#indigenous-peoples

[pencildragons]

bro i LOVE indigenous fusion music i love it when indigenous people take traditional practices and language and apply them in new cool ways i love the slow decay and decolonisation of the modern music industry

[autisticexpression2]

Seeing a lot of posts about the Palestinian flag, and it got me thinking about indigenous flags around the world.

Māori:

Kalaallit Nunaat:

Haudenosaunee

Nunatsiavut:

Australian Aboriginal:

Torres Strait Islands:

Rapa Nui:

Kurdistan:

Sami:

Ainu:

Of course, these are just a handful. May they all reclaim their stolen lands.

[artfilmfan]

Lakota Nation vs. United States (Jesse Short Bull & Laura Tomaselli, 2022)

[reasonsforhope]

"In a historic “first-of-its-kind” agreement the government of British Colombia has acknowledged the aboriginal ownership of 200 islands off the west coast of Canada.

The owners are the Haida nation, and rather than the Canadian government giving something to a First Nation, the agreement admits that the “Xhaaidlagha Gwaayaai” or the “islands at the end of world,” always belonged to them, a subtle yet powerful difference in the wording of First Nations negotiating.

BC Premier David Eby called the treaty “long overdue” and once signed, will clear the way for half a million hectares (1.3 million acres) of land to be managed by the Haida.

Postal service, shipping lanes, school and community services, private property rights, and local government jurisdiction, will all be unaffected by the agreement, which will essentially outline that the Haida decide what to do with the 200 or so islands and islets.

“We could be facing each other in a courtroom, we could have been fighting each other for years and years, but we chose a different path,” said Minister of Indigenous Relations of BC, Murray Rankin at the signing ceremony, who added that it took creativity and courage to “create a better world for our children.”

Indeed, making the agreement outside the courts of the formal treaty process reflects a vastly different way of negotiating than has been the norm for Canada.

“This agreement won’t only raise all boats here on Haida Gwaii – increase opportunity and prosperity for the Haida people and for the whole community and for the whole province – but it will also be an example and another way for nations – not just in British Columbia, but right across Canada – to have their title recognized,” said Eby.

In other words, by deciding this outside court, Eby and the province of BC hope to set a new standard for how such land title agreements are struck."

-via Good News Network, April 18, 2024

[no-passaran]

Genocide experts warn that India is about to genocide the Shompen people

Who are the Shompen?

The Shompen are an indigenous culture that lives in the Great Nicobar Island, which is nowadays owned by India. The Shompen and their ancestors are believed to have been living in this island for around 10,000 years. Like other tribes in the nearby islands, the Shompen are isolated from the rest of the world, as they chose to be left alone, with the exception of a few members who occasionally take part in exchanges with foreigners and go on quarantine before returning to their tribe. There are between 100 and 400 Shompen people, who are hunter-gatherers and nomadic agricultors and rely on their island's rainforest for survival.

Why is there risk of genocide?

India has announced a huge construction mega-project that will completely change the Great Nicobar Island to turn it into "the Hong Kong of India".

Nowadays, the island has 8,500 inhabitants, and over 95% of its surface is made up of national parks, protected forests and tribal reserve areas. Much of the island is covered by the Great Nicobar Biosphere Reserve, described by UNESCO as covering “unique and threatened tropical evergreen forest ecosystems. It is home to very rich ecosystems, including 650 species of angiosperms, ferns, gymnosperms, and bryophytes, among others. In terms of fauna, there are over 1800 species, some of which are endemic to this area. It has one of the best-preserved tropical rain forests in the world.”

The Indian project aims to destroy this natural environment to create an international shipping terminal with the capacity to handle 14.2 million TEUs (unit of cargo capacity), an international airport that will handle a peak hour traffic of 4,000 passengers and that will be used as a joint civilian-military airport under the control of the Indian Navy, a gas and solar power plant, a military base, an industrial park, and townships aimed at bringing in tourism, including commercial, industrial and residential zones as well as other tourism-related activities.

This project means the destruction of the island's pristine rainforests, as it involves cutting down over 852,000 trees and endangers the local fauna such as leatherback turtles, saltwater crocodiles, Nicobar crab-eating macaque and migratory birds. The erosion resulting from deforestation will be huge in this highly-seismic area. Experts also warn about the effects that this project will have on local flora and fauna as a result of pollution from the terminal project, coastal surface runoff, ballasts from ships, physical collisions with ships, coastal construction, oil spills, etc.

The indigenous people are not only affected because their environment and food source will be destroyed. On top of this, the demographic change will be a catastrophe for them. After the creation of this project, the Great Nicobar Island -which now has 8,500 inhabitants- will receive a population of 650,000 settlers. Remember that the Shompen and Nicobarese people who live on this island are isolated, which means they do not have an immune system that can resist outsider illnesses. Academics believe they could die of disease if they come in contact with outsiders (think of the arrival of Europeans to the Americas after Christopher Columbus and the way that common European illnesses were lethal for indigenous Americans with no immunization against them).

And on top of all of this, the project might destroy the environment and the indigenous people just to turn out to be useless and sooner or later be abandoned. The naturalist Uday Mondal explains that “after all the destruction, the financial viability of the project remains questionable as all the construction material will have to be shipped to this remote island and it will have to compete with already well-established ports.” However, this project is important to India because they want to use the island as a military and commercial post to stop China's expansion in the region, since the Nicobar islands are located on one of the world's busiest sea routes.

Last year, 70 former government officials and ambassadors wrote to the Indian president saying the project would “virtually destroy the unique ecology of this island and the habitat of vulnerable tribal groups”. India's response has been to say that the indigenous tribes will be relocated "if needed", but that doesn't solve the problem. As a spokesperson for human rights group Survival International said: “The Shompen are nomadic and have clearly defined territories. Four of their semi-permanent settlements are set to be directly devastated by the project, along with their southern hunting and foraging territories. The Shompen will undoubtedly try to move away from the area destroyed, but there will be little space for them to go. To avoid a genocide, this deadly mega-project must be scrapped.”

On 7 February 2024, 39 scholars from 13 countries published an open letter to the Indian president warning that “If the project goes ahead, even in a limited form, we believe it will be a death sentence for the Shompen, tantamount to the international crime of genocide.”

How to help

The NGO Survival International has launched this campaign:

From this site, you just need to add your name and email and you will send an email to India's Tribal Affairs Minister and to the companies currently vying to build the first stage of the project.

Share it with your friends and acquittances and on social media.

Sources:

India’s plan for untouched Nicobar isles will be ‘death sentence’ for isolated tribe, 7 Feb 2024. The Guardian.

‘It will destroy them’: Indian mega-development could cause ‘genocide’ and ‘ecocide’, says charity, 8 Feb 2024. Geographical.

Genocide experts call on India's government to scrap the Great Nicobar mega-project, Feb 2024. Survival International.

The container terminal that could sink the Great Nicobar Island, 20 July 2022. Mongabay.

[Maps] Environmental path cleared for Great Nicobar mega project, 10 Oct 2022. Mongabay.

[loudmouthbrowngirl]

What is National Pride...In North America?

When it comes to “National Pride” in *the* most Western countries in the world, what exactly does that phrase mean? When I was sixteen I was sitting in a civics class and we were talking about national pride. I couldn’t explain at that tender age, why it was that I wasn’t “proud” to come from Canada, but I can now so I am going to. Canada is a place filled with rape abuse and trauma that…

[liberalsarecool]

Cristoforo Colombo was vile.

[titan-god-helios]

i love you black trans people. i love you asian trans people from all over asia (not just east asia). i love you hispanic trans people. i love you indigenous trans people. i love you poc trans people. you're doing great, i promise you, and i'm so fucking sorry the community erases you as much as it does.

[biophonies]

when I drew this comic 3 years ago I had NO idea how far it would reach. I'm happy to finally share a corrected version with proper abbreviations, and even MORE state names of indigenous origin ♥️

however, the goal of this comic was to inspire people to do your OWN research on indigenous history. To question everything we have been taught, and everything that has been pointedly left out. This erasure, this “forgetting”, of history is not just of the past… it is happening now. - Across so-called Canada, the US, and US-occupied islands, native women are victims of murder at 10-12x the rate of non-native people, and are the most likely to go missing without being searched for by the law. - Native reservations have the highest rates of poverty in the US, with over HALF of tribal homes with no access to clean water (with more joining this list by the year) - Native people are 6-10x more likely to be unhoused than the rest of the population, and native teens suffer suicide rates higher than any other demographic. This list of modern day genocide goes on (thank you for compiling @theindigenousanarchist <3) and yet take a look at those environmental stats!

Native people manage to do SO much for the planet as a whole - thanklessly - and with all this stacked against them. Don't even get me started on kin fighting in south america. Could you imagine if there was help? #landback is resistance to genocide, and it is the key to saving our warming earth.

So look into it and the other hashtags, cuz a cartoon goose ain't a substitute for a proper education. Love to my grandparents who always kept a map of tribal territories of turtle island on their wall, to speaking on our Tsalagi & Saponi heritage. Love & solidarity forever, happy research, and happy #indigenouspeoplesday

LANDBACK.ORG

(Also, if you care to support the artist, I'm publishing a book ! and writing another - a fantastical afroindigenous graphic novel - that I post exclusively about with tons of other art on my patreon.)

[kingskrazzyart]

Well, if you hate winter, you know how much of a pain it can be to constantly have to shovel your drive way. And if you don't get snow, you get seasons of heavy hurricanes and typhoons. Harsh weather conditions destroy homes, harm our communities, and take more money to repair damages than some people can afford. That's why you should help @ma7moudgaza2 and his family

Here's their verification || Verification 2

Mahmoud and his brother, Muhammad, are campaigning to buy supplies to survive this winter season. Their current goal is to buy covers and blankets to keep themselves warm because Surviving genocide is just as important as escaping it. Their family consists of 20 people-- that's an entire classroom of people! The money will be used for the supplies mentioned previously along with food, wood for a chair, clothes, and a shader to prevent their tent from sinking. For more details about how the money will be spent, click here. These people are your neighbors, graphic designers, phone repairers, and some maybe could've been your friends. If your neighbor's work blew up, wouldn't you want to help?

Pictured: Muhammad's work before and after the war.

"...I lost all of my work, leveled it to the ground, and completely destroyed my dream. As this war continued for more than 10 months, what I had saved was not enough for me. From money to buy my basic life, I am now without money and without a source of income, which the occupation has completely destroyed." -Message from Muhammad, read more here

Click here to see Mahmoud's work portfolio

The family has been a recent victim of *fraud* and had their campaign money STOLEN! Every cent you can donate matters! If 2500 people who reblogged this donated 10 USD then they'd reach their goal! If tumblr can come together for a fake movie, we can come together for this! We got this!!! Donate to their campaign and Paypal!

[communistkenobi]

whenever right wing people talk about “parental rights” they are talking about property rights. they are arguing for further political and legal enshrinement of their children as their literal actual property

[loveaankilaq]

Fantasy books stop having arctic kingdoms of all blond hair blue eyed white people.

[lee-romee]

this is a great time of year to buy from native stores or donate to native organizations. you can figure out who's land you're on here, and below i've listed some (of many) businesses you can support ♡

B.Yellowtail --- jewlery, clothing, and home goods designed by Bethany Yellowtail, citizen of the Northern Cheyenne Nation and from the Apsáalooke (Crow) Nation

Cheekbone Beauty --- sustainable, low-waste beauty products from Jenn Harper, an Anishinaabe artist based in Canada

Trickster --- atheletic products from Tlingit and Deg Hit’an Athabascan siblings (Alaska)

NativeHumboldt on Etsy --- the artist, Shayna McCullough, and their fiancé make designs inspired by traditional designs from their culture; she is from the Yurok tribe and descended from the Hupa, Karuk, Redwood Creek, Pit River, Yuki, Wintun, Pomo (tribes in California), and Chetco tribe (in Oregon)

OklahomaThirtyNine on Etsy --- they mostly sell beaded work, particularly earrings, as well as some necklaces

xBeadsByMandyx on Etsy --- handmade beaded earrings, from a Cherokee veteran

food products, from wine to sauces to teas to mixes to fish to jerky and nuts, sorted by store with details beside each store

[artfilmfan]

Chase Iron Eyes & Tokata Iron Eyes in Oyate (2022)

[felucians]

Nex Benedict's death wasn't just for being transgender, it was for being native too. 2 Spirits are revered in many native cultures and it is a native-specific identity. This wasn't just a hate crime against trans & NB individuals, this was also a hate crime against Natives of Turtle Island.

You cannot separate Nex's trans identity from their native identity - this is a case of MMIWG2S (Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls, and 2 Spirits).

Native children being killed at school is nothing new, so it's equally important to talk about Nex's native identity and being intersectional, this is a devastating tragedy for indigenous people, the queer community & especially those of us who are both indigenous and queer.

May Nex rest in peace 🪶

[catdotjpeg]

9 Oct 2023, Indigenous Peoples' Day Rally for Gaza, New York City