Honoring Courage During A Year of Genocide -- Solidarity with Palestine in Indian Country
Censored News, December 12, 2024
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| Image by Censored News |
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Laveen Village, Gila River Indian Community, Arizona -- In the Gila River Indian Community, Biden claimed to be issuing an apology to Native children who were victims of U.S. boarding schools. His glory campaign was short-lived. As Biden spoke, an O'odham woman held up this sign: "There Are Still Babies in Mass Graves. Your Apology Means Nothing!! Land Back." Calling out to Biden, an O'odham woman yelled, "What about the people in Gaza! What about the people in Palestine!"
Read more at Mohawk Nation News https://mohawknationnews.com/blog/
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| United Nations: Ano Jensen, Lakota. Screenshot by Censored News |
United Nations, New York -- Anpo Jensen, Kiyuksa Tiospaye, Oglala Lakota of Pine Ridge, South Dakota, delivered the statement of the Global Indigenous Youth Caucus to the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues in New York. Censored News, April 15, 2024. "We are witnessing the genocide and displacement of Palestinian people. We demand the right of return to their ancestral homeland," the Global Indigenous Youth Caucus told the U.N. Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues as it opened its session. |
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| Photo Courtesy of the Arab Resource and Organizing Center |
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Photo by Maurus Chino, Acoma Pueblo, Censored News
University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, New Mexico -- Pro-Palestine Encampment at the Duck Pond. "The police have brought in a garbage truck, and I can hear it crushing the materials used to build the encampment." Source New Mexico reporter Austin Fisher reports: "By 7 a.m. on Wednesday morning New Mexico State Police and UNM Police moved the group from the encampment, taking several people away in police custody. Riot cops stood in front of protesters, about 20 feet away as UNM staff tossed the belongings left at the encampment into a garbage truck with the words 'Go Lobos. painted on the top. Police used yellow tape to establish a barrier around the encampment space in the Duck Pond and arrested anyone caught in the area, or who refused to leave."
University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, New Mexico -- Pro-Palestine Encampment at the Duck Pond. "The police have brought in a garbage truck, and I can hear it crushing the materials used to build the encampment." Source New Mexico reporter Austin Fisher reports: "By 7 a.m. on Wednesday morning New Mexico State Police and UNM Police moved the group from the encampment, taking several people away in police custody. Riot cops stood in front of protesters, about 20 feet away as UNM staff tossed the belongings left at the encampment into a garbage truck with the words 'Go Lobos. painted on the top. Police used yellow tape to establish a barrier around the encampment space in the Duck Pond and arrested anyone caught in the area, or who refused to leave."
During this year of genocide in Palestine, the Raytheon Dine' Facility located on the Navajo Nation at its commercial farm, Navajo Agricultural Products Industry, near Shiprock, New Mexico, produced missile parts for Raytheon, a top war profiteer in Palestine. Raytheon, now RTX, partners with Rafael, an Israeli weapons producer. Raytheon said, "Raytheon Diné stores and generates parts for 12 missile programs such as the Tomahawk cruise missile, Javelin weapon system, and Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missile." -- Censored News.
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Diné (Navajo) Demetrius Johnson, The Red Nation, at The National Day of Mourning at Plymouth Rock, on the turkey-laden day when genocide is celebrated in the U.S.
"We have seen how mainstream media is used by the settler states to justify, perpetuate, then make invisible ~yet again~ a genocide in Palestine without consequence. We have seen how the truth is suppressed and how journalists are slaughtered by the dozens. Even they realize that the truth is our greatest weapon. Our power lies in our words. That is why this day is so important -- The National Day of Mourning embodies an Indigenous counter narrative that dissolves settler lies. Today, with tongues like sharpened iron we will cut open colonialism and expose its rotten core." -- Demetrius Johnson, Dine', The Red Nation. The speech is written by the members of The Red Nation and read by Demetrius Johnson. Watch on TikTok, Instagram, and Youtube!
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Photo courtesy International Indigenous Youth Council, Oglala Lakota Chapter, Pine Ridge, South Dakota. |
Students for Justice in Palestine at Rutgers responded and said it was censorship aimed at silencing voices for Palestine. "This attempt to conflate protected speech with violence is dangerous," said the student group. "The administration’s letter contributes to the perception of Arab and Palestinian students on campus as terrorist threats, a racist and unacceptable caricature. These allegations lodged against our group, with no due process, are attempts to silence Palestinian voices." Read the statement here. Earlier, the threats, pressure from a U.S. Congressman, and 12,000 e-mails, didn't shut down the event, "Race, Liberation and Palestine," at Rutgers University. Nick Estes, Lakota, Lower Brule in South Dakota, said the U.S. had more than 400 federal institutions dedicated to removing Native children from their families, all across the United States, and in Alaska and the Pacific. "Look at the headstones at Carlisle Barracks, where there are more than 200 headstones," Estes said.
Photo courtesy International Indigenous Youth Council, Oglala Lakota Chapter, Pine Ridge, South Dakota. Lakota Youths Raising Voices for Palestine. 'Our Liberation is Linked' by International Indigenous Youth Council, Oglala Lakota Chapter, Censored News, March 29, 2024. "In a world plagued by injustices and oppression, the youth of the Oglala Lakota Nation raise their voices in support for Palestine. As descendants of a people who have faced centuries of systemic violence and displacement, we intimately understand the pain and suffering inflicted by colonialism and genocide." |
Red Lake Anishinaabe Support Palestine -- Opposing Apartheid and Genocide. Censored News, January 31, 2024. Red Lake, Minnesota -- The Red Lake Band of Chippewa in Minnesota passed a resolution in support of Palestine, stating the parallel between the current slaughter of Palestinians, and the treatment of Native Americans by the United States government. The Red Lake Tribal Council urged sanctions against Israel and a halt to the United States funds and weapons to Israel for apartheid and genocide.
Missoula, Montana — Gwen Nicholson (Salish, Kootenai, and Coeur d’Alene) grew up learning about the history of oppression that Indigenous people have experienced in the US via firsthand accounts of her family members’ experiences. Her grandmother, a member of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes, who grew up on the Flathead Reservation, attended two boarding schools — one on the Flathead Reservation and one in De Smet, Idaho. Nicholson saw these boarding schools as attempts to eradicate Indigenous people and ways of life and as part of a broader ethnic cleansing campaign carried out by the US government. She would later see the treatment of Palestinians by the Israeli government in a similar vein. 'It mirrors the history of what’s happened to Indigenous people in America,' she said.
'Spaces of Exception' Film Reveals Resistance to the Fat Takers, from Native Lands to Palestine
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| Images from the film Spaces of Exception: Standing Rock; Klee Benally and Dine' grandmother on Black Mesa; Akwesasne Mohawk; Lakota at Standing Rock; Palestine. |
'Spaces of Exception was shown at McGill University in Montreal, with Mohawk Mothers, in a packed room. During this year of genocide, the film was shown on the Navajo Nation, in the Navajo Capitol of Window Rock and nearby Fort Defiance in Arizona in 2024.
On the Navajo Nation, the two day event on April 26 and April 27 was organized by K’é Infoshop, The Red Nation, and the Palestinian Youth Movement. The public was invited to the film screening of the documentary Spaces of Exception featuring interviews with Native relatives across this continent and Palestinian relatives in refugee camps in Palestine and Lebanon. The screening was followed by a discussion with one of the filmmakers, Matt Peterson. On April 27 they hosted a panel discussion with Diné and Palestinian on the shared struggle against colonialism and imperialism.
The film shows how places are defined by their historical and spiritual resistance.
"We might be the ones holding the knife -- but it is the state that is the one who is still killing us." Those are the words of Klee Benally, in 'Spaces of Exception."
"In the Navajo language, there is no word for relocation, it means to disappear and never be seen again."
The film, 'Spaces of Exception,' shown around the world this year, begins on Pine Ridge, with the history of the resistance to the 'fat takers,' and travels to the refugee camps of Palestine, before arriving at the land of Akwesasne Mohawk, and the words shared of true sovereignty.
Then, there are the images of the oil and gas, the fracking, and coal mining on the Navajo Nation, where Dine' say the true literacy once known, talking with the natural world, is being lost. Now, there is the destruction of the burial and sacred places, as asthma takes over lives.
Spaces of Exception comes out of the long-term multimedia project “The Native and the Refugee”, profiling Native lands in the United States alongside Palestinian refugee camps, and is directed by Matt Peterson and Malek Rasamny.
Spaces of Exception filmmaker Malek Rasamny said, "After Spaces of Exception’s sold-out theatrical premiere run at the historic Anthology Film Archives in New York City in October 2023 the film embarked on a world-tour of cinemas, art institutions, universities and community centers."
"Spaces of Exception is a documentary film that profiles the terrains of the Indian reservation and the Palestinian refugee camp, 'spaces of exception' that have become essential in the struggle for decolonization and indigenous autonomy."
-- Censored News.
About Censored News
Censored News was created in 2006, when journalist Brenda Norrell, a long time staff reporter for Indian Country Today, was censored and fired by the newspaper. Among the issues censored was the Raytheon Dine' Facility. ICT editors forbid even research about the weapons maker. Today, Censored News is in its 19th year. It is a collective with no ads or revenues, and is a service to Indigenous Peoples and human rights.
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