Re: TREATY PEOPLE

2021-06-20 Thread Molly Hankwitz
hello, treaty people and indigenous friends,

this unique native land map <https://native-land.ca/> shows global lands
where there are treaties, indigenous languages spoken, and "territories".
produced by native-land.ca which is a canadian non-profit..."native land
digital is a canadian not-for-profit organization, incorporated in december
2018". here is the 'about' link <https://native-land.ca/about/our-team/>and
the mostly indigi-genous "canadian" board of directors.

curiously, some global lands are completely uncharted, another way to
consider the social geography of "indigenous" maybe.

this organization has also produced an app
there are a few of these

enjoy
molly




molly hankwitz - she/her
http://bivoulab.org


On Sun, Jun 13, 2021 at 5:04 AM Andreas Broeckmann 
wrote:

> hey brian, thanks for sending this moving report.
>
> it strikes me that these Treaty People actually have treaties to refer
> to which, if they were honoured, would create bearable situations -- in
> comparison with so many other situations where there are only bad deals
> or "contracts" that were rotten in the first place, or straightforward
> robbery.
>
> i found this reference to "what it means to be treaty people":
>
> https://thevarsity.ca/2017/05/20/what-it-means-to-be-treaty-people/
>
> regards,
>
> -a
>
>
> Am 12.06.21 um 20:03 schrieb Brian Holmes:
> > The Mississippi River springs from innumerable lakes and wetlands in
> > northern Minnesota, where the indigenous Ojibwe harvest wild rice. In an
> > insane and suicidal world, what could be more beautiful than a rolling
> > green protest camp full of activists chanting "Water is life"?
> >
> > We got up early last Monday and made our way to the previously secret
> > location. It was a construction site: a pumping station along the route
> > of the Enbridge Line 3 pipeline, which, if ever completed, would send
> > almost a million barrels of Tar Sands crude every day to US refineries
> > and Gulf Coast exporters. We were there to blockade, lock down on the
> > equipment and ultimately get arrested by the police: civil disobedience
> > by around two hundred people, with hundreds more in active support.
> > Meanwhile another, even larger group was heading for peaceful and
> > prayerful protest near Coffeepot Landing, at an Enbridge construction
> > easement where the pipeline would cross beneath the nascent Mississippi,
> > only a few yards wide at that point. Those folks are still there,
> > camping on the easement, after the indigenous sheriff decided on
> > conscience that he could not repress their action.
> >
> > I can tell you that it was blazing hot in the sun, that it was fabulous
> > to lock arms with your neighbors and find out why they had come to stare
> > down the cops, and that in a world condemned by speed and greed, there
> > is no better use of your precious time than a pipeline protest to
> > protect the rights of the people whom colonial capitalism has always
> > tried to eliminate, in order to create the disaster that is now facing
> > all of us.
> >
> > Jane Fonda spoke quite wonderfully while I sat in the shade of a
> > bulldozer, but incomparably more inspiring were the voices of Winona
> > LaDuke, from Honor the Earth, and Tara Houska, an indigenous lawyer and
> > founder of the Giniw protest camp.
> >
> > When the fuzz finally came out in force, late in the afternoon, they
> > were fast to invade and seal the pump station perimeter, but slow to
> > extract the activists who had locked down on the machines. Those of us
> > who were outside the gate at that moment formed a line and advanced
> > right up to the noses of the cops, chanting for hours till the sun set
> > with glorious colors and they finally came for all of us. The local
> > jails were full by then, so we would only get citations. They zip tied
> > our hands behind our backs and dragged us over to some bare bulldozed
> > ground. As I went down in the dust, a cry rose up: "Who are we?"
> > Everyone roared back with one voice: "Treaty People!"
> >
> > A protest action takes bodies and plans, concepts and visions. This
> > action was exquisitely planned to reveal the water and wild rice at one
> > site, the destructive equipment at another. The vision was clear: a
> > restoral of indigenous life in the territory, coinciding with a drawdown
> > of fossil-fuel infrastructure. And the concept was far-reaching.
> >
> > If we didn't know it already, we learned at the camp that the treaties
> > made between native tribes a

Re: TREATY PEOPLE

2021-06-14 Thread Molly Hankwitz
Hi Brian, et al,

Such a vivid description of participation in direct action and protest;
momentary freedom and intense emotion one feels when physically involved in
such actions. I'm sorry about your family's house. The fire season is
shifting wildly now, partly as the result of the massive drought...so more
will unfortunately come.

Now with Deb Hallend in Biden's cabinet (Native American) as Secretary of
the Interior, there may also be more hope for the resistence efforts.

Have traveled extensively in the Southwest, visited Reservations briefly
outside Monument Valley some years ago which everyone should do because
Pueblo cities were built during European "middle ages" and your sense of
history will be quickly transformed by the presence of this unique
architecture from the 13th c, long before Pilgrim landing or other
"enunciatory" colonial acts.

Just returned from a trip to Death Valley, where tribal lands have been
reclaimed (about 700,000 acres) by the Timbishi Shoshone. Curiously, desert
towns are quickly turning to gated resorts as economic solutions to remote
poverty, which in turn is boosting interest in "rural bandwidth" which is
an ongoing reason for economic failure in rural areas.

Here are a bunch of related links:
https://mojaveproject.org/dispatches-item/how-the-timbisha-got-their-land-back/
http://mojaveproject.org/
https://artandcakela.com/2021/01/04/kim-stringfellow-the-mojave-project/

 molly


molly hankwitz - she/her
http://bivoulab.org


On Sun, Jun 13, 2021 at 5:04 AM Andreas Broeckmann 
wrote:

> hey brian, thanks for sending this moving report.
>
> it strikes me that these Treaty People actually have treaties to refer
> to which, if they were honoured, would create bearable situations -- in
> comparison with so many other situations where there are only bad deals
> or "contracts" that were rotten in the first place, or straightforward
> robbery.
>
> i found this reference to "what it means to be treaty people":
>
> https://thevarsity.ca/2017/05/20/what-it-means-to-be-treaty-people/
>
> regards,
>
> -a
>
>
> Am 12.06.21 um 20:03 schrieb Brian Holmes:
> > The Mississippi River springs from innumerable lakes and wetlands in
> > northern Minnesota, where the indigenous Ojibwe harvest wild rice. In an
> > insane and suicidal world, what could be more beautiful than a rolling
> > green protest camp full of activists chanting "Water is life"?
> >
> > We got up early last Monday and made our way to the previously secret
> > location. It was a construction site: a pumping station along the route
> > of the Enbridge Line 3 pipeline, which, if ever completed, would send
> > almost a million barrels of Tar Sands crude every day to US refineries
> > and Gulf Coast exporters. We were there to blockade, lock down on the
> > equipment and ultimately get arrested by the police: civil disobedience
> > by around two hundred people, with hundreds more in active support.
> > Meanwhile another, even larger group was heading for peaceful and
> > prayerful protest near Coffeepot Landing, at an Enbridge construction
> > easement where the pipeline would cross beneath the nascent Mississippi,
> > only a few yards wide at that point. Those folks are still there,
> > camping on the easement, after the indigenous sheriff decided on
> > conscience that he could not repress their action.
> >
> > I can tell you that it was blazing hot in the sun, that it was fabulous
> > to lock arms with your neighbors and find out why they had come to stare
> > down the cops, and that in a world condemned by speed and greed, there
> > is no better use of your precious time than a pipeline protest to
> > protect the rights of the people whom colonial capitalism has always
> > tried to eliminate, in order to create the disaster that is now facing
> > all of us.
> >
> > Jane Fonda spoke quite wonderfully while I sat in the shade of a
> > bulldozer, but incomparably more inspiring were the voices of Winona
> > LaDuke, from Honor the Earth, and Tara Houska, an indigenous lawyer and
> > founder of the Giniw protest camp.
> >
> > When the fuzz finally came out in force, late in the afternoon, they
> > were fast to invade and seal the pump station perimeter, but slow to
> > extract the activists who had locked down on the machines. Those of us
> > who were outside the gate at that moment formed a line and advanced
> > right up to the noses of the cops, chanting for hours till the sun set
> > with glorious colors and they finally came for all of us. The local
> > jails were full by then, so we would only get citations. They zip tied
> > our hands behind our backs and 

Re: TREATY PEOPLE

2021-06-13 Thread Andreas Broeckmann

hey brian, thanks for sending this moving report.

it strikes me that these Treaty People actually have treaties to refer 
to which, if they were honoured, would create bearable situations -- in 
comparison with so many other situations where there are only bad deals 
or "contracts" that were rotten in the first place, or straightforward 
robbery.


i found this reference to "what it means to be treaty people":

https://thevarsity.ca/2017/05/20/what-it-means-to-be-treaty-people/

regards,

-a


Am 12.06.21 um 20:03 schrieb Brian Holmes:
The Mississippi River springs from innumerable lakes and wetlands in 
northern Minnesota, where the indigenous Ojibwe harvest wild rice. In an 
insane and suicidal world, what could be more beautiful than a rolling 
green protest camp full of activists chanting "Water is life"?


We got up early last Monday and made our way to the previously secret 
location. It was a construction site: a pumping station along the route 
of the Enbridge Line 3 pipeline, which, if ever completed, would send 
almost a million barrels of Tar Sands crude every day to US refineries 
and Gulf Coast exporters. We were there to blockade, lock down on the 
equipment and ultimately get arrested by the police: civil disobedience 
by around two hundred people, with hundreds more in active support. 
Meanwhile another, even larger group was heading for peaceful and 
prayerful protest near Coffeepot Landing, at an Enbridge construction 
easement where the pipeline would cross beneath the nascent Mississippi, 
only a few yards wide at that point. Those folks are still there, 
camping on the easement, after the indigenous sheriff decided on 
conscience that he could not repress their action.


I can tell you that it was blazing hot in the sun, that it was fabulous 
to lock arms with your neighbors and find out why they had come to stare 
down the cops, and that in a world condemned by speed and greed, there 
is no better use of your precious time than a pipeline protest to 
protect the rights of the people whom colonial capitalism has always 
tried to eliminate, in order to create the disaster that is now facing 
all of us.


Jane Fonda spoke quite wonderfully while I sat in the shade of a 
bulldozer, but incomparably more inspiring were the voices of Winona 
LaDuke, from Honor the Earth, and Tara Houska, an indigenous lawyer and 
founder of the Giniw protest camp.


When the fuzz finally came out in force, late in the afternoon, they 
were fast to invade and seal the pump station perimeter, but slow to 
extract the activists who had locked down on the machines. Those of us 
who were outside the gate at that moment formed a line and advanced 
right up to the noses of the cops, chanting for hours till the sun set 
with glorious colors and they finally came for all of us. The local 
jails were full by then, so we would only get citations. They zip tied 
our hands behind our backs and dragged us over to some bare bulldozed 
ground. As I went down in the dust, a cry rose up: "Who are we?" 
Everyone roared back with one voice: "Treaty People!"


A protest action takes bodies and plans, concepts and visions. This 
action was exquisitely planned to reveal the water and wild rice at one 
site, the destructive equipment at another. The vision was clear: a 
restoral of indigenous life in the territory, coinciding with a drawdown 
of fossil-fuel infrastructure. And the concept was far-reaching.


If we didn't know it already, we learned at the camp that the treaties 
made between native tribes and the early US state were "the supreme law 
of the land," enshrined in the Constitution, but honored only in the 
breach. Those treaties gave the tribes who signed them rights to hunt, 
fish, gather and carry out ceremonial activities on the treaty territory 
forever, even though indigenous ownership of the land would be 
restricted to much smaller reservations. Today those treaty rights must 
be extended to entire ecosystems, because resource extraction, overuse 
of water and relentless industrial pollution threaten every aspect of 
native lifeways.


It takes two to make a treaty, and it takes two to uphold it. At the 
camp, indigenous leaders encouraged us to think, not only about them, 
their sufferings and their dreams, but about ourselves, who we are, 
where we came from and how we got to this place. As the descendants of 
European settlers, and/or as citizens of the United States, we have not 
only rights, but also unique and important treaty obligations. The 
colonial capitalist state is a traitor to its own law. Protest, 
political engagement and active solidarity have become ways that we, as 
individuals and groups, can begin fulfilling our part of the bargain.


Who am I in the era of climate change? My ancestors came from the 
British isles and the Dalmatian coast. I was born in San Francisco, 
surrounded by an extraordinary natural environment. Yet

TREATY PEOPLE

2021-06-12 Thread Brian Holmes
The Mississippi River springs from innumerable lakes and wetlands in
northern Minnesota, where the indigenous Ojibwe harvest wild rice. In an
insane and suicidal world, what could be more beautiful than a rolling
green protest camp full of activists chanting "Water is life"?

We got up early last Monday and made our way to the previously secret
location. It was a construction site: a pumping station along the route of
the Enbridge Line 3 pipeline, which, if ever completed, would send almost a
million barrels of Tar Sands crude every day to US refineries and Gulf
Coast exporters. We were there to blockade, lock down on the equipment and
ultimately get arrested by the police: civil disobedience by around two
hundred people, with hundreds more in active support. Meanwhile another,
even larger group was heading for peaceful and prayerful protest near
Coffeepot Landing, at an Enbridge construction easement where the pipeline
would cross beneath the nascent Mississippi, only a few yards wide at that
point. Those folks are still there, camping on the easement, after the
indigenous sheriff decided on conscience that he could not repress their
action.

I can tell you that it was blazing hot in the sun, that it was fabulous to
lock arms with your neighbors and find out why they had come to stare down
the cops, and that in a world condemned by speed and greed, there is no
better use of your precious time than a pipeline protest to protect the
rights of the people whom colonial capitalism has always tried to
eliminate, in order to create the disaster that is now facing all of us.

Jane Fonda spoke quite wonderfully while I sat in the shade of a bulldozer,
but incomparably more inspiring were the voices of Winona LaDuke, from
Honor the Earth, and Tara Houska, an indigenous lawyer and founder of the
Giniw protest camp.

When the fuzz finally came out in force, late in the afternoon, they were
fast to invade and seal the pump station perimeter, but slow to extract the
activists who had locked down on the machines. Those of us who were outside
the gate at that moment formed a line and advanced right up to the noses of
the cops, chanting for hours till the sun set with glorious colors and they
finally came for all of us. The local jails were full by then, so we would
only get citations. They zip tied our hands behind our backs and dragged us
over to some bare bulldozed ground. As I went down in the dust, a cry rose
up: "Who are we?" Everyone roared back with one voice: "Treaty People!"

A protest action takes bodies and plans, concepts and visions. This action
was exquisitely planned to reveal the water and wild rice at one site, the
destructive equipment at another. The vision was clear: a restoral of
indigenous life in the territory, coinciding with a drawdown of fossil-fuel
infrastructure. And the concept was far-reaching.

If we didn't know it already, we learned at the camp that the treaties made
between native tribes and the early US state were "the supreme law of the
land," enshrined in the Constitution, but honored only in the breach. Those
treaties gave the tribes who signed them rights to hunt, fish, gather and
carry out ceremonial activities on the treaty territory forever, even
though indigenous ownership of the land would be restricted to much smaller
reservations. Today those treaty rights must be extended to entire
ecosystems, because resource extraction, overuse of water and relentless
industrial pollution threaten every aspect of native lifeways.

It takes two to make a treaty, and it takes two to uphold it. At the camp,
indigenous leaders encouraged us to think, not only about them, their
sufferings and their dreams, but about ourselves, who we are, where we came
from and how we got to this place. As the descendants of European settlers,
and/or as citizens of the United States, we have not only rights, but also
unique and important treaty obligations. The colonial capitalist state is a
traitor to its own law. Protest, political engagement and active solidarity
have become ways that we, as individuals and groups, can begin fulfilling
our part of the bargain.

Who am I in the era of climate change? My ancestors came from the British
isles and the Dalmatian coast. I was born in San Francisco, surrounded by
an extraordinary natural environment. Yet today I live in a scorched world,
whose probable destiny became so bitterly clear last year, when the
California fires burned down the home that my family had built with our own
hands. How much more terrible is this scorching feeling for young people in
their twenties, who came in such large numbers to put their bodies on the
line in Anishanaabe treaty territory in northern Minnesota? We shall have
to spend the rest of our lives searching, not only for who we are, but for
a world that we can live in. Neither of these things will be easy, though
they may be intuitive for some. You cannot erase the past, but you can
chos