, retreated south into the Florida peninsula.

In 1821, the United States acquired Florida from Spain (see the Adams-Onis Treaty), and more European-American settlers started moving in, encroaching on the Seminoles' territory. After early military skirmishes and the signing of the 1823 Treaty of Moultrie Creek, by which the U.S. seized the northern Seminole lands, Osceola and his family moved with the Seminole deeper into the unpopulated wilds of central and southern Florida.

Through the 1820s and the turn of the decade, American settlers continued pressuring the US government to remove the Seminole from Florida to make way for their desired agricultural development. In 1832, a few Seminole chiefs signed the Treaty of Payne's Landing, by which they agreed to give up their Florida lands in exchange for lands west of the Mississippi River in Indian Territory. According to legend, Osceola stabbed the treaty with his knife.

Five of the most important Seminole chiefs, including Micanopy of the Alachua Seminole, did not agree to removal. In retaliation, the US Indian agent, Wiley Thompson, declared that those chiefs were deposed from their positions. As US relations with the Seminole deteriorated, Thompson forbade the sale of guns and ammunition to them. Osceola, a young warrior rising to prominence, resented this ban. He felt it equated the Seminole with slaves, who were forbidden by law to carry arms.

Thompson considered Osceola to be a friend and gave him a rifle. Osceola had a habit of barging into Thompson's office and shouting complaints at him. On one occasion Osceola quarreled with Thompson, who had the warrior locked up at Fort King for two nights until he agreed to be more respectful. In order to secure his release, Osceola agreed to sign the Treaty of Payne's Landing and to bring his followers into the fort. After his humiliating imprisonment, Osceola secretly prepared vengeance against Thompson.

On December 28, 1835, Osceola, with the same rifle Thompson gave him, killed the Indian agent. Osceola and his followers shot six others outside Fort King, while another group of Seminole ambushed and killed a column of US Army, more than 100 troops, who were marching from Fort Brooke to Fort King. Americans called this event the Dade Massacre. These nearly simultaneous attacks catalyzed the Second Seminole War with the United States.

In April 1836, Osceola led a band of warriors in an attempt to expel U.S. forces from Fort Cooper. The fortification was built on the west bank of Lake Holathikaha as an outpost for actions against the local Seminole population. Despite running low on food, the U.S. garrison had enough gunpowder and ammunition to keep the Seminoles from taking the fort before reinforcements arrived.

On October 21st, 1837, in what historian Thom Hatch called "one of the most disgraceful acts in U.S. military history", Osceola was captured after U.S. forces disingenuously agreed to meet under a white flag of truce. Osceola was arrested along with 81 of his followers. He died in prison a few months later, on January 30th, 1838.

• A Seminole Warrior Cloaked in Defiance

• 🐻Link to all Hexbear comms

• 📀 Come listen to music and Watch movies with your fellow Hexbears nerd, in Cy.tube

• 🔥 Read and talk about a current topics in the News Megathread

• ⚔ Come talk in the New Weekly PoC thread

• ✨ Talk with fellow Trans comrades in the New Weekly Trans thread

• 👊 Share your gains and goals with your comrades in the New Weekly Improvement thread

• 🧡 Disabled comm megathread

reminders:

• 💚 You nerds can join specific comms to see posts about all sorts of topics
• 💙 Hexbear’s algorithm prioritizes comments over upbears
• 💜 Sorting by new you nerd
• 🌈 If you ever want to make your own megathread, you can reserve a spot here nerd
• 🐶 Join the unofficial Hexbear-adjacent Mastodon instance toots.matapacos.dog

Links To Resources (Aid and Theory):

Aid:

• 🌈 LGBTQ+ Resource Post
• 🍉 Resources for Palestine
• 🐌☕ Zapatista Coffee

Theory:

• ❤️Foundations of Leninism
• ❤️Anarchism and Other Essays

Jim Hallum grew up on the Santee Sioux Reservation in Nebraska not knowing anything about the U.S.-Dakota War of 1862.

Now, 162 years later, he and 30 others are on a nearly 300-mile ride from the reservation to southern Minnesota to mark one of the most tragic periods in Minnesota history — the hangings in Mankato of 38 Dakota warriors and two other men at the war’s end, the largest mass execution in American history.

Hallum is one of the organizers of the Dakota Exiles ride, a journey through frozen fields and open country covered in snow on horseback. They rode once before in 2020. They’ll meet up with another group of riders to commemorate the Dec. 26, 1862 hangings ordered by President Abraham Lincoln that led to a mass exile of Native people from Minnesota.

The ride is meant to honor those hanged in Mankato but also the thousands of people later forced from their homelands, Hallum said. Riders also want to preserve this painful history of the Dakota in the hope of helping heal the intergenerational trauma it created, he added.

Full article

by Taylar Dawn Stagner

The ongoing brutality committed against Indigenous peoples — land grabs, genocide, continuing disregard for self-determination and sovereignty — bolster a culture of over-consumption and play an undeniable role in the climate crisis. Given that anger is a hallmark of heavy metal, it isn’t surprising that an Indigenous audience would find it appealing.

Although often associated with Satan, swords, and sorcery (and illegible logos), metal has always reflected on the environment and the state of the world. Indigenous bands have been part of the scene almost from its start more than five decades ago, but the past few years have seen a growing number of Native musicians writing about a wide range of subjects, from rurality to discrimination to the universal experience of having a good time despite all of that.

Metal is famously opaque, with around 70 subgenres, but it is almost universally accepted that everything started with Black Sabbath in 1968. Even as that British quartet was laying the foundation, XIT, pronounced “exit,” was singing about the Indigenous experience on its 1972 album Plight of the Redman.

XIT, once deemed the “first commercially successful all-Indian rock band,” sang frankly and expressively about colonization, poverty, and the loss of Indigenous traditions. Its politics and performances at American Indian Movement rallies prompted FBI attempts to suppress its music, but that didn’t keep XIT from touring Europe three times and appearing with bands like ZZ Top. Although their best music is delightfully of the ‘70s, it remains radical stuff.

Winterhawk, led by Cree vocalist and guitarist Nik Alexander, explored similar themes in 1979 on Electric Warriors, an anti-colonial, pro-environmental message that could have been written today. “Man has his machines in mother earth, murdering the balance weaved destruction in our doom,” Alexander sang on “Selfish Man.” The song interrogates whether nuclear energy is worth destroying the land: “They say nuclear power is alright, like light to make the night bright. But it doesn’t mean you can have my birthright, does it, selfish man?” (Then, as now, Indigenous peoples were at the forefront of opposition to nuclear power.) The band was popular enough to perform with the likes of Van Halen and Motley Crue and earned a slot at the US Festival in 1983, but broke up a year later.

Full article___

It was barely a choice. In 1855, a time when the ink of border lines on United States maps had scarcely dried, Yakama Chief Kamiakin was told to sign over the land of 14 tribal nations and bands in the Pacific Northwest — or face the prospect of walking “knee deep” in the blood of his people.

Legend has it that, when he put pen to paper, he was so furious he bit through his lip.

By signing, he ceded over 10 million acres across what is now known as Washington state. In return, the Yakama Nation was allowed to live on a reservation one-tenth the size of their ancestral lands, about 100 miles southeast of Seattle.

But the story doesn’t end there. The treaty map was lost for close to 75 years, misfiled by a federal clerk who put it under “M” for Montana.

With no visual record to contradict them, federal agents extracted even more Yakama land for the nascent state, drawing new boundaries on new maps. One removed an additional 140,000 acres from the reservation, another about half a million, and still other versions exist.

By the time the original map was discovered in the 1930s, it was too late. Settlers had already made claims well within reservation boundaries, carving the consequences of this mistake into the contours of the land. Non-Native landowners remain to this day.

The Yakama want that land back. Most tribal members know the story of Kamiakin and his bloodied lip when he signed the treaty. Ask Phil Rigdon, a Yakama citizen and nationally recognized forester. As the superintendent of the Yakama Nation Department of Natural Resources, he deals with a medley of issues, but his most important work is getting the reservation land back. After working on this for nearly 20 years, he knows that it takes time and an entire community to make the progress they want.

“It’s a family thing for us, as we do this business,” he said.

Full article

Rosie Clayburn is a descendant of the Yurok Tribe, which had its territory — called 'O Rew in the Yurok language — ripped from them nearly two centuries ago.

"As the natural world became completely decimated, so did the Yurok people," she said.

That decimation started when miners rushed in for gold, killing and displacing tens of thousands of Native Americans in California and ravaging the redwood trees for lumber.

"Everything was extracted that was marketable," Clayburn said. "We've always had this really intricate relationship with the landscape. We've hunted, we've fished, we've gathered. And those are all management tools. Everything that we do has been in balance with the natural world."

Now, generations later, 125 acres bordering Redwood National and State Parks will be handed back to the Yuroks.

The nonprofit Save the Redwoods League purchased the land in 2013 from an old timber mill, with the original goal of giving it to the National Park Service.

"As we continued conversations about the transfer of this land to the National Park Service, we began to realize that perhaps a better alternative would be to transfer the land back to the Yurok Tribe," said Save the Redwoods League's Paul Ringgold. "No one knows this land better. They've been stewarding this land since time and memorial"

Full article

At night, deep in the woods of northern Alberta, white images move across the dark screen, the ghostly figures fitting for a buffalo herd that is facing extirpation and now faces the prospect of oil and gas exploration in its range for the first time.

The Wabasca Herd, nestled in an area southwest of Wood Buffalo National Park, is down to six or seven animals, according to area trappers and advocates. That’s down from an estimate of nine animals just under two years ago.

“There’s only one bull left, and what we counted was six cows, one calf, on these wildlife cameras last winter,” Lorne Tallcree, a trapper, said in an interview. “We don’t know what’s left this winter.”

Tallcree is part of a group called ShagowAskee — a group of trappers, Elders and knowledge keepers — which has been advocating to protect the herd, putting pressure on industry, government and their own nations.

Logging in the herd’s range took place last winter, with more expected this year, and now the Little Red River Cree Nation is hosting meetings with Calgary-based Spur Petroleum about its planned exploratory drilling in the area, which is rich with oil deposits.

Tallcree, a member of the nation, says some in the community want to see the jobs that could come with oil and gas, but many are concerned.

He says 26 Elders are opposed to the development.

“They’re scared of what’s coming out, it’s gonna impact the environment, destroy the water, destroy all the medicinal plants they gather,” he said.

Full article