#indigenous peoples institutions

[indigenouspeopleday]

4th Meeting, Second Intersessional Meeting on the Participation of Indigenous Peoples - UN Human Rights Council.

This intersessional meeting is the second of two mandated under paragraph 16 of resolution 54/12, in which the Council decided to "continue to discuss and develop further steps and measures necessary to enable and to facilitate the participation of Indigenous Peoples' representatives and institutions duly established by themselves in the work of the Human Rights Council." The first intersessional meeting was held on 18 and 19 July 2024.

Watch the 4th Meeting, Second Intersessional Meeting on the Participation of Indigenous Peoples - UN Human Rights Council!

[specialagentartemis]

story about a heist team doing a heist of colonial museums and returning unethically stolen sacred objects and objects of cultural patrimony to their original communities

but the story isn’t about them

the story is a legal thriller about the repatriation coordinator and the pro bono lawyer who get frantically called in by that community when an artifact goes missing from a museum and shows up unexpectedly at their doorstep and now they are in a shit ton of (potentially international) legal trouble because the heist team did not take the legal ramifications into account, and no one else believes them that they didn’t steal it, and The Law is saying they are legally obligated to return it to the museum and are also probably going to go to prison for this, and activists are protesting, and it’s rocking the repatriation world, and it’s turning into a huge Thing

[naivety]

So long as the political and economic system remains intact, voter enfranchisement, though perhaps resisted by overt white supremacists, is still welcomed so long as nothing about the overall political arrangement fundamentally changes. The facade of political equality can occur under violent occupation, but liberation cannot be found in the occupier’s ballot box. In the context of settler colonialism voting is the “civic duty” of maintaining our own oppression. It is intrinsically bound to a strategy of extinguishing our cultural identities and autonomy.

[...]

Since we cannot expect those selected to rule in this system to make decisions that benefit our lands and peoples, we have to do it ourselves. Direct action, or the unmediated expression of individual or collective desire, has always been the most effective means by which we change the conditions of our communities. What do we get out of voting that we cannot directly provide for ourselves and our people? What ways can we organize and make decisions that are in harmony with our diverse lifeways? What ways can the immense amount of material resources and energy focused on persuading people to vote be redirected into services and support that we actually need? What ways can we direct our energy, individually and collectively, into efforts that have immediate impact in our lives and the lives of those around us? This is not only a moral but a practical position and so we embrace our contradictions. We’re not rallying for a perfect prescription for “decolonization” or a multitude of Indigenous Nationalisms, but for a great undoing of the settler colonial project that comprises the United States of America so that we may restore healthy and just relations with Mother Earth and all her beings. Our tendency is towards autonomous anti-colonial struggles that intervene and attack the critical infrastructure that the U.S. and its institutions rest on. Interestingly enough, these are the areas of our homelands under greatest threat by resource colonialism. This is where the system is most prone to rupture, it’s the fragility of colonial power. Our enemies are only as powerful as the infrastructure that sustains them. The brutal result of forced assimilation is that we know our enemies better than they know themselves. What strategies and actions can we devise to make it impossible for this system to govern on stolen land? We aren’t advocating for a state-based solution, redwashed European politic, or some other colonial fantasy of “utopia.” In our rejection of the abstraction of settler colonialism, we don’t aim to seize colonial state power but to abolish it. We seek nothing but total liberation.

Voting Is Not Harm Reduction - An Indigenous Perspective

[aroaessidhe]

2023 reads // twitter thread

To Shape A Dragon’s Breath

YA fantasy

a young Indigenous girl finds & bonds with a dragon hatchling - the first time in many generations for her people - and is required to go to the coloniser’s dragon academy in their mainland city, to learn how to raise her dragon and the science of its magic

historical inspired setting on the cusp of industrial revolution with steampunk vibes

bi polyamorous MC, Black lesbian SC, nonverbal autistic SC

[queering-ecology]

Mitákuye Oyás’iŋ. Tapestry Institute. https://tapestryinstitute.org/mitakuye-oyasin/. Referencing Sicungu Lakota Elder Albert White Hat.

Their website defines itself thusly: Tapestry Institute weaves Indigenous Knowledge to life through activities and publications that use Indigenous ways of knowing, learning about, and responding to the natural world. The particular post I am referencing is about the Lakota phrase ‘Mitakuye Oyasin’ (also spelled as Mitákuye Oyás’iŋ, mitákuye oyásʾį). “The Lakota phrase Mitákuye Oyás’iŋ describes Reality by addressing it as “All My Relations.” All humans, all animals, all plants, all the waters, the soil, the stones, the mountains, the grasslands, the winds, the clouds and storms, the sun and moon, stars and planets are our relations and are relations to one another. We are connected to each other in multiple and vital ways. When one is in pain, all are harmed. When there is justice for one, there is more justice for all.” 

This quote is important as it confirms the idea that ‘Mitakyue Oyasin’ is more than merely a meaningful phrase, but is a way of describing Reality. It also helps describe the sheer scope of what the words mean. What is also important to recognize is the belief in pain and justice also being interconnected as this can be connected to feminist ideas expressed within much queer ecology. But, the post also emphasizes that even though ‘All our Relations’ is the most common translation of the words, “the phrase actually bears within it rich layers of additional meaning that cannot be easily translated into English. It’s important to point this out because words and ideas, stories and rituals, are bound together into a single reality that must be respected, not misappropriated”. 

Finally, the video interview with Albert White Hat adds even more complexity: the wisdom in these words are not “merely a collection of historical ideas or words” but “ a system of powerful knowledge applicable to the lives and struggles of people right now”. This ultimately supports my thesis; that indigenous worldviews (in this case, Mitakuye Oyasin) can be in symbiosis/symbiopoesis with queer ecology--the concept is a tool (a much more besides) that can be applied to the struggle we face in healing our planet.

-- Symbiosis is any type of a close and long-term biological interaction between two biological organisms of different species

-- ‘Symbiopoesis’ or “how organisms can be intimately involved in each other’s development” (squid and light emitting bacteria, bees and pollination, acacia trees and ants, wasps and figs). (Rahder)

[leaf-green-spring]

Religious/spiritual bipoc youth who have to grapple with generational trauma, religious guilt, and on top of that their own peers giving them a hard time for being religious/spiritual because it makes them "the enemy" or whatever... yea

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

[The origin of the Belle Park totem pole in Kingston, Ontario, at least in part. Queen Elizabeth was visiting for the Kingston tercentenary, and this totem pole was one of a number made at that time by Indigenous inmates at Collin's Bay Penitentiary and Joyceville Institution, two medium security federal prisons in Kingston. 

Who the carvers were, the inception of the project, whose idea was it, how it fits into the broader activities of the Native Brotherhood at Joyceville, all of that is still a little hazy to me - but the hard work of local researchers has resulted in a stupendous resource available here online: https://belleparkproject.com/the-place/totem-pole. It answers a lot of my questions and features the words of many of the carvers - a useful corrective to the Whig's slant here.

The Advance - the inmate newspaper at Joyceville - has a notice in June indicating OECA Channel 19 interviewed the totem pole carvers on May 18, for broadcast July 1 & 2 in Toronto. The Advance praises the tercentenary project as a "significant symbol of the role Native People have played in the evolvement of the Canadian people." Haven't read earlier issues yet to get a better feel. 

In terms of outside newspaper coverage, there is this dramatic image from April 17 crediting MP Flora MacDonald for getting the wood shipping from BC. Which is all about how great the local Conservative MP is, not the carvers.

In terms of the broader context, Seth Adema's article “Native Brotherhoods and Decolonization in Ontario's Federal Prisons' is pretty crucial, and available for free online if you search. The totem pole is still on the Belle Park golf course, which has become during the pandemic a tent encampment for Kingston’s growing unhoused population. The city keeps trying to evict them all - presumably to re-open the golf course - while local solidarity activists try and stop it.  Belle Island, where the park is partly located, is a site with great significance to the local First Nations, but was of course a garbage dump at one point because this is Canada...]

/// Captions for top images: "Chips are flying," Kingston Whig-Standard. June 8, 1973. Page 4. ---- Indian inmates at Joyceville Institution are busy these days in an effort to finish a giant totem pole before the Queen's visit on June 27. When finished, the carved pole will be given to the city and placed at the new municipal golf course where the Queen and Prince Philip will be staying in their private railway car. 

(Photo by William O'Neill)

"To overlook the municipal golf course," Kingston Whig-Standard. June 8, 1973. Page 4. ---- When completed and presented to Kingston, the totem pole on the left will be set up by the parks and recreation department on the spot marked with an X in the above picture. The Chalet willhouse the dressing rooms and office building for the city's new municipal golf course, built over at former dump site.

(Photo by Bill Baird)

Captions for middle image: "Putting some art into it," Kingston Whig-Standard. April 17, 1973. Page 1. === Turning a four-ton 40-foot log into a work of art in a monumental task. However working on the adage that a journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step Flora MacDonald MP for Kingston and the Islands helps Indian inmates at Joyceville Institution with their first cut. The Indians as a Tercentenary project have agreed to carve a totem pole for Kingston. The giant log was shipped by CNR to the institution from British Columbia free of charge, through the efforts of Miss MacDonald and CNR president MacMillan.

[enbycrip]

Fucking hell.

An entire indigenous community is having to fight for a search in landfill for the bodies of missing women, despite one *already being found*.

[natandacat]

They're uncovering unmarked indigenous graves on my campus and in communication they call it "archeological work" and "activities". You literally have to read the whole email to understand they're talking about genocidal graves.

[treety-of-the-ents]

This is one of my big hang ups with getting help in the behavorial health field; there are mostly neurotypical people pathologizing traits like “caring strongly about social justice issues/ unfairness” and they still somehow spin it as a bad thing. Not trying to derail the cluster b discussion - my experience is mostly with ADHD/Autism/Depression/Anxiety/CPTSD, but I have been told I might have a personality disorder because of how disregulated I presented at the office where I was actively getting more Trauma TM. It is just so baffling how stigmatizing this is toward everyone with so called “abnormal” brains / behaviors. Countering ableism and behavorial health stigma isn’t just about destigmitizing the socially acceptable/ “nice” disorders, but also the ones that aren’t as understood / accepted by society at large - especially when so much of the fear mongering comes from within the field itself.

I think people would armchair diagnose bad people with cluster B disorders much less if psychiatric disorders hadn't all been given names by ableists who of course picked the traits most unberarable to "sane" people to name them rather than, you know, the ways it affects the people that have them. It's like, when doctors are all "this disorder gives you extremely low self esteem. and it's called the Selfish Fucking Asshole Disorder" or "this disorder makes you want to die so bad. and it's called the Hysteric Bitch Disorder" or "this disorder disconnects you from your peers. and it's called the Insane Evil Cunt Disorder" and so on and so forth, so of course you have people going "oh, this person is a selfish fucking asshole, they MUST have Selfish Fucking Asshole Disorder! this further proves that all people with this disorder are like that in the first place!" Do You See It

[indigenouspeopleday]

3rd Meeting, Second Intersessional Meeting on the Participation of Indigenous Peoples - Human Rights Council.

This intersessional meeting is the second of two mandated under paragraph 16 of resolution 54/12, in which the Council decided to "continue to discuss and develop further steps and measures necessary to enable and to facilitate the participation of Indigenous Peoples' representatives and institutions duly established by themselves in the work of the Human Rights Council." The first intersessional meeting was held on 18 and 19 July 2024

Watch the 3rd Meeting, Second Intersessional Meeting on the Participation of Indigenous Peoples - Human Rights Council!

[prairietrashdotcom]

lord give me strength not to type a certain folk singer-songwriter former sesame street castmember and certified grade A premium Liar's name into the search bar on this website.

[quotesfrommyreading]

IN JULY 1980, just outside Bakersfield, California, the body of a woman who had been stabbed 27 times was found dumped in an almond orchard. She carried no identification, and Kern County detectives could not match her fingerprints with anyone, though they thought she might be Native American. The autopsy showed she had previously given birth and that she’d been sexually assaulted before her death. She had two tattoos: a rose surrounded by the words “Mother I love you,” and a heart with the words “Seattle” and “Shirley.” This particular “Jane Doe” was part of a horrific pattern: Throughout North America, Indigenous women, girls, and two-spirit, trans and queer people are being murdered and disappearing altogether. According to a 2016 study funded by the National Institute of Justice, four in five American Indian and Alaska Native women in the U.S. have experienced violence. In Canada, Indigenous women and girls are 12 times more likely to experience violence than non-Indigenous women.

Canada held a three-year federally mandated investigation, the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (MMIWG). The final report, from 2019, acknowledged that “there is not an empirically reliable estimate of the number of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls in Canada” but concluded that it constituted a “genocide”. Advocates estimate that the number of cases is on the order of 4,000; meanwhile, a count in 2014 by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) — one of Canada’s largest policing agencies — tallied only 1,181 cases during a 32-year span.

Even with the RCMP’s lower estimate, Indigenous people account for 25% of Canada’s homicide victims between 2015-2020, despite comprising only about 5% of the country’s population. These statistics, already a decade old, appear to be the most recent of their kind reported by RCMP.

The National Inquiry was clear about the root causes of the epidemic: colonial structures, including the Indian Act; the removal of Indigenous children from their homes; forced attendance at residential schools and breaches of Indigenous rights, all of which directly resulted in increased rates of violence, death and suicide in Indigenous communities.

Of the 1,181 cases that the RCMP acknowledged, 225 remained unsolved as of 2013. For family members, the response is slow and disappointing. In Canada, 91% of homicides involving non-Indigenous women are likely to be solved, compared to just 77% for Indigenous women. The crisis is similar in the U.S. According to the FBI’s National Crime Information Center, more than 5,700 American Indian and Alaska Native women and girls were reported missing in 2016, and advocates believe the number could be even higher, given that authorities sometimes think victims are Latina or white.

A 2008 study funded by the U.S. Department of Justice found that women on some reservations are killed at a rate more than 10 times the national average. The U.S Department of the Interior told HCN that they did not have any additional information about the percentage of cases solved relating to Indigenous women and girls.

In response to families’ demand for justice and attention to the crisis, Canada and the U.S. have developed initiatives both within and across their own borders. In the U.S. in 2021, Interior Secretary Deb Haaland (Laguna Pueblo) announced the creation of the Missing and Murdered Unit (MMU) inside the Bureau of Indian Affairs Office of Justice Services to address MMIWG cases and strengthen law enforcement’s resources. According to the Department of the Interior, the initiative’s funding level has grown from $5.5 million to $16.5 million over fiscal year 2020 through 2022. The fiscal year 2023 Omnibus Appropriations bill maintained Bureau of Indian Affairs MMIP funding at $16.5 million.

In Canada, the response to MMIWG cases has been fragmented. The Tyee reported in 2021 that the RCMP, Canada’s national police force, lacked a coordinated strategy, while the regular police force does not separately track MMIWG cases. A few months later, Canada launched a national action plan to address MMIWG cases.

Throughout North America, families have waited decades for information. “Every family that we heard from was waiting, waiting for an answer,” said Marion Buller, who is Cree and a member of Mistawasis First Nation as well as the chief commissioner of Canada's National Inquiry. “They were prepared for bad news and good news.

“A loved one was murdered or went missing 20, 30 or 40 years ago, and they were still waiting for something,” she continued. “They have not given up hope.”

According to Buller, people are not generally concerned with issues of privacy when they have been waiting so long; at this point, they're simply desperate to find their loved ones. “Some families would very willingly provide samples of their own DNA if that would somehow identify a lost loved one’s remains or provide a lead to locating their lost loved one,” Buller said, adding that she had heard from families who had made this offer to law enforcement and been turned down.

  —  New DNA technique could bring closure for families of missing and murdered Indigenous people

[bywandandsword]

The idea that people are separate from the Earth has it's roots in colonialism, colonial exploitation, and the Enlightenment. Western science originated in this period and, because nothing exists in a vacuum, was influenced by the ideas of racial/cultural superiority, the idea that the land and those that lived on it were an extractive resource, and the idea that Western, mostly upper-class society were the default and superior, and therefore above the resources (land/people/animals/ect.) they sought to exploit. All these became justifications of colonial power and blended into early western science's development, and even now, there in an insistence in science, especially the hard sciences, that the researcher is an unbiased force, when in reality, everything from what is studied, the way a study is conducted, to the conclusions the researcher draws are all influenced by the culture the researcher lives in.

The persistent idea that any part of this country was uninhabited or had an unmanaged landscape is directly a result of colonial powers trying to strip the legitimacy of indigenous peoples from their sovereignty and open that land up to colonial settlement and/or resource exploitation. Most of the National Parks were formed in this way. But the western mindset of nature and the land being separate is at the basis of a lot of how western environmental movements operate, which then immediately comes into contention with indigenous communities who point out that that has never been the case and who are trying to reassert their land and resource rights.

If you want to read more, "As Long as Grass Grows" by Dina Gilio-Whitaker is a really accessible and in depth look at a lot of this

[weepingfireflies]

People & countries mentioned in the thread:

DR Congo - M23, Cobalt

Darfur, Sudan - International Criminal Court, CNN, BBC (Overview); Twitter Explanation on Sudan

Tigray - Human Rights Watch (Ethnic Cleansing Report)

the Sámi people - IWGIA, Euronews

Hawai'i - IWGIA

Syria - Amnesty International

Kashmir- Amnesty Summary (PDF), Wikipedia (Jammu and Kashmir), Human Rights Watch (2022)

Iran - Human Rights Watch, Morality Police (Mahsa/Jina Amini - Al Jazeera, Wikipedia)

Uyghurs - Uyghur Human Rights Project (UHRP) Q&A, Wikipedia, Al Jazeera, UN Report

Tibetans - SaveTibet.org, United Nations

Yazidi people - Wikipedia, United Nations

West Papua - Free West Papua, Genocide Watch

Yemen - Human Rights Watch (Saudi border guards kill migrants), Carrd

Sri Lanka (Tamils) - Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch

Afghans in Pakistan - Al Jazeera, NPR

Ongoing Edits: more from the notes / me

Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh/Azerbaijan (Artsakh) - Global Conflict Tracker ("Nagorno-Karabakh Conflict"), Council on Foreign Relations, Human Rights Watch (Azerbaijan overview), Armenian Food Bank

Baháʼís in Iran - Bahá'í International Community, Amnesty, Wikipedia, Minority Rights Group International

Kafala System in the Middle East - Council on Foreign Relations, Migrant Rights

Rohingya - Human Rights Watch, UNHCR, Al Jazeera, UNICEF

Montagnards (Vietnam Highlands) - World Without Genocide, Montagnard Human Rights Organization (MHRO), VOA News

Ukraine - Human Rights Watch (April 2022), Support Ukraine Now (SUN), Ukraine Website, Schools & Education (HRW), Dnieper River advancement (Nov. 15, 2023 - Ap News)

Reblogs with Links / From Others

Indigenous Ppl of Canada, Cambodia, Mexico, Colombia

Libya

Armenia Reblog 1, Armenia Reblog 2

Armenia, Ukraine, Central African Republic, Indigenous Americans, Black ppl (US)

Rohingya (Myanmar)

More Hawai'i Links from @sageisnazty - Ka Lahui Hawaii, Nation of Hawai'i on Soverignty, Rejected Apology Resolution

From @rodeodeparis: Assyrian Policy Institute, Free Yezidi

From @is-this-a-cool-url: North American Manipur Tribal Association (NAMTA)

From @dougielombax & compiled by @azhdakha: Assyrians & Yazidis

West Sahara conflict

Last Updated: Feb. 19th, 2024 (If I missed smth before this, feel free to @ me to add it)

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

“Eight Indian Pupils Found After Quest,” Toronto Globe. October 26, 1932. Page 2. ---- Brantford, Oct. 25. - After wandering about the Six Nations Reserve, near here, since last night, four girls and four boys, ranging in ages from 14 to 15, returned back tonight to the Indian Institute from which they were missing.

Rev. H. W. Snell, in charge of the Institute, reported last night that seven girls and four boys, all dressed in the institute’s uniform, were missing. Search parties were organized to hunt for them, but during last night and today eight of the runways had either been found or had returned of their own accord.

Mr. Snell stated tonight that he knew where the three girls who are still missing could be located.

[AL: Make no mistake, though the story is trying to avoid this, but these young men and women were running away - escaping - from a residential school, a genocidal part of the Canadian settler state.]