From Sungmanitu:
If you don’t know, I’m making an audio documentary about AIM and conducting on the ground research and interviews with organizers new and old about their conditions in order to find out what unity can be built. I will be traveling from Michigan to Colorado and will talk to many
Elders of the movement as well as many youth and people in between. If this seems like something worth supporting to you $ZitkatosTinCan on CA or @Zitkato On ven is where you can send that help. This will help pay for a car rental, gas, emergency shelter if we need it, and most
Importantly for mutual aid and food. You can also help out by offering me a meal or a couch to sleep on. I look forward to sharing what I learn as well as the archive of information and videos I have from the 5 years I’ve been studying AIM and the US conditions
We are at 720/2500
Comrade Sungmanitu has shared the history of the Indigenous movements in Northamerica before here in this community via the ChunkaLutaNetwork here is one of my favorites: Fish Wars, Climate Change, and Forgotten History
cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/72772
ZȺWIZUT (Carl Olsen) speaks to supporters in SELEt₭TEȽ, a former village site and river. Today they are encompassed within Goldstream Park. Photo by Julie Chadwick
This story is a collaboration between IndigiNews and The Narwhal.
The sound of cars passing is a constant hum, so constant it’s almost meditative. Every so often one bleats out a honk of support.
On the shoulder of the highway stands a 78-year-old man, holding a sign that reads: “Save the Salmon.”
Cheeks ruddy from the cold, he clutches it with gloved hands from behind a waist-high concrete highway barrier.
His dark eyes glitter warmly behind glasses, and over his knitted wool toque is a black baseball cap emblazoned with the image of a tree, water and paddles.
This is ZȺWIZUT, a Tsartlip First Nation Elder also known as Carl Olsen.
Carl Olsen protests beside the highway in his homelands late last year. Photo by Julie Chadwick
For the last three years, he’s been coming out here every Tuesday — through rain, snow and even sickness — to stand out on the shoulder of the Malahat highway and protest.
It’s Dec. 30. ZȺWIZUT grins, surrounded by supporters who wave at cars and shake their own homemade signs.
Carl Olsen speaks with supporters outside Goldstream Park. Organizer Christine Willes, right, holds a salmon cutout designed by renowned artist Roy Henry Vickers. She said the highway protests have been a ‘transformative’ experience. Photo by Julie Chadwick
But it wasn’t always this way. When he first started out, it was just him, his granddaughter and a supporter from the local book club ZȺWIZUT runs.
At his back is Goldstream Provincial Park, or as ZȺWIZUT knows it, SELEt₭TEȽ.
At 477 hectares, it’s bigger than “New York City’s” Central Park, a verdant gem on the southern tip of “Vancouver Island,” just a 20-minute drive from the province’s capital.
The park features waterfalls, Garry oak meadows, 600-year-old Douglas fir trees, flowering dogwood, western red cedar trees, Oregon grape and salmonberries.
READ MORE: ‘Like going back in time’: W̱SÁNEĆ people to regain rightful ownership of abundant remote island
In front of ZȺWIZUT is the Malahat, a busy two-lane highway that cuts through the park and sees an average of 25,000 vehicles a day pass by.
The park’s accessibility means more than 600,000 people visit each year to camp, hike and hang out.
Many come in the fall to watch the huge runs of chum, Chinook and coho salmon that return each year to spawn in SELE₭TEȽ‘s waters.
The park’s chinook and coho salmon spawning habitat runs the length of the Goldstream River, from the downstream hydro dam to the river delta at Finlayson Arm. Photo by Julie Chadwick
Highway versus habitat
What prompted ZȺWIZUT to go out there in the early months of 2023 was learning of a proposal put forward by the province to widen the Malahat.
Critics say it would catastrophically affect the adjacent Chinook and coho salmon spawning habitat in SELE₭TEȽ.
According to the province, the highway expansion, estimated in 2024 to cost $162 million, was needed to improve safety and reliability along a 1.7-kilometre section that bisects the park.
One part that especially concerned ZȺWIZUT was the expected “permanent loss or alteration of aquatic salmonid and amphibian habitat” in SELE₭TEȽ.
This impact and others were detailed in a 139-page environmental assessment report commissioned by the province and completed in 2024 by consulting firm McElhanney.
The area’s chinook and coho salmon spawning habitat falls directly within the project’s footprint.
Within a half-kilometre of the project site, at-risk species were likely to be affected, including western screech owls, northern red-legged frogs, wandering salamanders and the endangered sharp-tailed snake.
Expand that to within five kilometres of the project site, and that list lengthens to at least 200 endangered and threatened species potentially impacted.
READ MORE: In W̱SÁNEĆ territories, Matriarchs raise funds to buy back their unceded lands
ZȺWIZUT was also horrified to learn that, among a host of other environmental issues, more than 700 trees would also be removed from an area along the highway during construction.
He thought about the owls and nesting birds, about the spe’uth (bears) that make their homes in SELE₭TEȽ and fed beside him while he and other nation members harvested fish for winter.
He thought of how the noise and vibration from excavation and rock blasting might affect the vulnerable salmon fry, hiding out in the darkness under fallen logs in river pools until they were big enough to head to the ocean.
“The canopy that creates the coolness of the water in the stream — if that disappears, those fish will disappear,” he says, “because then the water starts to get too hot. It’s about 12 degrees difference from the sun to the shade.
“So that’s what started me. I thought, ‘Yeah, I can do this. I can be the voice for the salmon.’”
ZȺWIZUT (Carl Olsen) protests expansion of the Malahat highway in SELE₭TEȽ, today the site of Goldstream Park. Photo by Julie Chadwick
Prayers, tea, and bearing witness
Every Tuesday for the last three years, ZȺWIZUT wakes up at about 5 a.m. in the house his grandfather built, on the W̱JOȽEȽP Tsartlip reserve.
He heads down to the beach right outside his door on the “Saanich Inlet” and starts his day with a prayer at the water’s edge.
“I meditate about what I would like to see in my day,” he says.
READ MORE: With court win, Quw’utsun Nation sees a ‘spiritual homecoming’ after 150 years
After his prayer, ZȺWIZUT heads to a local cafe for some toast and tea.
That’s typically where a group of supporters show up to tag along with him to SELE₭TEȽ. Others meet him there.
Some are members of local churches and the Wilderness Committee, or participants in his Indigenous authors book club.
One of those book club members is Christine Willes, a settler from a group called Goldstream Protectors that helped organize a protest with ZȺWIZUT and others at the legislature last October.
“What he says to anybody who asked him is, ‘Well, I can go and stand by the side of the highway,’” she says.
“And that’s what he says to other people. ‘Do what you can.’ So I thought, well, I can go stand on the side of the highway too.”
Much more than a roadway
For ZȺWIZUT, this fight is now much broader than the highway project.
It’s a flashpoint in a larger and contentious discussion around Indigenous land rights, title and reconciliation that has consumed the province — and has repercussions for the entire country.
It’s also about the ability for Indigenous people to make land decisions in their own territory.
To the W̱SÁNEĆ people — of which Tsartlip are a part — SELE₭TEȽ is one of their oldest fishing villages.
It was arguably protected by a treaty put to paper 174 years ago which clearly states they retain the rights to their village sites, and to hunt and fish on those lands as they always have.
The original North Saanich treaty, shown here in a glass case, is kept in the B.C. Archives in Victoria. Photo by Julie Chadwick
It’s one of 14 treaties negotiated in the 1850s by James Douglas, then-Governor of “Vancouver Island,” with the local First Nations.
For many, the existence of these treaties may come as a surprise, as it’s well known that most of the province’s land mass was never ceded by its original inhabitants.
READ MORE: Treaty-protected sxwayxum village site returned to Snuneymuxw: ‘Where our people have lived for thousands of years’
Known collectively as the Douglas Treaties, multiple court cases since the 1960s have re-affirmed these treaty-protected rights, for both the W̱SÁNEĆ and the other nations on the island who signed them in the 1850s.
This fight to hold colonial governments to their word is what has kept ZȺWIZUT out on the highway for three years.
This is another Douglas Treaty in the B.C. Archives, known as the Snuneymuxw Sarlequun Treaty of 1854, from the Nanaimo area. Its ‘signature’ sheets are not accompanied by a Douglas form. It consists only of a six-page list, in ink, of 159 names under the heading ‘Sarlequin Tribe’ with a note at the top in pencil. Photo by Julie Chadwick
‘It rightfully belongs to us’
On its website, the province states “Goldstream Park” was “given to the people of British Columbia by the Greater Victoria Water Board in 1958.”
But the actual history is far more complicated.
“It rightfully belongs to us,” stated Jean Baptiste Paul, a Tsartlip First Nation member and son of then-chief Thomas Paul, in an article published in the Daily Colonist on March 27, 1956.
“We have never given it up, and never been offered anything for our fishing and hunting grounds there.”
Jean Baptiste recalled how he had hunted and fished at SELE₭TEȽ as a child.
He told the Daily Colonist that all of the inlet, from “Cherry Point” to the hills south of SELE₭TEȽ, was Indigenous territory. It had been identified as such by his grandfather, former Tsartlip Chief Ben Paul.
Tsartlip and Malahat members had built fish-smoking shacks near the river and his grandfather had also constructed a log cabin in the area.
But one day when no one was there, all the buildings were burned down, Paul told the paper.
READ MORE: Historic land agreement ‘will bring our people home,’ says SC’IA⁄NEW Chief
At the time, Paul’s resistance was reported as little more than a passing curiosity with headlines such as, “Prospect of city giving park to B.C. has West Saanich Indians on warpath.”
In 1958 the province went ahead and designated the area a park in celebration of the province’s centennial.
SELE₭TEȽ became a tourist attraction. Even though it was not yet officially open, the campground was quickly packed with vacationers.
Newspaper columnists sung the praises of its beauty and touted its quick accessibility from “Victoria.”
In the fall of 1960, thousands of onlookers crowded around the waterway to watch the salmon run, a practice that continues to this day.
WEC’KINEM (Eric Pelkey) is hereditary chief of the Tsawout First Nation. Photo by Julie Chadwick
A host of new problems
However, these thousands of new visitors brought with them a host of new problems, says WEC’KINEM (Eric Pelkey), hereditary chief of the Tsawout First Nation.
Sometimes when nation members are down at the river harvesting fish, visitors to the park will confront them.
“They start cussing us up and down, saying that we’re destroying the fishery,” WEC’KINEM says. “We tell them we have the right — we have the right to do this, to carry on our fishery and to just leave us alone.
“But there’s still a lot of racism that comes out at that time. People think we’re torturing the fish.”
The W̱SÁNEĆ carry on regardless. More recently, people have also been coming out there to support them, he adds.
WEC’KINEM sits at a picnic table in the park, the gentle rush of SELE₭TEȽ’s waters behind him.
Barrel-chested, his voice a deep, gentle baritone, he wears a ball cap-style hat woven from cedar bark and a wool and feather headband.
A cream-coloured traditional knitted blanket is wrapped around his shoulders.
These accusations are especially misplaced because, he explains, it’s the W̱SÁNEĆ who constantly steward the area and conduct their own assessments to monitor the health of the fish.
For example, in 2023 the numbers of chum in the SELE₭TEȽ were so low that nation members just went down to the river to observe.
“Nobody took a fish,” according to ZȺWIZUT, a long time volunteer at the Goldstream Hatchery.
READ MORE: Treaty-protected sxwayxum village site returned to Snuneymuxw: ‘Where our people have lived for thousands of years’
Most of the environmental problems in the area are due to settler activity in the first place, WEC’KINEM points out.
Commercial fishing boats that come down the “Johnstone Strait” along the coast of “Vancouver Island” and into the Salish Sea take most of the salmon before they can even reach SELE₭TEȽ, he says.
In 2011 a fuel tanker truck crashed in the area, leaking tens of thousands of litres of gasoline and diesel into the river caused further stress on the salmon.
Members from all W̱SÁNEĆ nations harvest chum, chinook and coho salmon from SELE₭TEȽ’s waters as a winter food supply, and have for generations.
When it’s smoked, the chum can last all winter, WEC’KINEM says.
“I remember growing up, and we always had that smell in our house,” he recalls, “because my parents would have sacks of smoked chum on top of our cupboards, burlap sacks.”
A village displaced
In 1877, the Indian Reserve Commission parceled out a fishing reserve along the south end of “Finlayson Arm,” an extension of the inlet where SELE₭TEȽ’s waters feed into the ocean.
However Goldstream Reserve no. 13, as it’s called, sits at the base of “Mt. Finlayson” instead of in the area of the river where the community still harvests fish.
“They carried out the survey of the old fishing village, but the surveyor is the one that took it from here and put it over there, off on the side of the mountain, instead of surveying where our village was,” says WEC’KINEM.
“This whole area here used to be filled with longhouses all along the river. Right over there, where that overhang is there, is actually where our family’s longhouse used to be.”
READ MORE: Mi’kmaq people mark 300 years of treaty — and broken promises
He turns and points over his shoulder, to a structure not far from Goldstream Park’s gravel parking lot.
“I was not aware of that until maybe I was in my 30s, when my grandfather asked me to bring him out here. We parked over there, walked down. And he said, ‘Oh, what is this building?’”
He told his grandfather, Marshall Pelkey, that it housed the washrooms and that this was now a public park. He became upset, WEC’KINEM recalls.
The saltwater people
Known as the “saltwater people,” the ocean is entwined within everything the W̱SÁNEĆ do, including their SENĆOŦEN place names, explains WEC’KINEM.
The W̱SÁNEĆ have maintained a wide and complex network of traditional reef net fishing sites throughout their territory, which encompasses what are currently known as the “San Juan Islands,” “Boundary Bay,” and the “Saanich” inlet and peninsula.
These reef net sites are not just places to harvest food, but are part of a wider spiritual and community practice.
READ MORE: W̱SÁNEĆ youth rise to the challenge of reef net fishing as they reclaim the formerly-outlawed practice
In and around SELE₭TEȽ, community members also use streams that feed into the area for ritual bathing, and host a first salmon ceremony each fall to greet their returning salmon relatives.
This is in an area right beside the province’s proposed road work site.
“Our people always fished here, no matter where the reserve was,” WEC’KINEM says.
“Every winter, our people came here to fish. Conservation officers always tried to stop us, but we always just kept on and dared them to take us to court.”
That’s exactly what happened one evening 30 years ago, when ZȺWIZUT and another Tsartlip member, Ivan Morris, were caught hunting by conservation officers on their territory and arrested.
The right to hunt and fish
Though it was early evening, it was already getting dark on Nov. 28, 1996 when two men, driving in the woods near Youbou, spotted what appeared to be the glow of deer eyes through the trees.
They were showing two boys — eight and twelve years old — how to hunt at night with the help of a light.
It was something their families had safely done for generations, but was previously done with burning pitch and bows and arrows.
Ivan Morris pulled the vehicle over. ZȺWIZUT took aim and fired a few shots. He then passed the rifle across the two boys to Morris, who got out of the vehicle and squeezed off two more.
They soon got a nasty surprise. The deer they shot at was, in fact, a decoy, complete with reflective eyes, set up by provincial conservation officers to trap illegal hunters.
Their vehicle was quickly swarmed by officers and the two men were arrested, ZȺWIZUT recalls.
“There were probably a dozen or more conservation that surrounded us and even manhandled the kids that were there, threw them up against the hood of the car to search them,” he said.
The two were charged with hunting with a firearm during prohibited hours and hunting with an illuminating device, under provincial wildlife legislation.
The subsequent trial revolved around the Crown’s argument that yes, Morris and ZȺWIZUT had a right to hunt — but that did not include the right to hunt in a way that was “inherently unsafe,” as the trial judge put it.
At trial, the men’s lawyers countered with a vigourous legal defense.
Not only were they using safe practices, they argued, their right as Tsartlip members to hunt as they always had was protected under the North Saanich Treaty of 1852, negotiated between nation members and Douglas.
The case dragged on for 10 years. Initially both men were convicted and it was upheld by the B.C. Court of Appeal. However, when it got to the Supreme Court of Canada, the convictions were overturned in a 4-3 vote.
Under consideration was the relevant text of the North Saanich treaty, which guaranteed that village sites and enclosed fields were to be kept for the W̱SÁNEĆ and their children’s use, though the land itself was to become the “property of the white people for ever.”
But it also clearly stated that its signatories were at liberty to hunt and carry on their fisheries “as formerly.”
The front page of The Province newspaper on Dec. 22, 2006. Courtesy The Province
Alternate historic realities
But there are essentially two versions of what happened with the signing of the treaties — the written settler version backed by Douglas and others’ accounts, and the Indigenous oral version told through history by W̱SÁNEĆ members.
It’s generally understood that on Feb. 7 of 1852, Douglas met with 10 W̱SÁNEĆ members to agree on what became the South Saanich treaty.
He then requested W̱SÁNEĆ chiefs come to another meeting on February 11 during which he negotiated with 118 “men with beards,” as he later described them, in what ended up as the North Saanich treaty.
Historians have different theories on why these two agreements were negotiated separately, but it’s important to understand the context in which they were negotiated.
For a prior treaty with the Songhees Nation, Douglas said he asked the chiefs to sign marks at the bottom of a blank sheet of paper, later adding details above it that resulted in the acquisition of the area’s South Island.
Experts believe it’s possible Douglas did the same thing with the W̱SÁNEĆ as he did with the Songhees, and got them to sign blank paper.
Adding to the complications, the X marks on the “North Saanich” treaty that represented signatures “were forged” in that they were supposedly signed by W̱SÁNEĆ members “but were in fact made by the clerk of the Hudson’s Bay Company,” declared Justice Douglas Lambert, in ZȺWIZUT’s B.C. Court of Appeal case.
There is no evidence that the First Nations signatories saw the agreements after the fact, were given a copy, or knew what text was later added.
READ MORE: Modern treaties law would hold feds ‘accountable to the promises’ made to First Nations, say chiefs
To this day, the text of the Saanich treaties does not match W̱SÁNEĆ’s own oral version, which asserts that the treaties were likely agreements to share the land, not surrender it.
On this point, the court also came to a stunning conclusion in its final ruling, in the Elder’s favour.
“The Douglas Treaties were the reflections of oral agreements reduced to writing by agents of the Crown,” the court declared, and those oral promises made when the treaty was agreed to “are as much a part of the treaty as the written words.”
As the people who wrote the Douglas treaties down were not the Indigenous people, the court “had to take into account what was the evidence of Indigenous people about what they thought the treaty meant,” says lawyer Louise Mandell.
She was ZȺWIZUT and Morris’s representative, and one of the founding partners of Mandell Pinder, a law firm that specializes in Aboriginal and treaty rights law.
This was important for the legal cases that were to follow, she adds.
‘It wasn’t to own. It was to share’
There are other reasons that the W̱SÁNEĆ think the treaties were likely land sharing agreements meant to stave off tensions that had arisen at that time for a variety of reasons, including a dispute over timber being harvested by settlers in “Cordova Bay.”
Given that the Indigenous population on “Vancouver Island” at this time was approximately 11,700 people — compared with a settler population of about 700 — there wouldn’t be any motivation for the W̱SÁNEĆ to sell off all their land, says Joni Olsen.
Olsen is the policy and negotiations manager for the W̱SÁNEĆ Leadership Council, and ZȺWIZUT’s daughter.
Joni Olsen, right, is the policy and negotiations manager for the W̱SÁNEĆ Leadership Council and Carl Olsen’s daughter. Last February, she negotiated a joint statement with the government that acknowledged W̱SÁNEĆ’s oral version of the treaties. Photo by Julie Chadwick
“The concept of selling land at that point in history was not a thing for W̱SÁNEĆ people,” she says, especially in the context of the west coast being the last place in the country colonized by settlers.
“Maybe on the east coast, where they had been settled hundreds of years before, there were probably those concepts there already, but that didn’t happen here.”
READ MORE: Challenges of the Mi’kmaw harvesters ‘mirror’ those of several west coast First Nations, says Tsawout chief
Furthermore, the idea that the W̱SÁNEĆ would sell land in exchange for a “payment” of blankets doesn’t make sense culturally, and represents a fundamental lack of understanding around what gifting means to their people, Olsen says.
“I mean, historically, to access land you would have married somebody’s daughter or something like that,” she adds.
“There would have been an exchange. And it could have been through Potlatch — where you had an exchange of things like blankets — but it wasn’t to own. It was to share. It was to have access to.”
Joni Olsen, policy and negotiations manager for the W̱SÁNEĆ Leadership Council, and ZȺWIZUT’s daughter. Photo by Julie Chadwick
Last February, Olsen helped negotiate a joint statement with the provincial and federal governments to acknowledge W̱SÁNEĆ’s oral version of the treaties.
It states that “though Canada and British Columbia have long considered these agreements to be land purchase agreements, W̱SÁNEĆ oral histories hold that they were agreements to settle disputes and establish peaceful relations between the W̱SÁNEĆ Nation and the European settlers.”
But these peaceful relations remain a challenge when it comes to negotiations over the future of SELE₭TEȽ.
Overcoming historic fears
ZȺWIZUT stands on an outcropping of stone known as “The Rock.”
It’s a scenic spot along Mill Bay Road in the Cowichan Valley that looks out across the waters of the inlet, which is fed by SELE₭TEȽ’s waters.
In the distance are the western shores of the “Saanich Peninsula”; beyond that, a scattering of islands.
The sun is bright, and he cups a hand over his forehead as he looks across the water.
“When I was a kid, this bay was full of salmon. You could see it,” he says. “You really could see it.”
ZȺWIZUT points out the ‘San Juan islands’ in the distance, where his relatives have long been separated from him by the ‘US’ border. Photo by Julie Chadwick
These waters and lands were his garden and food source growing up.
“It’s where we harvested food plants, medicine plants, and berries,” he recalls.
“And when you come to the ocean like this, we harvested our food from the ocean. In fact, I was in my early teens before I even had a store-bought meal. It was like fish, ducks, deer, clams, oysters, seal meat. That was my diet before, up until maybe the mid ’60s.”
READ MORE: Food security, community memories are key ingredients of new Tla’amin cookbook
Though he was raised as a hunter and a fisherman, his father taught him those skills in private, under a cloud of fear.
“Most parents in our communities suffered from fear: fear of losing their kids because of how the residential school would just take you away if there was a problem,” he explains.
“They actually lived with that fear right up till the end, and so they never taught us on land here.”
He remembers his dad teaching him when they were alone fishing on a boat, with nobody around and “nobody to come and take us away.”
“That’s how it affected the treaty as well. They had to go outside or to the islands to teach us our ways.”
That fear has continued to affect the exercising of their Douglas Treaty rights, because those rights are still disrespected and uncertain, he adds.
“It only verifies the rights that I have, that’s what the Douglas Treaty does. Because that’s what we did before, hunting and fishing, being taught with hands-on teaching,” he says.
“That fear is still there, because of the inability of the government to come and sit down with you to implement that court ruling.”
A string of court wins
Of the five historical court cases that involved Douglas Treaty rights — including ZȺWIZUT’s — each one resulted in victory.
And every case presented its own legal challenge.
“It wasn’t as if we sat around, thinking about what all we have to do to win whatever,” says Mandell, the lawyer who represented ZȺWIZUT and Morris.
“In every case, we nuanced what the arguments were going to be, and we built the law — gradually.”
In the 1980s Mandell worked on a 1987 B.C. Supreme Court case, Saanichton Marina Ltd. v. Claxton.
The landmark case centered on a development company’s plans to dredge and develop a commercial marina in “Saanichton Bay” — home to eel grass beds, crabs, salmon and trout.
The legal team wondered how they could assert the treaty “not as a shield but as a sword,” Mandell says.
Rather than defend themselves from persecution, they would now assert their rights proactively, to protect the crab fishery and the Tsawout Nation’s traditional fishing grounds.
Essentially, Saanichton Marina’s argument was that the “right to fish as formerly” — as worded in the treaties — meant the company could simply pick up and move the eel grass habitat elsewhere.
The fish would still be there to harvest, so what was the problem?
READ MORE: With land transfer deal, once-displaced Lyackson First Nation prepares to return home
The court agreed with Tsawout’s lawyers that a fishery is actually the place where fish are harvested — and the right includes a nation’s capacity to care for it.
“It’s both the incidental aspect and also the place itself,” Mandell says.
“It’s not the right to put your fish net in the water and pull out a fish. It’s the right to continue to protect and harvest and steward and be reciprocal, inside the place that the fishing is happening.”
A protest sign alongside the Malahat highway in SELE₭TEȽ. Photo by Julie Chadwick
This was a crucial and far-reaching finding, and directly relevant to the fight at SELE₭TEȽ — the concept that nation members not only had the right to fish, but also to protect their harvest.
It’s been a rallying cry for ZȺWIZUT ever since.
“My relatives fought for that. And the decision that came out of there was that they not only had the right to hunt and fish as formerly, they have the right to protect what they hunted and fished as formerly,” says ZȺWIZUT.
“That’s why I’m here. I’m protecting what belongs to us, our relatives that come up the stream that feed us.”
Translating legal wins into change
However, Mandell says there is a huge difference between winning a case and translating that legal victory into political action.
“I can’t tell you how many times we came home from the Supreme Court of Canada thinking we had died and gone to legal heaven, only to find out nothing much changed on the ground,” Mandell says.
“I think that’s the difference between winning a legal point, and actually having the capacity to move that victory into shifting the political landscape.”
ZȺWIZUT, standing on the side of the Malahat protesting for the protection of SELE₭TEȽ, embodies that distinction.
Despite decades of court cases and historical agreements which upheld the W̱SÁNEĆ people’s rights — not only to their village site, but also to their fishing grounds at SELE₭TEȽ — and despite three years of weekly protests to highlight these rights, it appeared the government’s $162-million highway improvement plan would plough ahead.
‘Do what you can**’**
That is, until ZȺWIZUT received a phone call in February this year, from some members of the W̱SÁNEĆ Leadership Council.
They had received some important news; the province had an announcement to make about the Malahat highway.
Its widening project was being paused.
They congratulated him.
According to the government, additional work was required “to address environmental considerations in this sensitive area of Goldstream Park” and understand the project’s impacts.
READ MORE: Snuneymuxw reclaims kwula’xw in Land Back deal that will bring members home
“I thought, ‘well, that’s great,’” ZȺWIZUT says.
But he also doubts whether the government will keep its word.
“Well, in the past we’ve had meetings with businesses and government offices and in our longhouses here and come to agreements with them,” he says. “Then not even a couple of days later, they break those agreements.
“This could be one of those issues.”
But the announcement that authorities need to do more research on the environment, he suggests, “tells me we were right in thinking that they didn’t really have an environmental plan.”
Some of the trees in Goldstream Park are hundreds of years old. Photo by Julie Chadwick
’Where we stand’
From the beginning, the province wanted W̱SÁNEĆ members to accept their environmental assessment without question, Olsen says.
But he always felt that there was something odd about being asked to accept something without fully agreeing to it.
From what nation members could see, the environmental risks were obvious — even from the government’s own assessment report.
The purpose of the environmental assessment was to identify issues, and “some of these considerations were brought to light through that process,” stated transportation ministry spokesperson Murray Sinclair, via email.
“This does not mean the report was incomplete,” he said.
“The purpose of an environmental assessment is to identify issues, and some of these considerations were brought to light through that process.”
Given the complexity of the site and the sensitivity of the habitat, addressing those issues will take time, he added.
The ministry is currently conducting a review of crash data in the area as part of an update to its 2012 study of the Highway 1 Malahat corridor.
READ MORE: K’ómoks becomes first Indigenous government to appoint justice of the peace
What about ZȺWIZUT’s concern that the project is merely on pause, and not actually cancelled?
“It’s possible the project could be revisited in the future,” Sinclair noted.
“However, there is no timeline or estimate for when that might occur.”
This is why, for now, the 78-year-old Elder has decided to keep up his weekly protests.
“We want better decisions made about Goldstream and protecting the watershed especially. It’s about protecting the whole area,” he says.
“It’s really important that we recognize where we stand in the whole thing. I’m not going to leave. I think they expected me to leave. We’re still there.”
The post Inside an Elder’s fight to save salmon habitat around a W̱SÁNEĆ village site from a highway appeared first on Indiginews.
From Indiginews via This RSS Feed.
cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/72550
At least 15 Palestinian people have been trapped by illegal Israeli settlers inside their homes in the town of Qusra, southeast of Nablus, in the northern occupied West Bank for the ninth day consecutively.
The siege began on Sunday, August 9, when dozens of Israeli colonists gathered around the targeted homes, established an outpost, and cut off water and electricity to the properties. They also launched violent attacks against the trapped Palestinian residents, throwing stones at them.
Watching his home from afar facing an imminent threat of being seized by the settlers, US citizen Loui Ridi flew back from the United States to the West Bank on Monday, August 17.
Ridi wanted to join his brother Qusai Abu Rida, and his teenage nephew Ahmad, as they insisted on staying inside his home to defend it.
“I have been in contact with the US embassy, but they have not guaranteed me a safe way to my house that’s still under siege, and the settlers are still able to come around this house,” Ridi told media reporters at the airport.
Israeli forces joined the siege of Qusra under the cover of maintaining order
A few days after Israeli settlers surrounded the homes in Qusra, Israeli forces deployed troops in the town to allegedly expel the settlers, protect residents, and maintain order.
However, the Israeli Army turned some houses of Palestinian citizens into military barracks, restricted the movement of residents inside the town, and prevented the entry of journalists, activists, and humanitarian aid.
**US ambassador labels the settler siege a “**horrific act of terror” **and “**thuggish behavior”
On Tuesday, August 12, Palestinian human rights advocate Ihab Hassan said onX that the White House had intervened and questioned Israel about why it allowed Israeli settlers to besiege a Palestinian home belonging to a US citizen in Qusra for several days.
US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee refuted Hassan’s statement, describing it as a “lie” in a post he wrote on X.
Huckabee claimed that the US Embassy in Jerusalem has been “VERY involved,” noting that Israeli forces and the Israel Police have intervened at the US request “to remove the Israeli terrorists doing this.”
“The actions of those doing this to this family’s home is criminal. The WH hasn’t ‘intervened’ because we have kept DC apprised of the situation already,” the US diplomat added.
“Actions by those who carried out this horrific act of terror meant to intimidate and harass this family are disgusting. No excuse for such thuggish behavior,” he continued.
The siege of Qusra is not an isolated incident. For many, it reflects accelerating state-backed settler violence, which is expected to grow with the recent decision of the Israeli government to transfer all “civilian” law enforcement authority for Israelis in the West Bank from the Israeli Army to the Israeli Police.
Read more: Ben-Gvir’s police to assume law enforcement in West Bank
From BT News via This RSS Feed.
cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/71856
This story is published through the Indigenous News Alliance.
Aaron HemensIndigiNews
When the chief of the Okanagan Indian Band looked down on his community from a helicopter last week, much of what he had known all his life was gone.
Homes had burned. Photographs, memorabilia, and Salish baskets had disappeared with them. More than 30 band members had lost their homes, naspəpʕásəs Dan Wilson said, along with around 200 homes and other structures belonging to non-band members.
“Our loss is measured in the family histories that have been lost — especially the Elders who have lost their homes,” he said.
The destruction left by the Bradley Creek wildfire at nk̓maplqs (the head of Okanagan Lake) comes amid a wildfire season that has repeatedly forced Indigenous peoples across Canada from their homes. As of Tuesday, 601 wildfires were burning across the country, including 113 classified as out of control and another 371 that remained out of control but were being monitored rather than actively suppressed.
Those numbers have translated into a summer of evacuations, displacement, and, in some communities, devastating losses for First Nations. Wildfires have affected at least 81 First Nations and forced 9,131 people from their communities since April 1; 2,524 people remained evacuated as of Tuesday. As fires have threatened communities from British Columbia to Ontario, Indigenous leaders have raised concerns about inadequate firefighting equipment, delays in emergency assistance, and the information used to make evacuation decisions.
In Ontario, a fast-moving fire devastated Namaygoosisagagun First Nation in July as residents fled by boat. At least 12 First Nations in the province have been fully or partially evacuated because of wildfires this summer, according to Chiefs of Ontario. The organization is demanding an independent public inquiry into what Ontario Regional Chief Abram Benedict called a “catastrophic and systemic failure” in the response.
And last week, leaders of Kiashke Zaaging Anishinaabek were still fighting an Ontario government decision to withdraw wildfire implementation and evacuation orders while massive fires remained out of control nearby.
For the Okanagan Indian Band, the immediate danger has eased. The wildfire, which started July 31 on reserve lands near Vernon, British Columbia, had burned about 6,550 acres as of Monday. It was classified as being held over the weekend, meaning it was expected to remain within its existing boundaries under prevailing and forecast conditions. Some evacuation orders have since been rescinded or downgraded.
Although the community faces a long recovery, it “is getting stronger every day,” Wilson said last week. “We’re holding up. We’re very resilient. We have a long history — we’ve been here for 10,000 years.”
Wilson praised the band’s firefighters, who were first on the scene and worked alongside provincial wildfire crews. “They went above and beyond. I can’t say enough,” he said.
Wilson said the band’s fire department, which consists of around 30 trained firefighters, was equipped only with a fire truck designed to tackle structural fires. “If we had a proper wildland firefighting truck that’s able to access rough terrain … I’m told that if we had that equipment, our first responders would’ve been able to put that fire out immediately,” he said.
He said that concern was relayed to Mandy Gull-Masty, the federal minister of Indigenous Services.
Wilson noted that the one bright spot from the helicopter tour was seeing the Komasket powwow arbour grounds — as well as the nearby daycare and Nk̓maplqs Iʔ Snm̓am̓ay̓aʔtn Iʔ K̓l Sqilxʷtət Cultural Immersion School — unscathed by the fire.
The disaster comes five years after the Whiterock Lake wildfire destroyed 10 homes belonging to Okanagan Indian Band members and displaced the community for weeks.
For communities facing this summer’s fires, the challenges have extended beyond escaping the flames. The devastation of Namaygoosisagagun, also known as Collins First Nation, has raised questions about whether the remote community will receive federal recovery and rebuilding assistance. Although its residents are recognized as First Nations people under the Indian Act, Namaygoosisagagun is not recognized as a First Nation. A lawyer representing the community wrote to Gull-Masty that denying it the emergency and rebuilding assistance available to recognized First Nations could threaten its ability to rebuild.
Ontario Regional Chief Abram Benedict also criticized bureaucratic obstacles First Nations encountered while trying to access emergency assistance. On July 30, Chiefs of Ontario called for an independent public inquiry into the province’s response, saying at least 12 First Nations had been fully or partially evacuated during the wildfire season.
“There has been a catastrophic and systemic failure at nearly every level and at nearly every step of this process,” Benedict said in a statement. “We need to know how and why this happened. But most importantly, we need to learn from it so it never happens again.”
Communication has emerged as another concern. When an out-of-control wildfire threatened Xeni Gwet’in First Nation in British Columbia in April, authorities did not provide emergency alerts in Tŝilhqot’in — the only language spoken by many Elders in the community — leaving the Nation’s own forestry crew to alert them directly.
Sara Wilson, a communications researcher at Simon Fraser University, has described such shortcomings as part of a broader “crisis communication gap,” pointing to language barriers, underfunding, and the exclusion of Indigenous communities from decision-making during emergencies.
Those concerns extend beyond how emergency information is communicated to questions about who decides when a First Nation is safe. That question remained at the center of a dispute last week at Kiashke Zaaging Anishinaabek, also known as Gull Bay First Nation, in northwestern Ontario. The Nation’s leaders objected to the government decision to withdraw wildfire implementation and evacuation orders around the community. “Our members are still at risk and our infrastructure is at risk,” Chief Wilfred King told CBC Thunder Bay.
Several large fires remained near the community, and King said one of the community’s greatest concerns was that one of them could block its only road out, leaving residents trying to flee across Lake Nipigon. “The only escape would be jumping on boats and crossing Lake Nipigon, and that’s not an alternative,” he said.
King said the community was also concerned about delays in receiving information about changing fire conditions. Before residents return, he said, the Nation also must ensure its water treatment and sewage systems are functioning safely.
Ontario’s Ministry of Natural Resources told CBC that changes to evacuation orders would be made only when fires no longer posed a risk, based on advice from fire behavior experts. But King said the provincial order should have remained in place until the community was confident it was safe. He told CBC that Indigenous Services Canada supported the Nation’s decision to maintain its own evacuation order.
At Okanagan Indian Band, support came from other First Nations and Indigenous leaders. Penticton Indian Band and Westbank First Nation opened their communities to evacuees, while leaders from across the syilx Okanagan Nation Alliance reached out.
At an emotional community meeting in Vernon, drummers Bruce Manuel and his sister Trish Manuel, sent by Upper Nicola Band Chief Dan Manuel, performed a closing drum song. Wilson said the response was “really bolstering our spirits here.”
“We say our prayers,” he said. “We have a strong faith in kʷuləncútn, the Creator.”
This story was originally published by IndigiNews and updated with additional information by Grist.
The post Canada’s wildfire season is taking a heavy toll on First Nations appeared first on ICT.
From ICT via This RSS Feed.
cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/71915
This story was originally published by Source New Mexico.
Joshua Bowling
Source New MexicoThe majority of New Mexico’s tribe, nation and pueblo land could be ripe for exploring geothermal energy, an energy expert told a panel of state lawmakers Monday.
Rebecca “Puck” Stair, the New Mexico Energy, Minerals and Natural Resources Department’s Energy Conservation and Management Division director, spoke before the interim Indian Affairs Committee in Shiprock about the potential for the state’s Indigenous populations to harness the heat beneath the ground as a form of energy.
The state’s largest electric provider, PNM, has already tapped into a southern New Mexico geothermal plant that uses the heat beneath the earth’s crust to create steam, turn turbines and generate electricity.
Stair’s presentation to the committee focused on the advantages of geothermal energy — such as its renewable nature and its relatively low water demand — and said tribal leaders could consider investing in the technology not just to generate electricity, but potentially to sell excess energy or to strengthen New Mexico’s outdated power grid.
“If you’re using geothermal, the heat beneath our feet to generate electricity, that’s wonderful,” Stair told lawmakers. “It could offer electricity revenues to tribes…it’s clean energy, and that’s in alignment with a lot of tribal values.”
State leaders have increasingly eyed geothermal energy alongside renewables such as wind and solar as deadlines approach to comply with the landmark Energy Transition Act’s renewable energy goals. The ETA, which Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham signed in 2019, requires that utilities use 50 percent renewable energy by 2030, 80 percent by 2040 and 100 percent by 2045.
A 2025 report from Project InnerSpace, New Mexico Tech and the New Mexico Bureau of Geology and Mineral Resources found that “a significant amount of Tribal land sits on top of some of the best subsurface heat.” In addition to generating jobs and revenue on Native lands, the technology could also help Indigenous communities achieve “enhanced energy sovereignty,” the report said.
One state lawmaker at Monday’s hearing spoke along similar lines.
Rep. Patricia Roybal Caballero (D-Albuquerque) said she would like to see leaders in New Mexico’s 23 tribes, nations and pueblos work together and collectively benefit from the technology.
“I am proposing — and have proposed — that they come together and pool their resources and create their own geothermal development group,” Roybal Caballero, a member of the Piro Manso Tiwa Indian Tribe, Pueblo of San Juan de Guadalupe, said. “It’s natural heat coming from our natural earth, and it belongs to us.”
The post Much of New Mexico’s tribal, pueblo land ripe for geothermal power, energy leader tells lawmakers appeared first on ICT.
From ICT via This RSS Feed.
cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/70873
For generations, Palestinian farmers timed the wheat harvest by the stars and the rain. Now, Israeli settlers set the harvest instead, as their cows graze freely in Palestinian wheat fields across the West Bank after displacing Bedouin herders.
The Palestinian agricultural calendar has long served as a mirror of the environment, organizing farmers’ lives in lockstep with the changing seasons, the movement of the stars, and the cycles of rain. But the succession of Israel’s wars and manufactured crises has battered Palestinians and imposed a harsh political dimension upon nature’s rhythm. Road closures, denial of access to land, and repeated settler attacks have forced farmers to redraw their planting and harvest schedules. The wheat harvest has seen the most dramatic impact.
After the harvest ended, families would often exchange help through the “awnah” system, a collective form of mutual aid in Palestinian society that has organized Palestinian village life for generations. Relatives and neighbors gather to harvest the land together, before journeying to mill the grain into flour.
But disruptions to the wheat harvest schedule have rippled through an entire cycle of relationships and customs built around the grain, says Kbeineh’s wife. “We lost the way we used to live through the season,” she explained. “Everything had its own time. The harvest had its time, the selling had its time, and the celebration had its time.”
From Mondoweiss via This RSS Feed.
cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/70317
This story was originally published in the Anchorage Press.Subscribe here.
Nathaniel Herz
Northern Journal – Anchorage PressThis spring, ExxonMobil made big news in Alaska.
For years, the multinational oil giant had ignored the periodic auctions for drilling rights on public land in the state, instead investing in projects in other parts of the world like the South American nation of Guyana. Other big companies like Shell and BP had also walked away from holdings in the state — raising fears that Alaska’s oil industry was on the decline.
But in March, after a series of recent big oil discoveries in the National Petroleum Reserve – Alaska, ExxonMobil came back in force, placing winning bids on two dozen leases in an auction in the federally owned area. Shell, in partnership with a Spanish oil company, also placed surprise bids of its own, as did an array of other firms that collectively offered $163 million in winning bids.
Four months later, though, the Trump administration has yet to issue most of the leases that ExxonMobil bid on and won. A federal lawsuit filed by representatives of the area’s Indigenous residents has tied up 17 of the company’s 24 plots in legal limbo — with the U.S. Bureau of Land Management blocked by a federal judge from issuing leases to the company.
Other big oil players like Shell and ConocoPhillips won leases that don’t face the same legal complications — though multiple smaller companies’ bids are also caught in the litigation.
Last month, the Trump administration stepped back from an appeal that aimed to unblock the issuing process, leaving an underlying legal dispute to play out in a lower court.
At stake is the future of a huge area of the reserve, roughly 1,500 square miles, that some companies covet for its oil-bearing potential but local residents want conserved to protect caribou that they hunt for food.
Under a deal struck with the Biden administration, oil leasing was barred in the area unless it was approved by a group representing municipal and Native entities in the Iñupiaq village of Nuiqsut, about 50 miles southeast of the lake.
The Trump administration subsequently canceled the agreement and the group sued, winning an early victory from a federal judge who restored the deal. That means the recently auctioned leases can’t, in fact, be granted in the area without the local group’s consent.
“As development continues, it becomes more important to make sure that our subsistence remains healthy and accessible,” said Roxanna Oyagak, a board member of Kuukpik, Nuiqsut’s local for-profit Native corporation, which is part of a municipal coalition participating in the litigation. “We want to make sure that future generations can have that connection going forward.”
Multiple additional lawsuits challenging other aspects of the recent auction are also playing out at the same time. If successful, the litigation could also end up overturning leases that the Trump administration awarded to ConocoPhillips and other companies earlier this year.
Supporters of development are fighting back. In one recent 80-page motion, attorneys for ConocoPhillips wrote that conservation groups have been in “perpetual disagreement” with a policy choice by U.S. Congress to set aside the petroleum reserve for oil development.
“They will never be satisfied because their long-held policy goal of impeding and preventing all oil and gas activities in Alaska (and beyond) irreconcilably clashes with Congress’s mandate for expeditious leasing and development of the Petroleum Reserve,” the brief said.
Oil, birds and caribou
The national petroleum reserve spans an area the size of Indiana on Alaska’s North Slope, and it was originally created a century ago, as the U.S. Navy was converting its fleet from coal to oil power.
While federal geologists say the area could hold billions of barrels of oil, it also encompasses sprawling wetlands and robust populations of migratory birds, polar bears and caribou.
Conservation groups call it the Western Arctic rather than the petroleum reserve, and point to a half-century-old law that directs federal land managers to protect the reserve’s fish and wildlife, and environmental and scenic values.
The reserve sits at the far western edge of the North Slope’s existing oil infrastructure, and companies hadn’t actually produced any petroleum in the area until a decade ago.
Its conflicting characteristics have spawned decades of political battles and court fights over how much of the area to open to the oil and gas industry. And recent huge petroleum discoveries there, including ConocoPhillips’ Willow project, have further charged the debate.
An Obama-era management plan protected roughly half of the reserve, while the first Trump administration opened 82% of the area to leasing.
One area that’s particularly disputed is the 300-square-mile Teshekpuk Lake and its surrounding tundra, near the reserve’s northern coastline. That spot is essential feeding and resting habitat for birds like tundra swans, bar-tailed godwits and buff-breasted sandpipers, and for the Teshekpuk Caribou Herd — a population of some 60,000 animals that residents of Nuiqsut and the North Slope hub town of Utqiagvik depend on for food.
Given its ecological value and importance to traditional hunters, federal officials have long granted the Teshekpuk area special protections, though some Republican presidents, including Donald Trump, have worked to shrink them.
The Biden administration took a new approach, establishing a conservation area around the lake as part of its efforts to offset the impacts Willow — the ConocoPhillips project in the reserve, which faced strident opposition from local and national conservation groups.
In a late 2024 deal with a group representing three Nuiqsut entities — the village’s for-profit Indigenous-owned corporation, its tribal government and city government — the administration protected 1 million acres, banning oil development there without the local group’s consent.
The Biden administration structured the protections as a formal “right-of-way,” citing authority from a 1976 law, the Naval Petroleum Reserves Production Act.
Then, in late 2025, a top Trump administration official canceled the agreement, saying it gave Nuiqsut’s leaders illegal “veto power” over projects in an area with high oil and gas potential and that the deal blocked an “essential purpose” of the petroleum reserve. The Bureau of Land Management then said it would auction off dozens of plots around Teshekpuk Lake in the March 2026 lease sale.
In response to the cancellation, the Nuiqsut group sued, saying the Trump administration’s action had “clearcut” the government’s obligations to protect subsistence.
On the same day that bids were due in the auction, a federal judge, Sharon Gleason, restored the Biden administration’s agreement and issued a temporary ruling putting the protections back into place. The written ruling, known as an injunction, was notable because Gleason suggested the Nuiqsut group had a good chance of winning its underlying case.
But in the meantime, oil companies had placed bids — one of which exceeded $2 million — to lease land within the protected area. ExxonMobil was the highest bidder on a number of plots directly along the lake’s southwest shore; Epoch Oil and Gas, a Denver-based firm, won a large tract along the lake’s northeast edge.
Epoch and another company that bid in the conservation area subsequently contacted Nuiqsut’s Native village corporation, Kuukpik, to discuss their plans for the area, according to Andy Mack, Kuukpik’s chief executive. ExxonMobil, however, did not, he said.
“I have no idea what they’re thinking or what they’re doing,” Mack said in a recent phone interview. “If they have a plan, I don’t know what it is.”
An ExxonMobil spokesperson, Curtis Smith, declined to comment.
Legal wrangling continues
After the March auction, in written correspondence with ExxonMobil and other companies, the Trump administration said Gleason’s ruling blocked its ability to immediately issue leases in the protected area.
But it said it was “vigorously pursuing” its options, including litigation. And in May, the administration appealed Gleason’s ruling to a federal appeals court.
Then, last month, the Trump administration quietly reversed itself, dropping the appeal in a one-paragraph motion that didn’t explain why. A decision from Gleason in the underlying litigation over the Teshekpuk Lake conservation agreement is expected in the coming weeks or months, according to attorneys following the case.
In an email, a U.S. Department of the Interior official declined to comment, and would not specify what its decision means for the leases that Gleason has blocked the agency from issuing.
The Trump administration did say, in its correspondence with ExxonMobil after Gleason’s ruling, that it had requested a waiver of the Teshekpuk area oil leasing prohibitions from the Nuiqsut group.
An attorney for the Nuiqsut group, Patrick Munson, declined to comment. But officials from Kuukpik — the Indigenous corporation that’s one of the group’s members — didn’t sound inclined to consent to a waiver any time soon.
“That Teshekpuk Lake area is very important to that caribou herd, which the community really, really relies on and still hunts to this day,” said Oyagak, the Kuukpik board member.
Oyagak didn’t rule out that Kuukpik could, at some point, agree to limited development in the conservation area. But she said any such decisions would come only after engagement and conversation.
“We’d have to carefully consider important conditions with that,” Oyagak said. “It’s not about no development. We want to make sure our voices are heard and that our knowledge is included.”
She added: “We have to have a seat at the table. We have to listen to the people who live there.”
Oyagak’s corporation does have a long history of withholding support for neighboring oil developments before ultimately striking deals with petroleum companies that have made concessions — like hiring Kuukpik subsidiaries or adapting projects in response to Nuiqsut residents’ concerns.
Meanwhile, separate lawsuits filed by conservation groups aim to overturn the entire March lease sale — not just the bids in the area of Teshekpuk Lake.
Rosemary Ahtuangaruak, a Nuiqsut health advocate and former village mayor, said her nonprofit, Grandmothers Growing Goodness, is participating in one of the other suits in part because she’s not a Kuukpik shareholder and wants to make sure the community’s broader, non-corporate interests are represented in the courts.
“It’s about protecting our community overall,” Ahtuangaruak said. “It’s about making sure our community is going to be able to live in our lands and waters, and feed our families and our elders.”
The lawsuit from Ahtuangaruak’s group faces broad and vehement opposition from supporters of petroleum development.
Multiple oil companies, including ConocoPhillips, Epoch Oil and Gas and affiliates of Armstrong Oil and Gas, filed lengthy briefs last month arguing for the lease sale’s results to stand, as did attorneys for the state of Alaska.
So did the Alaska Oil and Gas Association trade group, which cited the ongoing war in Iran and resulting high oil prices in saying that the request to set aside the lease sale results is “out of step with the nation’s domestic energy needs.”
The association’s brief cited the 4,500 workers employed in Alaska’s oil industry and some $925 million in wages paid to state residents in 2024 — plus billions more in taxes and royalties collected by state government.
The reserve is one major area that companies have targeted for new projects needed to sustain or increase Alaska’s current oil production levels; if the lease sale is invalidated, the association said, it would threaten the “backbone of Alaska’s economy.”
Decisions on the broader cases are expected, also from Gleason, by mid-October.
The post ExxonMobil won big at a big Alaska lease sale. Months later, its bids are still in legal limbo. appeared first on ICT.
From ICT via This RSS Feed.
cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/70388
This story was originally published by Grist.
Aimee Gabay
GristThis story is published through the Indigenous News Alliance.
AI is the transformative technology of our time, with the potential to reshape our world on a global scale. And yet, underpinning its potential is the need for so-called hyperscale data centers that require vast amounts of land, energy, and water. As tech companies and governments continue to develop this infrastructure at a huge scale, Indigenous peoples around the world are responding to this threat in different ways. They are raising concerns about mounting pressure on water resources and inadequate consultation, but in some cases embracing projects for their economic benefits.
The rapid expansion of this massive digital infrastructure has Indigenous leaders, governments, and experts calling on those developing them to comply with the principle of free, prior, and informed consent while exploring whether this infrastructure can be established in ways that advance Indigenous rights and priorities.
During a panel discussion on the second day of the United Nations Expert Mechanism on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, or EMRIP, Indigenous delegates said that while there must be policies to ensure that AI does not harvest Indigenous knowledge without consent, protections for Indigenous lands and waters are equally important.
“AI is resource-intensive and requires vast amounts of energy. In Sápmi, we already see how large data centers put [immense] pressure on our territories,” said Maren Storslett, who is a member of the Sámi Parliament in Norway. “This forces a conversation about priorities and limits and we need to be at the table on these discussions.”
According to the International Energy Agency, conventional data centers, which store thousands of computer machines and other equipment to power everyday digital life like cloud storage, may draw around 10 to 25 megawatts of power per year. But a hyperscale, AI-focused data center, of the likes being built by or for transnational companies such as Google and Amazon, can require 100 megawatts or more annually, consuming as much electricity as 100,000 households would use over the same time.
All of that energy is needed to power the immense racks of servers that provide the computing power behind things like ChatGPT, Claude, and other platforms. They also require copious amounts of water to keep them cool.
This demand for energy and water, driven in part by the increasing rack power density for AI workloads, is a frequent concern raised by sources at the international Indigenous conference. Research by the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory estimates that all data centers in the U.S. alone directly consumed approximately 17.4 billion gallons (66 billion liters) of water in 2023. It also estimated that the energy generation consumed 211 billion gallons (800 billion liters) of water.
Other research puts it into perspective: By 2030, the energy required for data centers is expected to double to 945 terawatt-hours — enough to meet the needs of all 1.3 billion residents of Sub-Saharan Africa for 5.5 years. Those facilities would also require enough to meet the domestic water needs of all the same people for a year.
“These technologies … come with environmental cost,” said Aluki Kotierk, who is Inuk from Canada and current chairperson of the U.N. Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues. “The data centers that power them consume vast amounts of energy, water, and minerals, resources that are often extracted from or developed on Indigenous peoples lands without their meaningful participation or consent, with potential serious consequences for their rights, livelihoods, and environments.”
Extraction for AI data center resources can result in the degradation of sacred sites and threats to fragile ecosystems, according to Camila Vergada, who is a board member of the Forum for Real Economic Emancipation.
While there are potential benefits for Indigenous people, the electricity and water needs of hyperscale, AI-focused data centers can be detrimental to Indigenous lands that lack the capacity to meet their resource requirements, according to Matthew Rantanen, who is a Cree descendant and advocate for digital equity in Indian Country.
Rantanen, who is a co-chair of two technology-related subcommittees of the National Congress of American Indians, believes an industry shift toward renewable energy and alternative cooling methods is needed to ensure that AI infrastructure aligns with Indigenous priorities and rights.
The permitting needed to build these data centers should require in-depth studies of resource availability and the impacts on communities and ecosystems, as well as the involvement of those impacted throughout the lifecycle of a project — a point that was reinforced by participants at the EMRIP.
Others, like Rochelle Diver, who is a citizen of the Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Ojibwe and the U.N. environmental treaties coordinator for the International Indian Treaty Council, are calling for broader support for Indigenous-led moratoriums on data centers. “We are in an urgent situation regarding the infrastructure being built on a massive scale to power AI technology,” she said.
Data centers are often built in water-stressed regions, like Querétaro, Mexico, and Santiago, Chile. In a protest against the construction of a Google facility in Santiago, Indigenous peoples, local communities and workers’ unions rallied around the slogan “no es sequia, es saqueo” (“this is not a drought, this is a robbery”). Last year, the Anacé Indigenous people in Brazil filed an official complaint before federal authorities, requesting the cancellation of a $10 billion data center for the popular social media platform TikTok on their land. Leaders said their right to consultation was violated, and their concerns dismissed.
Roberto Anacé, leader of the community in Brazil, said in a WhatsApp message that the project “hinders our community, first disrespectfully separating relatives, causing fights, personal interests, bringing out ambition and hatred in human beings, and above all destroying our sacred things: Mother Earth, water, climate, air.”
A recent analysis by the London School of Economics suggests that the next wave of climate litigation may relate to the impacts of large data centers that AI relies on. In 2024, due to the efforts of Chilean protesters in Santiago, an environmental tribunal suspended construction of the Google data center, ruling that the environmental impact had not been properly considered. So far, there has been no progress on the Anacé peoples’ lawsuit against TikTok.
In the U.S., a more than $1 billion Meta data center project in Tulsa, Oklahoma, has received mixed responses among Indigenous and non-Indigenous community members. While some support it, others firmly oppose it and have actively campaigned against it. Cheyenna Morgan, who is an enrolled member of the Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Native Americans and the coalition coordinator of Stop Data Colonialism, said in an email that the data center will place a heavy burden on local power and resources.
Meta, Google, and TikTok did not reply to requests for comment.
Through Stop Data Colonialism, Morgan works to stop the rollout of hyperscale data centers on vulnerable lands, and said her community is already experiencing an increase in electricity bills and is expecting further rate hikes. “These impacts will be felt on regular people who didn’t ask to have these in their neighborhoods,” she said.
In March, the city council passed a moratorium to allow more time to assess the project’s impact. Similar moratoriums have been passed by tribes in the U.S., including the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma, the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians (EBCI), and the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians.
At the U.N., some delegates spoke of direct experience with harmful data centers, while others spoke of the potential risks.
Julia Aka Wille, who is Inuk from Greenland and invited by the Inuit Circumpolar Council to speak at EMRIP, said that even though her homeland does not have any data centers yet, the community is still concerned about their impact on the climate. “They still affect us in that way, because they use so much energy and water, and it will contribute to the general climate change,” Aka Wille said. “The Arctic is the region that is most affected by climate change because the ice is melting, and this affects us that we can’t really have the same way of living anymore.”
Although Aka Wille sees opportunity in AI to help teach and preserve Indigenous languages like hers, she hopes that Indigenous peoples from around the world can work together to ensure AI is used in a responsible way.
In Alberta, some Indigenous nations are embracing the data center boom, emerging as key stakeholders and investors. The Woodland Cree First Nation recently announced plans for a 650 megawatt data center that will utilize an idle power plant for energy generation. Woodland Cree has a 51 percent stake in the project.
Te Kāhui Raraunga, an Indigenous-led initiative in Aotearoa New Zealand, demonstrates how some tribal nations are considering AI-initiatives that respect Indigenous rights and priorities. The organization, linked to the Data Iwi Leaders Group, has created a Māori Data Governance Model and Māori AI Governance Framework focused on data policy and infrastructure.
As part of this initiative, leaders from 85 tribal nations gather each quarter to ensure the communities’ key priorities are upheld.
“These hyperscale data centres come with promises of economic development and digital sovereignty; however, the reality can be much different, and it is vital that iwi Māori have the information they need to make informed decisions,” Erena Mikaere, the digital program lead for Te Kāhui Raraunga, said in an email.
She added that the organization has developed resources for tribal leaders that highlight the impacts of hyperscale data centers, as well as key considerations before signing any agreement allowing one.
At EMRIP, Indigenous delegates stressed the need for meaningful participation throughout the development, implementation, and governance of AI initiatives that affect them.
“We must not only ask what AI can do, but what it should do,” said Maren Storslett. “Respect for the rights of Indigenous peoples must apply across the entire life of AI systems.”
Grist reporter Joseph Lee contributed reporting to this story.
The post Data centers are booming. Indigenous leaders want help protecting their lands. appeared first on ICT.
From ICT via This RSS Feed.
cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/70287
For nearly three years, Israeli officials and their US backers have denounced United Nations agencies reporting the facts of Israel's genocidal assault on Gaza as lies, but now many of them are citing the latest global hunger study by the United Nations Children's Fund as proof that last year's famine that killed at least hundreds of Palestinians in the coastal exclave was a "hoax."
The UNICEF-led State of Palestine Nutrition Cluster Coordination Meeting report, published on July 22, shows decreased hunger rates in areas of Gaza accessible to those conducting the survey. With Israeli forces controlling the majority of Gaza's territory and much of the strip flattened and inaccessible, the report's authors warned that "the survey findings should therefore be interpreted as representative."
This did not stop the Israeli government and media, and Israel's supporters and sympathetic media abroad, from citing UNICEF—which on Thursday said that Israel is killing about one child a day in Gaza despite a so-called ceasefire—and the broader UN, which they formerly accused of "lies," "antisemitism," "blood libels," and "hoaxes" throughout a war that a UN commission of inquiry called a genocide.
"Once again, facts prevail over fiction," Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations Danny Danon said. "UN bodies are acknowledging that the false narrative against Israel is falling apart."
US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee may have forgotten his acknowledgement last year—along with President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance—that Palestinians were "starving" in Gaza, aspersing the media for reporting on the starvation.
Eylon Levy—the British-Israeli former spokesperson for Israel known for purveying disinformation like the infamous October 7 "beheaded babies" lie—also ran with the narrative, posting on X that "the 'Gaza Famine' was always a hoax."
Except it wasn't.
UN agencies and other humanitarian groups started sounding the alarm on looming starvation in Gaza in the weeks after Israel began annihilating the strip in retaliation for the Hamas-led attack of October 7, 2023. By February 2024, UNICEF warned that "famine is imminent" in Gaza as the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs cited the deaths of six infants from malnutrition and dehydration.
As Gaza's hunger crisis worsened under Israel's "complete siege," UN agencies, including UNICEF, regularly warned about starvation in the strip. In February 2024, UN officials were accusing Israel of using starvation as a weapon of war—one of the alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes for which Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant, his former defense minister, are wanted by the International Criminal Court in The Hague. Michael Fakhri, the top UN expert on the right to food, accused Israel of genocidal forced starvation of Gazans.
In August 2025, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC)—the UN-aided top global authority on hunger crises—declared a Phase 5, or "catastrophic," famine in Gaza as at least hundreds of Palestinians perished from malnutrition and related causes.
“Famine is now a grim reality for children in Gaza," UNICEF executive director Catherine Russell said at the time. “As we have repeatedly warned, the signs were unmistakable: children with wasted bodies, too weak to cry or eat; babies dying from hunger and preventable disease; parents arriving at clinics with nothing left to feed their children."
The IPC lifted Gaza's famine designation in December 2025, citing improved—but still highly restricted—access of humanitarian aid into Gaza following a nominal ceasefire agreement reached two months earlier. However, last month the IPC published an analysis showing that from mid-April to the end of June, more than 1.2 million people, or 59% of Gaza’s population, were experiencing Phase 3 (crisis) or worse levels of food insecurity. This included about 212,000 people in Phase 4 (emergency).
"The situation remains fragile," IPC warned.
Many of the people who deny that Israeli forces have killed or wounded a quarter million Palestinians in Gaza or that Israel is committing genocide there—a conclusion reached by numerous UN officials, scholars, jurists, rights groups, and the approximately 20 nations that formally joined South Africa's pending genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice—are the same ones who have denied not only the Gaza famine, but that anyone was ever starving there.
They asked to see photos of starving Palestinians, and when shown them, they, and corporate media outlets including The New York Times, attempted to explain or even dismiss the evidence by claiming the emaciated—or often dead—children suffered from preexisting conditions, as if that somehow absolved Israel for their deaths. Others posted images of a Gaza market stocked with food or overweight Palestinians in a bid to debunk the fact of starvation in Gaza.
Still others dismissed images of starving Gazans as Hamas propaganda, with US media personality Megyn Kelly opining that Palestinians are "fine having their own children starve just as long as they can put them on camera."
From Common Dreams via This RSS Feed.
cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/69849
This story was originally published by WyoFile.
Maya Shimizu Harris
WyoFileLast month, a church pastor on the Wind River Indian Reservation stood before her congregation and prayed for Native people to reject their traditions in favor of Christianity. She delivered her sermon on the last day of the Northern Arapaho Sundance ceremony. The tribal ceremony offers prayers with a “grandfather pipe,” a sacred object that comes from the Arapaho creation story.
“Jesus is the chain-breaker,” Pastor Sarah Lucas said during the July 5 sermon. “He is the only God that we should be praying to. A pipe cannot hear your prayers. It’s just a piece of material. This is a cycle that they’re caught up in.”
Christian Wassana, a cast member on the drama series Yellowstone and a member of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma, shared a clip of the sermon on social media. “It feels like history repeating itself, with attempts to erase and discredit our traditional way of life,” he wrote.
Rather than heed the pastor’s words, hundreds of Native community members rose in protest, and the Northern Arapaho Business Council ordered the church to leave the reservation, reported WyoToday Media, which covers Fremont County and the reservation. The church, Foundations For Nations, which has been on the reservation since 2017 and also operates a food pantry, said it would fight the removal order in court. At present, it doesn’t appear that the church has done so. The church didn’t return a call from WyoFile by publishing time.
Some called on the tribes to use the “bad men” clause in their treaties with the U.S. government to oust the church from the reservation. Treaties signed in 1867 and 1868 between the federal government and nine Native American tribes — including the Northern Arapaho and Eastern Shoshone — have such “bad men” provisions.
Through the provisions, the federal government vowed to compensate Native Americans when they suffer injuries stemming from “any wrong” committed “upon the person or property of the Indians” by “bad men among the whites, or among other people subject to the authority of the United States.”
“Bad men” complaints go straight to the federal government. If the government determines that a “wrong” has been committed, federal agents can arrest the offender and punish them “according to the laws of the United States.”
“You’re generally looking at some sort of physical injury or property crime that would occur,” said John Schumacher, a Riverton lawyer with expertise in Native American law. “Inherent in that is the idea that there’s some action the person took that violated some existing law.”
Schumacher said the clause would likely not apply in the current situation on the Wind River Reservation with Foundations For Nations church, which concerns a differing religious view. “If the tribes are excluding someone, then that would have to be done under their inherent authority as a tribe,” Schumacher said. “There’s no bright line test for that.”
After the sermon, the Northern Arapaho Business Council announced a new policy requiring outside organizations like the church to receive the council’s authorization before conducting activities on land under the tribe’s jurisdiction, according to WyoToday Media, which publishes The Ranger, Lander Journal and Wind River News. After looking through records, the council found that Foundations For Nations Church hadn’t ever received authorization to set up on the reservation.
“This policy is not about preventing anyone from practicing their religion,” Northern Arapaho Business Council Chairman Keenan Groesbeck said in the business council’s July 20 statement about the new policy. “It is about respecting the sovereign government of the Northern Arapaho Tribe.”
The business council noted the “historical relationship between many Christian institutions and Native Nations, including the devastating legacy of forced assimilation, boarding schools, and efforts to suppress Indigenous languages, cultures, and spiritual traditions.
“These historical experiences make it especially important that any outside organization engaging with the Northern Arapaho people do so through respectful government-to-government consultation and with a full understanding of tribal history, culture, and sovereignty.”
The Eastern Shoshone Tribe backed the new policy, calling on the church to stop its efforts to persuade Native people to reject their traditions.
“It is a profound abuse of trust for any outside institution to be welcomed onto the Reservation, endear itself to our community, and then use that access to insult, diminish, or erase the people who offered that welcome,” the Eastern Shoshone Tribe’s statement said.
The Eastern Shoshone Tribe noted that it “respects the individual constitutional rights of all people to practice their faith.”
“What is troubling is the use of religious expression as a cover for targeted efforts to undermine coexisting beliefs,” the tribe’s statement said. Particularly troubling, the statement continued, is the church’s “use of tribal symbols and imagery to gain trust while simultaneously urging our people to turn away from traditional practices.
“Such tactics borrow the appearance of respect while working against the very cultures they claim to assist.”
Tribes have their own laws that govern people living on reservations. People living under tribal jurisdiction don’t have civil rights under the U.S. Constitution, but instead have statutory rights under the 1968 Indian Civil Rights Act, known as ICRA.
The act provides nearly all the same civil rights found in the U.S. Constitution, like free speech rights, to people who live under tribal governance, including nontribal members. But there are some differences that attempt to accommodate tribes’ unique needs. For example, ICRA doesn’t require the separation of religion and government because “religion and religious leaders have always played a central role” in governing some tribes, according to Stephen Pevar, author of “The Rights of Indians and Tribes.”
The only current federal remedy for alleged ICRA violations is a writ of habeas corpus — an order requiring a court to decide if a person’s imprisonment is lawful, Pevar explains in his book. In other words, for situations where no one is imprisoned, ICRA doesn’t really have teeth, though some tribal courts deal with noncustodial ICRA violation cases, according to Pevar. If Foundations For Nations were to fight the removal order, the case would likely land in tribal rather than federal court. “There’s a requirement that before you can go to federal court, you have to exhaust your tribal court remedies,” Schumacher said.
Groesbeck, chairman of the Northern Arapaho Business Council, didn’t respond to WyoFile’s inquiry before publishing time about the status of the removal order against the church.
The church has argued that it can’t be removed “in this manner” because it owns its property, The Ranger reported. It’s not clear whether the tribal order has legal clout, or if the church has an avenue to fight the order.
“Excluding people from the reservation doesn’t happen very often,” Schumacher said, adding that he wasn’t aware of any past cases off the top of his head that fit this particular situation.
Even amid reported threats and the order to leave, the church has continued its Sunday services.
The post Could tribes use ‘bad men’ clause to oust Christian church? appeared first on ICT.
From ICT via This RSS Feed.
cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/69957
"The world calls it a ceasefire, but families in Gaza are still burying their children."
That was one United Nations spokesperson's assessment of the ongoing US-backed Israeli assault on Gaza on Thursday, which marked the 300th day since a ceasefire deal was reached between Israel and Hamas—a period during which at least 300 Palestinian children have been killed, the UN reported.
"A ceasefire that leaves an average of one child dead each and every day is failing children," said Edouard Beigbeder, regional director for the Middle East and North Africa for the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF). "With hundreds more children injured, many severely, children in Gaza are still waiting for the end to the violence they were promised."
Louise Wateridge, a spokesperson for UNICEF, noted that in the first three days of August, at least four children were killed across Gaza, and surviving children have been left with "painfully simple" and urgent questions for Israeli officials who had agreed last October to cease hostilities, reopen border crossings, and ensure 600 aid trucks entered Gaza per day to get much-needed food and essentials to Palestinians who had been facing a near-total blockade.
Wateridge said Palestinian children need to know: "When will the killings stop? When will food and medicine reach me at the level needed? When will hospitals reopen? And when will clean water flow again?"
300 children gone in 300 days.
300 days of the ceasefire in #Gaza has seen at least 300 children killed.
"The world calls it a ceasefire, but families in Gaza are still burying their children."
- @UNICEF's Louise Wateridge pic.twitter.com/1rmJz3YExW
— United Nations Geneva (@UNGeneva) August 6, 2026Reports of the mass casualties of children come as Israel and President Donald Trump's Board of Peace raise doubts about whether Israel will accept a deal stipulating the disarmament of Hamas and Israel's withdrawal from the exclave.
UN officials on Thursday expressed hope that the next steps of the peace plan can move forward to save children and other civilians across Gaza.
"Children have heard promises before. This time, agreements must translate into action," said Beigbeder.
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said Thursday that continued airstrikes have damaged civilian infrastructure, including healthcare facilities and medical supplies.
UNICEF warned that children are continue to face acute malnutrition almost a year after Israel agreed to allow humanitarian aid into Gaza, as well as suffering from disease and a lack of sanitation.
An attack on a medical storage facility next to Al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir al-Balah last week destroyed supplies that had been delivered by the UN, said the World Health Organization.
The UN is working to help "exhausted and hungry mothers" arriving at health centers with their malnourished children, and are fighting to save newborns born prematurely or with health issues, with extremely limited resources.
“There’s not enough incubators and in some cases [health workers are] saying they see two or even three babies sharing a single machine,” said Wateridge. “In Gaza, children only days old are already fighting to stay alive, born into partially functioning hospitals lacking equipment and medicine. This is what the world has chosen to tolerate. The killing must stop, aid has to enter at scale and children must be protected.”
According to OCHA, at least 1,209 people have been killed and 3,943 have been injured since the ceasefire deal was reached last October.
From Common Dreams via This RSS Feed.
cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/69514
Amelia Schafer
ICT
Tuesday’s primary elections in four states resulted in significant wins for Indigenous candidates.
Of the five Indigenous candidates on ballots in Kansas, Michigan and Missouri, three candidates won their primaries Tuesday and two lost.
Sean McCann, Citizen Potawatomi Nation, won in the Democratic primary for Michigan’s Fourth Congressional District. McCann faced another Potawatomi, Diop Harris of the Nottawaseppi Huron Band of Potawatomi.
The Associated Press called the race with 34 percent of votes tallied. McCann earned 63.6 percent of the votes tallied, with Harris garnering 36.4 percent.
Sean McCann, Citizen Potawatomi Nation, will face another Potawatomi tribal member in the Michigan democratic primary for Congressional District 4 on Aug 4. Credit: Courtesy of Sean McCann campaign
“Our win tonight is thanks to every volunteer, supporter, and Michigan voter who put their trust in our campaign to bring change to Washington,” McCann said in a statement. “From the beginning, this campaign has been about standing up for working families and fighting back against corporate special interests and politicians getting rich while leaving our families behind. Every day between now and November 3rd, I’ll keep working to win every vote – to unite Democrats, Republicans, and Independents who believe Southwest Michigan deserves better than Bill Huizenga, who doesn’t work for us because he’s working for himself.”
McCann faces incumbent Bill Huizenga in the general election this fall.
Michigan
Melissa Perron, Sault Tribe of Chippewa Indians, won the Democratic primary for Michigan House of Representatives in District 107. Perron defeated Brendan Ryan and will face incumbent Republican Parker Fairbairn in the general election this fall.
Missouri
In Missouri, Justice Horn, a citizen of the Blackfeet Nation, lost the Democratic primary for the District 1 At-Large seat in the Jackson County Legislature. Horn lost to Carla Fields who tallied 49 percent of the votes. Fields also defeated incumbent Jalen Anderson who finished with 27 percent of the vote. Horn garnered 23 percent of the vote.
Horn’s campaign received key endorsements from Sen. Bernie Sanders, D-Vermont, and Advance Native Political Leadership.
Kansas
In Kansas, Ho-Chunk Nation of Wisconsin tribal member Sharice Davids wonthe Democratic primary for Kansas’s Third Congressional District. Davids was first elected in 2019, meaning that, if re-elected, this will be her fifth term in congress.
We're just getting started, and we need everyone on board to keep Kansas moving forward!
Get involved today ➡️ https://t.co/oMVW2p70ZB pic.twitter.com/oioxEZBwgr
— Sharice Davids (@sharicedavids) August 5, 2026
ICT was on the ground covering the election.
Washington
Washington’s primary results will not be finalized until days after the election. Approximately 12 Indigenous candidates are running in Washington.
- Jennifer White, Makah Tribe, running for Clallam County Treasurer
- Christopher “Chris” Roberts, Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, running for King County Assessor
- Patrick DePoe, Makah Tribe, running for Washington House of Representatives, District 24 Position 2
- Debra Lekanoff, Tlingit Tribe, running for Washington House of Representatives, District 40 Position 1
- Chandler Torbett, Muscogee Nation, running for Washington House of Representatives, District 45 Position 2
- William Chichenoff, Sun’aq Tribe of Kodiak, running for Washington House of Representatives, District 14 Position 1
- Chelsea Dimas, Nahua, running for Washington House of Representatives, District 14 Position 1
- Kim Harless, Ópata, running for Washington House of Representatives, District 49 Position 1
- Renee Hernandez Greenfield, Cochiti Pueblo, running for Washington State House of Representatives, District 26 Position 2
- Maria Littlesun, Skokomish, running for Washington House of Representatives, District 35 Position 2
- Chris Stearns, Navajo Nation, running for Washington State House of Representatives, District 47 Position 2
- Claudia Kauffman, Nez Perce Tribe, running for Washington State Senate, District 47
The post Natives notch wins in Tuesday primaries appeared first on ICT.
From ICT via This RSS Feed.
cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/69616
The same logic that bombed a novelist's car in 1972 is now embedded in today’s content moderation policies, platform architecture, large language model training data, and the deliberate severing of a fibre-optic cable.
On the morning of July 8, 1972, a car bomb exploded outside of a house in Beirut. 36-year-old novelist, editor, and poet, Ghassan Kanafani, was killed, along with his 17-year-old niece, Lamees Najim. He had served as a spokesperson for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), and the Mossad—which built the bomb, wired it to the ignition, and waited—justified the murder as a retaliatory response to the PFLP's Lod airport operation that May. Kanafani never fired a gun in his life, but his dedication to militant anti-imperialist struggle rendered him a culpable target.
Understand what that means: a state with a nuclear arsenal, an air force, and the backing of the world's most powerful military did not send its soldiers after Kanafani, but opted instead to use a car bomb to silence a prominent writer and militant intellectual. Ghassan Kanafani wielded his pen as his weapon of choice, and that pen had become, in the calculus of the Israeli settler state, a genuine strategic threat
Read more via Scalawag: The Assassinated Word: Kanafani at 54.
From Scalawag via This RSS Feed.
cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/68320
A family of three, including their 2-year-old child, were killed by US strikes against a residential building in Iran's Qeshm City, according to reports from Iranian media on Thursday.
Videos posted by the official IRNA news agency showed rescue teams searching through rubble for survivors. Two other children, ages 7 and 9, were found wounded in the wreckage and have been transported to the hospital, according to the agency.
The US attack on the building in the neighborhood of Chah Tangu was one of several launched against residential areas across Qeshm Island in the Persian Gulf overnight in what US Central Command (CENTCOM) said were dozens of strikes on Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) sites across the country.
The IRGC said that it would respond to Thursday's strikes by hitting back against the “aggressor." Iranian strikes on sites in Kuwait and Jordan followed shortly after, leading to the death of a worker in a Chinese-owned building in Kuwait. Iran also claimed that its attacks destroyed US aircraft in Jordan, which has not been confirmed.
The wave of US attacks came after Trump vowed on Wednesday to "beat the fucking shit out of" Iran after it fired ballistic missiles toward US troops in Jordan, the first such strike since a brief bombing pause over the weekend. The US also partnered with Saudi Arabia to carry out attacks on Iran-backed militias in Iraq, which reportedly killed 20 fighters and six Iranian advisers.
In a statement on Thursday, CENTCOM said it had "successfully completed a heavy wave of strikes" against Iran "in response to yesterday’s attempted missile attacks on US forces." It did not specify the strategic reason for the strikes on Qeshm or acknowledge the reported civilian casualties.
According to the US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA), at least 254 children have been killed in Iran since the US and Israel launched the war on February 28, among more than 1,700 total civilians.
Iran has reported that at least 383 children, including seven infants, had been killed over the course of the war, prior to the resumption of attacks in July. With Thursday’s attacks, at least three more children have been killed since the conflict resumed this month.
Many of those casualties include at least 123 children killed by US strikes on the Shajareh Tayyebeh elementary school in Minab on the first day of the war. Earlier this month, Trump declined to release the findings of a Pentagon investigation into the massacre, saying it would be impossible to ever determine who was at fault.
Since restarting the war earlier this month, the US has focused its attacks on southern Iran in areas near the Strait of Hormuz, where Iran has once again functionally blocked travel, despite US demands for unrestricted travel through the waterway, which carried around a fifth of the global oil supply before the war.
Trump's continued escalation comes as Americans are overwhelmingly skeptical of the war. A CNN poll released Wednesday showed that 67% of Americans believe Trump's military actions have "hurt the US" by causing oil prices to spike. Nearly three-quarters of Americans believe Trump does not “have a clear plan for handling the situation in Iran,” according to the poll.
From Common Dreams via This RSS Feed.
cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/67142
Kyle DavidsonMichigan Advance
Two state agencies charged with overseeing Michigan’s natural resources and the environment have approved another set of permits for Enbridge’s Line 5 tunnel project, pushing the Canadian energy company closer to the full approval needed to begin construction.
The Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy announced Wednesday that it had reapproved a set of permits that expired earlier this year, concerning wetlands resources and the Great Lakes submerged lands. It follows a 2024 agreement between Enbridge, EGLE and the Bay Mills Indian Community, where the company agreed to redo its Part 303 and 325 permits to incorporate new wetland survey results.
The Department of Natural Resources also approved a Part 365 permit, which will require Enbridge to take steps to reduce its impacts on rare plants and animals while constructing the tunnel.
This map shows the proposed tunnel and the existing dual pipelines crossing the Straits of Mackinac. | (Screenshot from the MPSC Line 5 Issue Brief)
Great Lakes Tribal Nations and environmental advocates have called on state officials to shut down Line 5 for years. The controversial pipeline runs from Superior, Wisconsin to Sarnia, Ontario, with a 4.5-mile segment of dual pipelines running through the Straits of Mackinac, where Lake Michigan and Lake Huron meet.
Opponents, including Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel, have repeatedly raised concerns about the threat of an oil spill in the straits, with the Oil and Water Don’t Mix Coalition arguing that taxpayers could be left on the hook for $4 billion should Line 5 rupture.
In 2018, Line 5 was damaged by a boat anchor dragged along the bottom of the straits, which dented the dual pipelines in three places. Enbridge later agreed to replace the dual pipelines with a new segment housed within a utility tunnel beneath the lakebed.
While Enbridge says the tunnel project will mitigate risks around future anchor strikes and an oil spill, Line 5 opponents are continuing to advocate for a shutdown, arguing the geological conditions of the lakebed are not stable for drilling, and that the construction process could also result in the release of oil or natural gas liquids from the existing pipeline.
Environmental advocates havepointed to the release of 1,900 gallons of drilling fluid amid Enbridge’s effort to reroute Line 5 in Wisconsin as further evidence of their concerns, arguing the release is in violation of waterway and wetland permit conditions.
Opponents say major legal hurdles remain
The project is still awaiting approval from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and another permit, which would allow Enbridge to discharge up to 6 million gallons of treated wastewater into the Great Lakes each day as the company builds the tunnel, remains under EGLE review.
Another major permit, issued by the Michigan Public Service Commission, is under review by the Michigan Supreme Court following a challenge from the Bay Mills Indian Community, Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians, Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa Indians, and Nottawaseppi Huron Band of the Potawatomi and several environmental advocacy groups.
Debbie Chizewer, a managing attorney for Earthjustice, which represents the Bay Mills Indian Community, told Michigan Advance they expect to appeal the EGLE permits, as they have done previously.
Whitney Gravelle, president of the Bay Mills Indian Community, called the permitting decision a betrayal.
“The Straits of Mackinac, the sacred place where my Tribe’s creation story begins, have been handed over to a foreign corporation with a history that is nothing short of disastrous,” Gravelle said in a statement. “Enbridge has spilled oil, committed safety violations, trespassed on lands, shattered ecosystems, pierced aquifers, violated our laws, and repeatedly shown contempt for tribal sovereignty. They have left devastation in their wake, and now they’re being rewarded with responsibility over one of the most precious and sacred resources in our state. The Great Lakes are not safe in their hands.”
In a press release announcing the permitting decision, EGLE said its 16-month review of the permit “concluded that the public and private need for the proposed activity outweighed other public interest criteria.”
Critics call permits a betrayal
Following the decision, several environmental advocacy organizations criticized Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and her administration, arguing the governor had softened her stance on the pipeline after pledging to take action against Line 5 in her 2018 campaign for governor.
As governor, Whitmer has authority over EGLE and the DNR and the final say on how or if these projects move forward, Beth Wallace, the climate and energy director for the National Wildlife Federation, told the Advance Thursday.
“EGLE has once again approved a set of permits where they have failed to consider or even look at the harm that is going to be caused from the actual construction of the pipeline,” Wallace said. “Enbridge and Governor Whitmer have allowed a permit to move forward that only looks at shoreline impacts in the wetlands from them starting the construction.”
State Rep. Betsy Coffia, a Democrat from Traverse City, also voiced her discontent with the decision in a Facebook post, where she spoke out against Whitmer’s appearance with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman at a groundbreaking for the Saline Township data center, and her decision to veto nine bills passed at the end of 2024, when Democrats held the majority in both the House and Senate.
“I am especially grieved by this profound disrespect to our tribal nations who have been on the front lines on this case for years, fighting to protect our precious Great Lakes,” Coffia said. “Let’s be honest. Michigan government does not have a good track record of keeping our word with our Native brothers and sisters and today is a shameful new chapter in that betrayal to both the tribes and the precious, Great Lakes waters, they have protected for generations.”
Wallace similarly pointed to the governor’s support for data center development.
“You saw yesterday that she has come up with a pledge for data centers to do the right thing, and we’re seeing very much in this moment that those types of commitments have fallen very short and are very shallow, and we actually need leaders to demand better and uphold our laws instead of taking pledges from the corporations,” Wallace said.
Whitmer’s office did not respond to several requests for comment left through text message and voicemail. This story will be updated if a response is received.
While the department’s decision dealt a clear blow to those advocating against the pipeline, Enbridge spokesperson Ryan Duffy said the permits were an important step forward for the project.
“We are reviewing the new permit conditions issued today to assess any impacts on tunnel construction,” Duffy said in a statement Wednesday evening.
The Great Lakes Michigan Jobs coalition, which consists of several business, industry and labor groups, also cheered the permit approvals.
“Union members across the Upper Peninsula back the Tunnel because it protects the Great Lakes, creates and supports great jobs and great paychecks, and it’s a big part of our energy mix,” Mike Smith, the executive director of the UP Construction Council, said in a statement. “Today’s news represents just one more important step on that path, and we’re eager for regulators to give every green light needed to start construction.”
In 2022, an Enbridge consultant determined a shutdown of the pipeline would result in a half-cent-per-gallon increase on gas, jet fuel and diesel in Michigan and Wisconsin, and a 5-cent-per-gallon increase in Ontario.
3:03 pm — This story has been updated after a previous version misstated the amount of drilling fluid spilled.
The post Tribes, environmental advocates decry Michigan’s approval of Line 5 permits appeared first on ICT.
From ICT via This RSS Feed.
cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/67073
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Friday announced actions to tighten and accelerate the illegal occupation and colonization of the West Bank after a Palestinian defending his village from rampaging settlers fatally shot two Israelis—whose companions killed four Palestinians in response—while other members of Netanyahu's government called for more ethnic cleansing in Palestine.
Residents of Tell—located 3 miles southwest of Nablus and less than 2 miles from the illegal Israeli settlement of Havat Gilad—said settlers attacked homes on the outskirts of the town at around 8:30 on Friday morning.
According to The Times of Israel, a group of several dozen settlers invaded the village under the pretense of going on a hike. However, as the newspaper noted, Tell is located in an area of the occupied West Bank that is off limits to Israelis unless they obtain permission from the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), which the military said they did not do.
Local Palestinian leader Essam Saifi told Reuters that settlers attacked the eastern part of Tell and tried to break into homes there. When residents emerged to confront the settlers, the intruders opened fire on them before leaving.
Backed by IDF troops, the settlers returned around half an hour later. Video recorded by one of the settlers shows an Israeli firing his gun in the air while his companions, who included minors, shout threats while other settlers stormed local residents' land. A Palestinian man snatched a long gun from a member of the Havat Gilad local security squad and shot him and an IDF major, mortally wounding both men.
Israelis returned fire, killing four Palestinians, including the shooter, and wounding four others. IDF commandos later raided a hospital in Nablus and seized two of the wounded Palestinians.
The Palestinian Foreign Ministry said in a statement that "this massacre represents a renewed image of the ongoing Nakba to which our Palestinian people are subjected," a reference to the ethnic cleansing of more than 750,000 Arabs from Palestine by Zionist forces during the establishment of the modern state of Israel in 1948.
The ministry also condemned "the misleading narratives promoted by the Israeli occupation authorities... in a systematic attempt to turn the executioner into the victim, and to cover up the crimes of murder, field executions, massacres, and grave violations committed by the occupation forces and settler militias against the Palestinian people."
IDF troops subsequently locked down Tell and Nablus while deploying five additional companies to the area and canceling soldiers' weekend furloughs in preparation for imminent "extensive counterterrorism operational activity in the sector.”
Responding to the incident as well as two separate stabbings of Israelis in the West Bank on Thursday, Netanyahu convened a security consultation, which resulted in a joint statement with Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz announcing a tightening of the occupation and acceleration of the colonization of Palestine—both already illegal under international law.
The statement said Israel will demolish the family home of the Palestinian who shot the two Israelis, confiscate arms and revoke work permits of Palestinians in "villages acting as terrorist hubs," reinforce IDF units throughout the occupied territories, expedite the "legalization of farm outposts" and establish new ones, and increase apartheid checkpoints and road separations.
Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich responded to the incident by calling for the destruction and "evacuation"—a term widely viewed as a euphemism for ethnic cleansing—of local Palestinians "for their own protection."
"This is our appropriate Zionist answer to terrorists and terrorism," Smotrich said.
"We will not normalize the erosion of deterrence and the brazenness of our enemies in recent weeks against the pioneers of settlement and the farms," Smotrich, who chairs the far-right Religious Zionism party, said on social media, "I demand that the IDF act with an iron fist against the village of the murderers and its surroundings and restore governance and deterrence."
Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who leads the far-right Jewish Power party, demanded the Palestinian shooter's town be obliterated like Beit Hanoun in Gaza, where Israeli forces have been waging a war that United Nations officials, legal and academic experts, and around 20 national governments have called a genocide.
"For every Jew murdered, the enemy must suffer the loss of land and homes," Ben-Gvir said. "This is the language spoken in the Middle East, and just as we spoke it in Gaza, it is time to speak it in [the West Bank] as well."
Yair Golan, who heads the opposition Democrats, accused Netanyahu and Katz of "a clear intent to set the area ablaze."
"Every escalation in the field endangers human lives—Israelis and Palestinians alike," he added.
David Zini, the head of Shin Bet, Israel's internal security and counterintelligence agency, urged the Israeli public “not to take the law into their own hands and to place their trust in the IDF and the Shin Bet, whose mission and duty this is.”
Many settlers rejected Zini's call and instead carried out revenge attacks on West Bank towns and villages, reportedly including Madama, Urif, Burin, Far'ata, Jit, Qabalan, Sarra, and others, resulting in multiple injuries.
Meanwhile, settlers mourned the killing of the two slain Israelis, 32-year-old Havat Gilad civil defense squad member Benayahu Mellet and 27-year-old IDF Maj. Yuval Ezra.
Extremist settler Meir Ettinger eulogized Mellet on social media, saying that "he was never satisfied with recognized roads and fences, and strived continuously to conquer the region."
“Benayahu always insisted on not making a distinction between areas C and B," Ettinger added.
Under the moribund Oslo Accords, the West Bank is divided into Areas A, B, and C. Area A is under full Palestinian Authority control, while Area B is under mixed control and Area C is under full Israeli control.
Israeli efforts to expand West Bank settlement activity have accelerated dramatically since the Hamas-led attack of October 7, 2023. Attacks on West Bank Palestinians, including pogroms carried out by mobs of settlers protected and sometimes joined by Israeli troops, have killed at least 1,111 Palestinians—at least 243 of them children—since October 2023, according to the latest report published by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
Israeli officials say 47 Israelis—including IDF troops, security personnel, and civilians—have been killed by Palestinian attacks over the same period.
According to the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem, more than 620,000 Jews currently reside in over 130 settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. While Israel grants every Jew in the world the right to settle there, it has—against UN resolutions and international law—refused to allow the approximately 5 million Palestinian refugees alive today to return to their homeland.
B'Tselem is one of 20 Israeli human rights groups that on Friday issued an "urgent call to the international community to take immediate action to stop Israel's violence and prevent pogroms by settler militias and the Israeli army across the West Bank."
From Common Dreams via This RSS Feed.
cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/66823
For decades, Israel has employed settler violence against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank as part of its program of ethnic cleansing. However, such violence has sharply increased since the far-right ultra-nationalist government, led by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, came to power in 2022.
While settler violence has affected the entire occupied territory over the last couple of years, it has been heavily concentrated in villages east of Ramallah, including Al-Mughayyir, Turmus Ayya, Deir Dibwan, Deir Jarir, Kufr Malik, Mazraa Al-Sharqiyah, and Khirbet Abu Falah.
A convergence of geographic, political, and strategic factors has made this area one of the primary flashpoints for displacement and the takeover of land in the occupied West Bank.
Ramallah’s eastern countryside overlooks the Jordan Valley to the east and the central West Bank to the west, making it a critical visual and geographical crest.
A continuous chain of Israeli settlements and wildcat outposts were established on the hilltops around these villages in order to isolate Palestinian agricultural communities, cutting them off from their surrounding pasturelands, and connecting infrastructure.
The local economy of villages east of Ramallah remains deeply rooted in traditional rain-fed agriculture, notably olive orchards and livestock grazing. This in turn made the area a target for systematic settler violence during harvest periods, severely undermining the long-term economic viability of the land for indigenous farmers.
The semi-nomadic Bedouin and Palestinian herding communities along the eastern Ramallah slopes have also been systematically targeted by aggressive settler groups, who destroy their crops, seize their animals, block their water supply and attack them physically.
Read more: Paradise lost: a Palestinian farmer on settler violence and dispossession
Three Palestinians killed in villages east of Ramallah in one week
On Sunday, July 19, the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) and illegal settlers launched a coordinated attack against Palestinians in Deir Jarir town, northeast of Ramallah in the central occupied West Bank.
Odah Abdul-Rahim Farakhna (53), and Ahmad Adul-Rashid Abu Mokho (26) were shot dead, while a third person was injured in the assault.
B’Tselem, an Israeli non-profit organization that documents human rights violations committed by Israel in the occupied Palestinian territories, slammed the offensive on Deir Jarir, accusing Israel of promoting ethnic cleansing in the West Bank.
“The killing in Deir Jarir is one example of how Israel promotes ethnic cleansing in the West Bank: settlers invade and steal, while the military and police accompany them and shoot Palestinians who try to protect their homes and property,” Yuli Novak, the executive director of B’Tselem noted.
The deadly attack on Deir Jarir was preceded by another tragic incident in Al-Mughayer village, northeast of Ramallah.
Palestinian footballer Fadi Hamdallah Al-Nasaan (17) died on Saturday, July 18, due to injuries he sustained after being shot by the IOF one week earlier during a raid on Al-Mughayer.
According to the Palestinian Football Association, Al-Nasaan is one of 1,013 Palestinian athletes, including 568 from the football community, who have been killed by Israel since October 7, 2023.
Meanwhile, the latest death toll published by Shireen Observatory indicates that at least 79 Palestinians have been killed due to Israeli violence in the occupied West Bank since the beginning of the year. This includes 21 children, five women, two elderly people, three prisoners, and one journalist.
From BT News via This RSS Feed.
cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/66099
Kalle Benallie and Jourdan Bennett-BegayeICT
TOTAH, New Mexico — Michael Roy held his “I did this, I did that” sign outside the Totah Theater in Farmington, New Mexico, where Navajo Nation presidential candidates were informing Navajo citizens of their platforms on economic development.
“I’m kind of undecided on who to vote for, but I got to hear them out and stuff like that,” Roy, 56, told ICT. “But what I have here on my sign, I’ve heard this before way back ever since I guess the administrations that I was born into, so things never change.” He is from Cudeii, New Mexico.
Roy is one of the many Navajo voters who will go to the polls on July 21 on the Navajo Nation.
Michael Roy, 56, stands outside of the Navajo Nation presidential forum on June 24, 2026, in Farmington, New Mexico. (Jourdan Bennett-Begaye, ICT)
The 16 presidential candidates are vying for the top two spots to move on to the general election in November.
The primary was moved to July 21 due to Arizona’s state and county elections and will only be for Navajo citizens in Arizona. Citizens in New Mexico and Utah have already cast their votes in June. The Navajo Nation has approximately 427,000 citizens.
In the last few months, the candidates have traveled across the southwest for several presidential forums, meeting Navajo voters in urban and rural communities, and sharing their priorities.
The Farmington forum was the first time Eleanor Joe, 65, attended a forum for the Navajo Nation candidates this year.
Navajo Nation ballot examples on the wall for Navajo voters in July 2026. (ICT Staff)
Joe said she isn’t happy with current Navajo Nation President Buu Nygren but some of the candidates she heard from at the forum, she liked. They told her exactly what was going on and what they were planning to do.
She’s looking for a Navajo candidate who can tackle homesight leases, use old buildings to bring businesses to the nation, and advocate for Navajo people with mental health issues or mental illnesses.
Joe said she liked Tom Chee’s focus on the Navajo language and traditions while “Justin Jones, I think he sounds like he’s going to clean house.” She also liked that Crystalyne Curley has experience as Speaker of the House.
A Navajo elder’s soda with voting materials at the Navajo Nation presidential forum on June 24, 2026, in Farmington, New Mexico. (Jourdan Bennett-Begaye/ICT)
Another voter at the forum, Rita James, wants a new administration. She said the system is already set for them, “but we just need to put the right people in there.”
She’s looking for a Navajo leader with “a vision and a leader with unity.”
James continued: “We do not want any other leader that’s going to downgrade the present administration, but we want to move on with you know a president that has a credential and has a future and hope for a new administration is what we’re looking for.”
Her hope is that a Navajo woman would be the next Navajo Nation leader.
“We are at the stage where we need a woman leader,” James, 66, said. “ … because the current administration kind of disrespected the women, so her vice president doesn’t have a voice. So right now we want somebody that has a voice, a woman that can fix the problem that happened with her.”
In 2024, Navajo Nation Vice President Richelle Montoya accused Nygren of sexual harassment. The Navajo Nation Attorney General’s office is currently investigating.
James has voted for Emily Ellison the last two times she ran for president.
Rita James with Navajo Nation Presidential Candidate Emily Ellison after the Navajo Nation president forum on June 24, 2026, in Farmington, New Mexico. This is Ellison’s third time running for president. (Jourdan Bennett-Begaye/ICT)
Presidential nominee and current Navajo Nation President Buu Nygren has faced turbulence in his position. In 2025, the Navajo Nation Council sought to oust Nygren led by presidential candidate and Navajo Nation Council Speaker Crystalyne Curley.
In May, a Navajo Nation District Court dismissed a second ethics complaint that was filed by Special Prosecutor Kyle Nayback for alleged misuse of funds during the fall 2025 budget process. The judge ruled the complaint was better suited for the Ethics and Rules Committee rather than the court. Nayback also filed a complaint against Nygren’s former chief of staff, Patrick Sandoval, for financial benefits from a company that was seeking payment from the office of the president and vice president.
The 15 other candidates running for Navajo Nation president are: Justin Jones, Kevin Cody, Crystalyne Curley, Jordan Begay, Arvin Trujillo, Debbie Nez-Manuel, Tom Chee, Frank Dayish Jr., Donovan Begay, Alexander Chambers, Emily Ellison, Johnny Russell Jr., Larry Noble, Myron Lizer and Andrew Curley.
Kevin Cody’s platform is focused on public safety, healthcare, education, local government, and public safety.
Andrew Curley’s platform is no uranium mining, downsizing the president’s office, better relationship with the Navajo Nation Council, land reform, and water rights.
Debbie Nez-Manuel’s platform is ethics and management reform, veterans, education and public spending, protecting Navajo tradition and culture.
Crystalyne Curley’s platform is safety, infrastructure, economy, preservation of culture and traditions, and a focus on veterans, elders, disabled and the youth.
Jordan Begay’s platform is healthcare, lessening federal government input, strengthening the economy and education.
Arvin Trujillo’s platform is to restore the relationships between the three branches of government, support departments and divisions in the government, and build up the economy.
Tom Chee’s platform is building community, supporting chapters, investing in the youth, building the economy, and preserving Navajo language and culture.
Frank Dayish’s platform is to protect resources, agriculture, expand manufacturing, efficient housing, restart economic activity, and housing.
Donovan Begay’s platform is veterans and healthcare.
Alexander Chamber’s platform is government accountability, infrastructure, safety, energy, strengthening economy, and unifying government branches.
Emily Ellison’s platform is government accountability, sovereignty, infrastructure, supporting local businesses and community.
Myron Lizer’s platform is infrastructure, water access, energy, economic development, jobs, housing, leadership transparency, healthcare, supporting youth, and education.
Important dates and where to vote
Election results are expected to be certified after July 31. Early voting ended on July 17 for in-person voting. Voting registration has closed until July 31, after the primary.
Five election offices to vote include the Chinle Agency Election Office, the Fort Defiance Agency Election Office, the Eastern Navajo Agency Election Office, the Northern Agency Election Office and the Western Navajo Agency.
All 110 chapter houses are polling locations as well.
There are several deadlines for the general election in November. Voting registration closes on Sept. 25, absentee voting begins Oct. 5, the last day to submit an absentee ballot is Oct. 19 and the last day to vote in person is Oct. 30.
The post Navajo Nation voters looking for a president with vision, unity appeared first on ICT.
From ICT via This RSS Feed.
cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/66085
This story is published through the Indigenous News Alliance.
The Arctic is warming four times faster than other regions, a trend that disproportionately harms the Indigenous Sámi people — particularly their access to vital traditional resources like reindeer and salmon, which are used for food, clothing, weapons, and more.
As northern temperatures rise, snow is melting and refreezing at an accelerating rate. That forms ice, preventing reindeer from reaching the lichen below and dramatically increasing starvation rates. “Those impacts in nature are severe for our culture and livelihoods,” said Tuomas Aslak Juuso, vice president of the Sámediggi, or Sámi Parliament, of Finland. “So survival of reindeer and then survival of our livelihoods [and] cultures is then questioned.”
Last week, the impacts of climate change and colonialism were among the key issues raised by the hundreds of Indigenous people gathered in Geneva. They’d come from around the world to discuss these mounting threats at the United Nations Expert Mechanism on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, or EMRIP. They agreed that a multitude of crises will only grow worse unless they are given greater say in international negotiations and decision-making. That’s why in addition to pushing specific policy recommendations on conflict, AI, and other key issues, Indigenous delegates continued their decades-long demand for better representation at the U.N.
“What we are trying to do is to get some implementation resources for us to adapt to the climate change. With Finland, for example, we don’t have any adaptation resources on how to adapt to these situations,” Juuso said. “To be able to bring these issues forward to the global discussion, we would have to have the opportunity to participate.”
Member states are granted access to U.N. gatherings, where they can easily express views, determine policies, and outline their progress implementing international commitments required by the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and other agreements. But Indigenous advocates say the voices of the peoples directly impacted by such actions aren’t always heard at international forums.
The U.N. structure requires participation through either a member state or a registered civil society agency — for instance, a non-governmental organization, academic institution, or accredited Indigenous organization. But Indigenous nations don’t fit neatly into one of those categories and are reduced to participating as NGOs. Beyond those structural barriers, Indigenous peoples also face financial and other resource challenges that compound the difficulty of making themselves heard at the international level. That’s why those attending EMRIP continued the long fight for what is called enhanced participation, which could finally give Indigenous nations and organizations the same access and power the United States and other countries enjoy.
That increased influence is especially important when many countries ignore Indigenous priorities. Throughout the week, many delegates identified climate and environmental issues as one area where national governments often have different priorities than Indigenous peoples, who consider land and ecosystems more important than economic growth — a value system they believe is at odds with the world’s best interests.
Read Next
For Indigenous peoples, conflict means so much more than war
“We’ve got to try and balance immediate economic interests with longer-term environmental protections,” said Kym Hamilton, who is from the tribes of Ngāti Kahungunu, Ngā Rauru, Ngāti Raukawa in Aotearoa New Zealand. “I think we’ve got a responsibility to protect our descendants.”
In U.N. lexicon, enhanced participation is the catchphrase often used for efforts to elevate Indigenous peoples’ voices. Those gathered in Geneva asserted the right to represent their communities in crucial global discussions that impact them. They are also demanding more respect from member-state governments and other policymakers, something they argue will better help them to survive conflict and other crises.
“The question before us is no longer whether Indigenous peoples should participate more fully in the Human Rights Council,” Hamilton, who spoke on behalf of the National Iwi Chairs Forum that represents 87 tribes, said. “The question now is how quickly we will implement these commitments.”
She offered recommendations for EMRIP’s seven expert Indigenous members, including a clear timeline for creating participatory status for Indigenous peoples’ institutions and appointing Indigenous and state representatives with equal standing to lead the process. She also called for the establishment of an independent and transparent accreditation mechanism to prevent states from vetoing Indigenous representatives, and initiatives to provide predictable and sustainable funding to take part.
Hamilton said Indigenous peoples’ full participation in international deliberations includes the right to decide who represents their communities. “Governments don’t always tell the truth,” she said, citing the U.N. Human Rights Council’s Universal Periodic Review — which all 193 member states must undergo every 4.5 years — which she said revealed gaps between the reports governments submitted and the actual human rights situations within their jurisdictions.
Kenneth Deer, member of the Mohawk Nation of Kahnawà:ke and longtime international Indigenous advocate, echoed that point. “The government never speaks ill about itself,” he said. “You can’t let government speak for us.”
But the U.N.’s accreditation and recognition process can hinder progress toward collectively tackling the challenges impacting Indigenous peoples, he noted. “For us, as a representative institution, there isn’t actually any clear path to accreditate ourselves — and that leads to them trying to improvise, and try to find ways how we can accreditate ourselves.”
Read Next
Indigenous cultural practices are a climate solution, report finds
The National Congress of American Indians also called for increased Indigenous participation at the international level. “Recognition and participation of Indigenous peoples must accommodate the numerous ways we identify, organize, and represent ourselves,” President Mark Macarro said. “It is essential that we participate directly in matters of global concern that affect our environment, health, human rights, and unique rights as Indigenous peoples.”
Deer said he’s seen many caucuses of Indigenous delegates at the U.N. engage in important collaborations. But he wishes they could have a higher profile. “Indigenous peoples want to have a voice,” he said. “They want to be heard.”
A diversity of voices at the U.N.’s highest levels, he believes, would improve the U.N. processes and system to the benefit of all countries. “What we need is the states, now, to agree to a process that was run by Indigenous people,” he said.
Throughout the week, EMRIP delegates identified a host of other barriers to participation. For example, communications technology within remote communities presents challenges to joining global deliberations. Additionally, there are significant financial barriers for under-resourced communities when U.N. forums are held far from their homelands.
The U.N. Voluntary Fund for Indigenous Peoples, which helps finance travel to U.N. forums, is also experiencing budget shortfalls, inhibiting many delegates’ ability to attend. It is seen as an important way to increase participation among delegates from areas where governments do not recognize the Indigenous peoples within their borders. Sheryl Lightfoot, EMRIP’s North America region member, is an Anishinaabe expert in Indigenous rights, global politics, and public policy.
She said states are not involved in how EMRIP officially recognizes Indigenous peoples. “Worldwide, there’s a need — and this is especially true across Africa and Asia — of Indigenous peoples seeking just mere recognition of their existence from their governments,” she said. “States seem to be more resistant now than they were 10 years ago to recognize that peoples are Indigenous peoples and have those rights attached to them.”
Despite Hamilton’s doubts about how much change has been achieved internationally, hearing her peers from other Indigenous nations testify about how they’ve persevered inspired her and restored her hope. “I feel like there’s a real sense of … urgency and concern,” she said. “We don’t want our grandchildren’s grandchildren to have to keep coming here and doing this stuff.”
This story was originally published by Grist with the headline As climate change threatens their lands, Indigenous nations demand more power at the UN on Jul 21, 2026.
From Grist via This RSS Feed.
cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/66266
Palestinian officials said an Israel Defense Forces drone strike burned a family of six alive in their Gaza City home on Tuesday, a bombing that followed the massacre of another Palestinian family over the weekend and other attacks—including one on a hospital—as the Israeli genocide continues amid a nominal ceasefire.
The Palestinian Red Crescent Society said that rescue workers initially recovered the charred bodies of a mother, later identified as Salsabeel el-Masri, and her four children from their home in the Sabra neighborhood of Gaza City. Husband and father Firas el-Masri was later confirmed killed in the same strike.
The couple's three daughters and son—Faryal, Salma, Amira, and Naeem—ranged in age from 6 to 13.
(Photo by el-Masri family/X)
At least some members of the family—who were sleeping when their home was bombed—were apparently not killed by the blast.
"They were all burned so much that our crews couldn't reach them," said Palestinian Civil Defense spokesperson Mahmoud Basal. "They were screaming and begging us to get them before they were martyred, but all attempts failed."
Video recordings of the airstrike's aftermath show first responders desperately trying to extinguish the blaze caused by the attack and retrieving the burnt victims' bodies.
Ahmed el-Masri told the Emirati newspaper The National that his brother's "entire family was wiped out from the civil registry."
"Martyred child Ameera Al-Masri, a charred corpse"
Today, from Gaza City, Israel has wiped out the Al-Masri family in a targeted airstrike on their flat. pic.twitter.com/XmLL3Rde0M
— Abubaker Abed (@AbubakerAbedW) July 21, 2026The el-Masri family is one of approximately 2,700 erased from the registry since Israel launched its war on Gaza in retaliation for the Hamas-led attack of October 7, 2023, according to an Al Jazeera analysis published in January.
The Israel Defense Forces confirmed the bombing, claiming the strike was targeting a Hamas member. The IDF dramatically loosened its rules of engagement following the October 7 attack, effectively allowing an unlimited number of civilians to be killed when targeting a single Hamas member, no matter how low-ranking.
Reuters reported at least six more Palestinians were killed by Israeli strikes later on Tuesday, including one targeting a vehicle in the central Gaza Strip.
On Monday, an IDF missile attack on the al-Yemen al-Saeed Hospital in northern Gaza's Jabalia refugee camp killed at least two people and wounded 16 others, including women and children.
“The children were having fun and playing football, and suddenly they started screaming,” eyewitness Youssef Akasha told Drop Site News contributor Mohamed Ahmed. “We found many children lying on the ground, women screaming, and young men running to rescue the wounded."
Graphic video footage shows children, including infants, being treated for shrapnel embedded in their bodies.
Israel's attack on the el-Masri family followed a Saturday IDF airstrike on the home of the Nasman family in the al-Nasser neighborhood of Gaza City that killed five people. The Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported that Adham Nasman, 42; his wife, Marwa, 40; and three of their children—Arwa, 8, Ibrahim, 16, and Yahya, 18—were killed, and that Adham was apparently the intended target.
The couple's 13-year-old son, also named Adham, was not home at the time of the strike. Video footage published by photojournalist Nahed Hajjaj shows the grieving boy beside the bodies of his slain family.
Ayham Nasman, the sole survivor of his immediate family, returned to find his father, mother, and three siblings killed after an Israeli strike hit their residential apartment in Gaza's Al-Nasr neighborhood.
Ayham survived because he was not inside the apartment when it was… pic.twitter.com/86Co3JlI4r
— Middle East Eye (@MiddleEastEye) July 19, 2026In another massacre on Saturday, an Israeli drone bombed a funeral in the Nuseirat refugee camp for a man who was allegedly a member of Palestinian Islamic Jihad, who had been killed earlier the same day in another IDF strike. Eight people were killed and 20 others wounded in the second attack, according to Palestinian, Israeli, and international media reports.
Israel's US-backed assault on Gaza has left more than 250,000 Palestinians dead, maimed, or missing since October 2023 and around 2 million people forcibly displaced, starved, or sickened. Over 21,500 children—1,022 of them babies—are among the more than 73,000 Palestinians killed by Israeli forces during the war that scholars, jurists, human rights groups, a panel of United Nations experts, and others say is a genocide.
Israel is facing a genocide case filed by South Africa at the International Court of Justice and supported by nearly 20 nations, while Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant—his former defense minister who ordered the "complete siege" on Gaza that fueled famine and disease—are wanted by the International Criminal Court for alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes, including murder and forced starvation.
The IDF's continued attacks come despite a US-backed ceasefire that went into effect last October. Since then, more than 1,160 Palestinians—most of them civilians—have been killed and over 3,750 others wounded by Israeli forces, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.
“Nine months after the announcement of a ceasefire, still nowhere is safe for Palestinians in Gaza,” UN human rights spokesperson Thameen Al-Kheetan told reporters in Geneva on Tuesday. "The killing of civilians in these attacks raises concerns of continuing violations of international humanitarian law, war crimes and other possible atrocity crimes in Gaza. Under international law, deliberately attacking civilians is a war crime."
Akasha, who witnessed the Jabalia hospital bombing, told Drop Site News, “I don’t feel like there is a ceasefire at all."
From Common Dreams via This RSS Feed.
cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/65003
Anti-fossil fuel campaigners on Wednesday emphasized that Michigan state regulators had issued key permits for the Enbridge Line 5 tunnel in the Straits of Mackinac on the same day that "wildfire smoke from climate change blotted out the Mackinac Bridge from view" and as the US and other countries faced extreme heatwaves.
Despite the mounting evidence that—as energy and climate experts have long warned—continued fossil fuel extraction is heating the planet and causing dangerous extreme weather, Michigan's Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy handed down a permit Wednesday to allow the Canadian company Enbridge to construct a tunnel that EGLE officials acknowledged will likely have "significant impacts" on threatened or endangered species and Indigenous burial ground in the Straits.
“The magnitude of impacts to recognized historic and cultural values of this proposed project exceeds that of any other that EGLE has reviewed,” said EGLE in its statement on the permits.
Enbridge has sought to build a tunnel around its Line 5 pipeline in the Straits for years, following a massive oil spill from its Line 6B pipeline in the Kalamazoo River. Line 5 has been struck by ships' anchors numerous times, heightening concerns.
EGLE said in its explanation that the oil spill risk was found to be "unacceptable" and that the need for the tunnel outweighed its risks.
But opponents who have argued that Line 5 should be permanently shut down, including the Bay Mills Indian Community, condemned the agency for "rewarding" Enbridge with new permits even after its fossil fuel infrastructure has caused hazardous oil spills.
“Enbridge has spilled oil, committed safety violations, trespassed on lands, shattered ecosystems, pierced aquifers, violated our laws, and repeatedly shown contempt for tribal sovereignty," said Whitney Gravelle, president of the Bay Mills Indian Community. "They have left devastation in their wake, and now they’re being rewarded with responsibility over one of the most precious and sacred resources in our state. The Great Lakes are not safe in their hands. This decision is a deep betrayal of our Great Lake State, and we will confront it immediately, fiercely, and without hesitation.”
The state Department of Natural Resources also issued a permit following EGLE's decision, granting permission for the tunnel despite its potential impact on rare plants and animal habitats.
According to Michigan Bridge, about 1.53 acres of wetlands in Mackinac County would be impacted by the tunnel project, as well as 0.17 acres of Lake Michigan bottomlands in Emmet County, where Enbridge is expected to build a water intake structure.
The environmental legal organization Earthjustice, which has helped represent the Bay Mills Indian Community in its legal challenges against Enbridge, said that with the permits, the company will "transform the Straits of Mackinac into an industrial construction zone for at least six years, destroying views, displacing wildlife, and interrupting tourism dollars."
“Our environmental laws, the looming climate crisis, and simple common sense tells us that an oil pipeline doesn’t belong in the Great Lakes,” said Earthjustice managing attorney Debbie Chizewer. “Today’s decision is a setback, but we’re not giving up. A future without oil in the Great Lakes is still possible.”
EGLE is also expected to rule by September 30 on an Enbridge request to discharge millions of gallons of treated wastewater per day into Lake Michigan while it is constructing the tunnel, and the Michigan Supreme Court is considering a lawsuit brought by four Tribal Nations, including Bay Mills, alleging that the Michigan Public Service Commission improperly issued a key tunnel permit in 2023.
The state is also fighting Enbridge over Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer's 2020 order to shut down Line 5 over oil spill concerns. She had campaigned in 2018 on a promise to shut down the pipeline. A federal judge ruled last year that the state had no authority to terminate the use of the pipeline, and the state appealed that ruling.
Advocates expressed anger on Wednesday at Whitmer as her government issued the permits.
“It’s incredibly disappointing that a governor who ran on a commitment to the climate and protecting the Great Lakes has now decided to instead endorse a Canadian industrial tunnel project that still threatens the Great Lakes and will contribute fossil fuels to the climate,” David Holtz, coalition coordinator for the anti-Line 5 group Oil & Water Don’t Mix, told Bridge Michigan.
David Gover, managing attorney for the Native American Rights Fund, said that "the Straits of Mackinac are not a piece of Enbridge oil infrastructure; they are the heart of creation for Anishinaabe people and a vital source of life for all who depend on the Great Lakes."
“We will pursue every legal avenue," Gover said, "to defend treaty rights, protect drinking water, and preserve tribal lifeways from another Enbridge disaster.”
From Common Dreams via This RSS Feed.
cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/64898
The family of Palestinian political leader Marwan Barghouti stated on Monday, July 13, that he was shot in the leg with rubber bullets by Israeli prison guards. Barghouti’s wife, Fadwa, said in a post she wrote on Facebook, that the attack “caused him to bleed and suffer a painful injury.”
According to Fadwa, the violent act coincided with a report by the Israel Prison Service (IPS), which incited violence against her husband.
The report alleged that Barghouti continues to declare his support for armed resistance, despite being incommunicado and placed in solitary confinement for the last few years.
It also listed a number of accusations against the veteran Palestinian leader, including disseminating rhetoric that encourages violent struggle, working to unite Fatah and Hamas under a joint leadership, seeking to exert influence over the Israeli political arena through Arab members of the Israeli parliament (known as the Knesset), and inciting terrorism.
The language of the report reveals an attempt to demonize Barghouti by claiming that he certain acts, while cultivating “a moderate international image” and “consolidating his standing as a leading Palestinian Arab figure.”
Incitement fails to erase Barghouti’s influence
Barghouti’s wife argued that the Israeli report was issued “at a time when the international campaign “Free Marwan, Free Palestine” continues to expand, attracting prominent global figures and leaders and receiving significant official and public support around the world.”
“What the occupation has failed to understand throughout the past quarter century – and still fails to understand today – is that Marwan has never wavered in his conviction that freedom is a fundamental right and that occupation is destined to end,” Fadwa affirmed.
“He has rejected both surrender and despair, believing that resisting occupation while striving for a just peace that brings it to an end is both a national and a moral responsibility. He believes in the unity of the Palestinian people and their land. Marwan’s foremost concern has always been to spare every Palestinian child the suffering of occupation and the devastation of war, and his enduring goal has been to secure a life of freedom and dignity for his people,” she continued.
Fadwa further asserted that although the report wanted to condemn her spouse, it acknowledged the extent of his “status, influence, symbolism, and the global campaign demanding his freedom.”
“As for incitement and aggression, they will not change this fact, nor will they take Marwan away from the conscience of his people or from the conscience of the free people of the world, nor will they take away from Marwan his love for his homeland, his love for his people, and his concern for them,” she emphasized.
It is worth noting that Marwan Barghouti secured an overwhelming victory with the highest number of votes in Fatah central committee elections in May 2026, despite being imprisoned in Israeli jails since 2002.
This in turn, denotes that he remains a highly popular figure among the Palestinian grassroots, given that Fatah is the largest national political faction within the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO).
Zoe. , July 15, 2026
From BT News via This RSS Feed.
cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/63860
This story was originally published by Source New Mexico.
Joshua Bowling
Source New MexicoThe New Mexico Department of Justice recently published the results of a yearslong investigation into Gallup-McKinley County Schools and found that the district disproportionately disciplines Native American and Hispanic students, causing them to miss exponentially more instructional time than other students across the state.
Attorney General Raúl Torrez’s report, published Thursday, July 2, found that the district’s students lose “at least twice as many” instructional days as those in other New Mexico districts to out-of-school suspensions. It’s even higher for Native American and Hispanic students, who lose “roughly eight to 10 times” and three to four times as many school days as their white peers, according to the report.
Teachers in the district impose harsher penalties on Native and Hispanic students than on white students, the report says.
Torrez’s office launched this investigation in 2023 following news reports that the district drove New Mexico’s outsized rates of expelling Native students.
In the agency’s new report, titled “Forced Out: How Exclusionary and Disparate Disciplinary Practices at Gallup-McKinley County Schools Rob Students of Instructional Time,” NMDOJ officials wrote that the district “appears to have made progress” in some areas, including reducing its number of expulsions and referrals to law enforcement agencies.
The Navajo Nation Human Rights Commission in March also issued a report that called on district leaders to adopt a new, culturally appropriate disciplinary system in light of these longstanding allegations.
A district spokesperson in a statement to Source NM wrote that under Superintendent Jvanna Hanks’ leadership, district leaders created an Equity Council, which will include positions “designated for members of the Native American community.”
“Gallup-McKinley County Schools is aware of and has been reviewing the New Mexico Department of Justice report and appreciates NMDOJ’s work to help ensure all students are treated fairly, supported appropriately and able to remain engaged in learning,” the statement said.
Broadly, the issue of lost instructional time has been a focus for state lawmakers in recent months. A June Legislative Finance Committee report found that a $2.6 billion investment aimed in large part at complying with the state’s landmark Yazzie/Martinez educational equity lawsuit had done little to rectify the issue of kids missing out on learning time.
Students across the state are required to annually attend a minimum of 1,140 instruction hours. The average absentee student in New Mexico missed about 215 hours in the 2024-25 school year — nearly one-fifth of the total required learning time, according to that report.
However, Kevin Mitchell, president of the Gallup-McKinley County Schools Board of Education, pushed back on the NMDOJ findings. Native American students will comprise the majority of the district’s disciplinary actions because the majority of its students are Native, he said.
The sprawling district sits in the Four Corners region and includes portions of the Navajo Nation. In fact, nearly 54 percent of Gallup’s population is Indigenous, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s latest data.
“It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out we’re talking about 89% Native American population throughout the whole district…it could be a little higher,” Mitchell told Source NM. “‘You guys are disciplining Native Americans more than other students.’ Well, of course — it’s all we have.”
Mitchell added that many of his district’s schools serve small, rural communities, meaning a handful of chronic offenders in the classroom can skew overall disciplinary rates.
In a follow-up statement to Source NM, Mitchell wrote that he and his elected colleagues on the Board of Education have “consistently fought for quality education for all students,” citing the new Equity Council and the re-establishment of an Indian Education Committee.
“This work does not end with one report or meeting,” Mitchell wrote.
The post New Mexico Attorney General investigation finds Gallup schools more severely discipline Native, Hispanic students appeared first on ICT.
From ICT via This RSS Feed.
Indigenous
Welcome to c/indigenous, a socialist decolonial community for news and discussion concerning Indigenous peoples.
Please read the Hexbear Code of Conduct and remember...we're all comrades here.
Post memes, art, articles, questions, anything you'd like as long as it's about Indigenous peoples.
Chunka Luta Network, CLN linktree
Support the EZLN in Chiapas 🐌☕ Zapatista Coffee