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Ndee-Nnee Alliance statement on the Future Work of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues
Published
10 years agoon
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adminTwelfth Session United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues
May 20-31, 2013 New York, New York
Ndee-Nnee Alliance
FUTURE WORK OF THE PERMANENT FORUM
The NdeeNnee Alliance would like to thank Bik’ehgo’ihi’nan, the Life Giver, and Nigodzan, Earth is Woman, for giving us all life and for allowing all our indigenous brothers and sisters to be present here within the great land of the Lenape, whom, we thank for allowing us to gather in their inherent territory.
The Ndee-Nnee Alliance recommends to the UNPFII for future work the areas of herbicide, pesticide, chemical and toxic contamination, the violations of sacred sites by governments and corporations, and the militarization of the US/MX border that now inhibits the culture, heath, and autonomy of IP’s, not only in our region, but around the world.
While the United States mouths the empty rhetoric of concern about human rights in places around the world, like Burma, China, Tibet, and Syria, to name some examples, even furnishing an assessment of human rights through its own State Department, virtually nothing is ever said about the continued and incessant violation of human rights of the original people of this land, the Indigenous people. It’s bad enough that of the 370 so-called treaties made between the U.S. government and Indigenous nations from the early colonial settlement in Turtle Island, not ONE was kept.
It is thus relevant that the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination of the United Nations Human Rights Commission in its report of March 1, 2013 has expressed serious concern about the failure of the United States to provide a responsive report to the Committee’s raising of human rights violations of Indigenous peoples due on November 20, 2011, specifically regarding the following key issues:
The construction of a vast security wall on the Texas-Mexico border based on the purported aim of preventing entry of alleged terrorists, undocumented migrants, and drug traffickers into the United States that involved the Department of Homeland Security disregarding 36 Federal and State Laws in the wall construction, including the National Environmental Policy Act, the American Indian Religious Freedom Act, and the Administrative Act and where the lands on which the Kikapoo Traditional Nation of Texas, the Ysleta del Sur Pueblo (Tigua) nation, and the Lipan Ndé (Apaché) have lived for time immemorial are being victimized by wall construction that occurred with consultation of these respective Indigenous peoples and have uprooted ecological systems and lands while violating sacred cultural sites integral to these communities and preventing such peoples from gaining access to materials needed for traditional ceremonies. The rights of the Lipan Endé (Apaché) in particular warrant serious attention considering that the nation is unrecognized by the U.S. government and has no access to the courts as avenues for redress. It is also worth noting that commercial non-Indigenous enterprises such as the River Bend Golf Resort on the Texas-Mexico border were spared any disruption of their property and operations in the wall construction.
The impact of the Arizona Snowbowl Ski Resort Project in the sacred mountain in Northern Arizona, Dook ‘o’oosliid (San Francisco Peaks) on the cultural practices and sacred ceremonies of all Indigenous nations of the U.S. southwest, particularly given the Ski Resort Project’s plan to pipe sewage water to the mountain with the plan of making snow for skiing. Extractive Industries, mainly large scale mining corporations, since contact was made with Nnee, exploit the natural resources within the community’s territorial, cultural and spiritual boundaries causing harm to the health and welfare of Nnee and all peoples. The ongoing fight with Rio Tinto, Zinc and B.H.P. Biliton (whom both create a subsidiary company called Resolution Copper Company) and Nnee over the Southeast Arizona Land Exchange and Conservation Act of 2013. This bill was introduced into the United States House of Representatives in February of 2013 without the Free, Prior and Informed Consent of Nnee. The area Resolution Copper wants to mine copper Ore, is a holy place for Nnee and other indigenous peoples in the southwest United States and Northern Mexico. The site also maintains historical significance in the annuls of time through oral history and spirit within the Nnee, but also within the colonized history of Arizona, United States, Mexican, and Spanish histories as well. Not only culture is at stake, Water is as well. In a territory that is known for its desert dry lands and seasons of drought our sacred and precious water for a thirsty peoples will be depleted for the wealth of kingdoms, nations, governments and corporations, disguised as capitalism and free market societies, that continue to promote and impose adverse health effects, especially the polluted air from the mine smelter, that Nnee breathe in daily, which is known to effect the thyroid in human beings. There are repeated attempts by state and federal legislators to disturb Indigenous people’s ancestral lands by opening them for transfer to multinational extractive mining and energy corporations and commercial developers. Particular mention was made of the lethal destructive effects of dumping nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain in Nevada and the resumption of underground nuclear testing on Newe Segobia (Western Shoshone) ancestral lands in fundamental violation of the Treaty of Ruby Valley of 1863. The Newe Segobia have declared their lands a nuclear-free zone, yet the U.S government continues to use these lands for underground nuclear testing, over 1,000 having been detonated over the past 60 years, actions which are foundationally illegal.
It is germane to add that the rights of the Nnee Nation in San Carlos, Arizona, were and are being expressly violated with the introduction and spraying of twelve major herbicides–minopyralid, chlorsulfuron, clopyralid, dicamba, glyphosate, imazapic, imazapyr, metsulfuron methyl, picloram, sethoxydim, sulfometuron methyl, and triclopyr– (containing ingredients used in Agent Orange that was used as a defoliant by the U.S. military in Vietnam) at the rate of 9,000 acres per year on the Coconino, Kaibab, and Prescott forests around federal and state highways. The spraying of these toxic herbicides by the U.S. Forest Service under the pretext of eliminating invasive weed and plant species without prior informed and free consent of the Nnee Nation and its members, has been deployed in every Ranger District and spans vast ecological diversity from the Sonoran Desert to mixed conifer forest, including watersheds covering Salt River, Verde River, Agua Fria, New River, and Cave Creek and contaminating water resources in the process. Some 2,872, 876 acres of forest have been affected. These hazardous conditions have resulted in lethal health conditions of many among the Nnee Nation who are now suffering from cancer and other serious illnesses from poisoned water and vegetation. The Chircahua Apaché Alliance is currently engaged in documenting such hazardous health accounts of Indigenous community members.
It is also disturbing to note that members of the Indigenous Tohono O’odham nation whose lands span the Arizona-Mexico border continue to experience harassment, intimidation, and terror by U.S. border authorities as they cross the border to participate in ancestral ceremonies, due to the presence of an electrified wall and the violation of sacred sites by state agencies like the U.S. Border Patrol. The situation of fear has escalated to the point that O’odham community members no longer visit their neighbors and are afraid of leaving their homes at night due to concerns about safety of their children and elders. The sovereignty of the Tohono’ O’odham needs to be recognized by the U.S. government in accordance with the legal protections assured by international law and U.S. state security agencies are called upon to immediately desist from further invasion of O’odham lands on the pretext of pursuing drug smugglers.
The genocide of Indigenous people began with the first invasion by European pirates under the leadership of Columbus in the 15th century, starting in the Caribbean, followed by South and Central America, and then in the 17th century, Turtle Island (North America). While the United States has created a vast capitalist and globalized empire that has made trillions of dollars in wealth over four and a half centuries, few in the world recognize that this lascivious and insatiable greed for land, minerals, and wealth that resulted in the wealthiest economic and military power in the world, actually entailed the enslavement of African people and the systematic genocide of Indigenous peoples on these lands. It is high time for the world bodies of justice like the United Nations Human Rights Commission and the World Court to demand that the U.S. desist from its ongoing genocidal actions in violation of international human rights law and that it restore Indigenous people’s lands and sovereignty unconditionally in the interest of global justice, peace, and harmony. The United States can no longer be shielded from scrutiny in its obsessive pursuit of resources for capitalist industrialism through perpetual genocide and war in all continents of the world, making it the leading outlaw nation in the world.
###
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#nonukes
A quick & dirty review of the movie Oppenheimer
Published
2 weeks agoon
July 20, 2023By
admin
We watched this movie after arguing with social media pro-nuke apologists who accused us of being ill-informed as not having viewed Christopher Nolan’s biopic, so excuse the mess… (and if you haven’t already, read our initial post here for the context).
Oppenheimer is a glorification of the “complicated genius” and ambitions of white men making terrible decisions that imperil the world.
Many have remarked that the film is not a glorification, yet Christopher Nolan himself says, “Like it or not, J Robert Oppenheimer is the most important person who ever lived.”
Some of you may have even had a burst of laughter during the scene where Truman asked Oppenheimer what he thought the fate of Los Alamos should be and “Oppie” retorted, “Give the land back to the Indians.” But alas, the poisoned scarred landscape today is host to a 10-day “Oppenheimer Festival.” To underscore the disconnect of legacies, a small commemoration near the Churchrock spill site was also held on the anniversary of the Trinity detonation, a few hundred miles away. Yes, what glorification?
The movie is basically a Western à la John Wayne. It very well could have been called, “The Trial of the Sheriff of Los Alamos.”
Oppenheimer rides his horse with a black hat on and pulls a poster down from a fence post. He then strides into a debate on the “Impact of the gadget on civilization.” To respond to the question of how scientists can justify using the Atom Bomb on human beings, Oppenheimer speaks, “We’re theorists yes, we imagine a future and our imaginings horrify us. They won’t fear it until they understand it and they won’t understand it until they’ve used it. When the world learns the terrible secret of Los Alamos our work here will ensure a peace mankind has never seen. A peace based on international cooperation.”
Nolan establishes the only narrative that matters is his attempt at historical redemption, he paints Oppenheimer as a victim. While perhaps not as depoliticized as Nolan alluded to in interviews (as the politics of American loyalty and the Red Scare drive the drama), the consequences of nuclear weapons and energy is barely considered (arguably barely at all considering the issue). This is a political omission of the most insidious sort and the film is even worse for it.
The movie cares more about constructing and clearing Oppenheimer as a victim of McCarthyism than the impacts of the atomic bomb and its deadly legacy of nuclear colonialism. As it’s stated, there’s a “Price to be paid for genius.” Everything else is dramatic notation. Nolan gives Oppenheimer the public hearing he feels like he was denied to ultimately prove he was an American patriot. In the end, the question “Would the world forgive you if you let them crucify you?” matters above all other concerns. The movie poses the argument as “science versus militarism” while the world and Indigenous Peoples continue to suffer the permanent consequences of nuclear weapons and energy in silence. A deadly silence more deafening than Nolan’s cinematic portrayal of the Trinity test. But hey, there’s even a minute of cheering after the test.
Nolan has us listening to the radio while two cities are destroyed and hundreds of thousands of lives are taken. Nolan keeps the camera on his lead actor’s face while the horrors of his bomb are shown on slides. Oppenheimer simply looks away. What more about this film do we need to know?
15,000 abandoned uranium mines poisoning our bodies, lands, and water. 1,000 bombs detonated on Western Shoshone lands… the list goes on (we only stop here because we’ve stated much more in our original post). All omitted and sentenced to suffer in catastrophic silence. Films like Oppenheimer are only possible because people keep looking away from the deadly reality of nuclear weapons and energy.
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#nonukes
Architect of Annihilation: Oppenheimer’s Deadly Legacy of Nuclear Terror
Published
3 weeks agoon
July 20, 2023By
admin
Read our quick and dirty review of the movie here.
Klee Benally, Indigenous Action/Haul No!
Contributions by Leona Morgan, Diné No Nukes/Haul No!
Printable posters (PDFs): 11″x17″ color, 11″x17″ black & white
The genocidal colonial terror of nuclear energy and weapons is not entertainment.
To glorify such deadly science and technology as a dramatic character study, is to spit in the face of hundreds of thousands of corpses and survivors scattered throughout the history of the so-called Atomic age.
Think of it this way, for every minute that passes during the film’s 3-hour run time, more than 1,100 citizens in the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki died due to Oppenheimer’s weapon of mass destruction. This doesn’t account for those downwind of nuclear tests who were exposed to radioactive fallout (some are protesting screenings), it doesn’t account for those poisoned by uranium mines, it doesn’t account for those killed during nuclear power plant melt-downs, it doesn’t account for those in the Marshall Islands who are forever poisoned.
For every second you sit in the air conditioned theater with a warm buttery popcorn bucket in your lap, 18 people dead in the blink of an eye. Thanks to Oppenheimer.
Though you’ll certainly learn enough about J. Robert Oppenheimer, the “father of the atomic bomb,” thanks to director Christopher Nolan’s 70mm IMAX odyssey, let’s be clear about his deadly legacy and the overall military and scientific industrial complex behind it.
After the successful detonation of the very first atomic bomb, Oppenheimer infamously quoted the Hindu scripture Bhagavad-Gita, “Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.” Barely a month later, the “U.S” dropped two atomic bombs devastating the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and more than 200,000 people were killed. Some of the shadows of those perished were burned into the streets. One survivor, Sachiko Matsuo, relayed their thoughts as they tried to make sense of what was happening when Nagasaki was struck, “I could see nothing below. My grandmother started to cry, ‘Everybody is dead. This is the end of the world.” A devastation that Nolan intentionally leaves out because, according to the director, the film is not told from the perspectives of those who were bombed, but by those who were responsible for it. Nolan casually explains, “[Oppenheimer] learned about the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on the radio, the same as the rest of the world.”
Months after the atomic detonation at the “Trinity” site in occupied Tewa lands of New Mexico, Oppenheimer resigned. He walked away expressing the conflict of having, “blood on his hands,” (though reportedly he later said the bombings were not “on his conscience”) while leaving a legacy of nuclear devastation and radioactive pollution permanently poisoning lands, waters, and bodies to this day.
U.S. military and political machinery cannibalized the scientist and turned him into a villain of their imperialist cold-war anxiety. They reminded him and the other scientists behind the Manhattan Project, that they and their interests were always in control.
Oppenheimer never was a hero, he was an architect of annihilation.
The race to develop the first atomic bomb (after Nazis had split the atom) never could be a strategy of peaceful deterrence, it was a strategy of domination and annihilation.
Nazi Germany was committing genocide against Jewish people while the U.S. sat on the political sidelines. It wasn’t until they were directly threatened that the U.S. intervened. Though Nazi Germany was defeated on May 8th, 1945, the U.S. dropped two separate atomic bombs on the non-military targets of the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6th and 9th, 1945.
To underscore Oppenheimer’s complicity, he suppressed a petition by 70 Manhattan Project scientists urging President Truman not to drop the bombs on moral grounds. The scientists also argued that since the war was nearing its end, Japan should be given the opportunity to surrender.
Today there are approximately 12,500 nuclear warheads in nine countries with almost 90 percent of them held by the U.S. and Russia. It is estimated that 100 nuclear weapons is an “adequate… deterrence” threshold for the “mutually assured destruction” of the world.
Oppenheimer built the gun that is still held to the head of everyone who lives on this Earth today. Throughout the decades after the development of “The Bomb,” millions throughout the world have rallied for nuclear disarmament, yet politicians have never taken their fingers off the trigger.
The Deadly Legacy of Nuclear Colonialism
Nuclear weapons production and energy would not be possible without uranium.
Global uranium mining boomed during and after World War II and continues to threaten communities throughout the world.
Today, more than 15,000 abandoned uranium mines are located within the so-called U.S., mostly in and around Indigenous communities, permanently poisoning sacred lands and waters with little to no political action being taken to clean up their deadly toxic legacy.
Indigenous communities have long been at the front lines of the struggle to stop the deadly legacy of the nuclear industry. Nuclear colonialism has resulted in radioactive pollution that has poisoned drinking water systems of entire communities like Red Shirt Village in South Dakota and Sanders in Arizona. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has closed more than 22 wells on the Navajo Nation where there are more than 523 abandoned uranium mines. In Ludlow, South Dakota an abandoned uranium mine sits within feet of an elementary school, poisoning the ground where children continue to play to this day.
Nuclear colonialism has ravaged our communities and left a deadly legacy of cancers, birth defects, and other serious health consequences, it is the slow genocide of Indigenous Peoples.
From 1944 to 1986 some 30 million tons of uranium ore were extracted from mines on Diné lands. Diné workers were told little of the potential health risks with many not given any protective gear. As demand for uranium decreased the mines closed, leaving over a thousand contaminated sites. To this day none have been completely cleaned up.
On July 16, 1979, just 34 years after Oppenheimer oversaw the July 16, 1945 Trinity test, the single largest accidental release of radioactivity occurred on Diné Bikéyah (The Navajo Nation) at the Church Rock uranium mill. More than 1,100 tons of solid radioactive mill waste and 94 million gallons of radioactive tailings poured into the Puerco River when an earthen dam broke. Today, water in the downstream community of Sanders, Arizona is poisoned with radioactive contamination from the spill.
Although uranium mining is now banned on the reservation due to advocacy from Diné anti-nuclear organizers, Navajo politicians have sought to allow new mining in areas already contaminated by the industry’s toxic legacy. It is estimated that 25% of all the recoverable uranium remaining in the country is located on Diné Bikéyah.
Though there has never been a comprehensive human health study on the impacts of uranium mining in the area, a focused study has detected uranium in the urine of babies born to Diné women exposed to uranium.
Western Shoshone lands in so-called Nevada, which have never been ceded to the “U.S.” government, have long been under attack by the military and nuclear industries.
Between 1951 and 1992 more than 1,000 nuclear bombs have been detonated above and below the surface at an area called the Nevada Test Site on Western Shoshone lands which make it one of the most bombed nations on earth. Communities in areas around the test site faced severe exposure to radioactive fallout, which caused cancers, leukemia & other illnesses. Those who have suffered this radioactive pollution are collectively known as “Downwinders.”
Western Shoshone spiritual practitioner Corbin Harney, who passed on in 2007, helped initiate a grassroots effort to shutdown the test site and abolish nuclear weapons. He once said, “We’re not helping Mother Earth at all. The roots, the berries, the animals, are not here anymore, nothing’s here. It’s sad. We’re selling the air, the water, we’re already selling each other. Somewhere it’s going to come to an end.”
Between 1945 and 1958, sixty-seven atomic bombs were detonated in tests conducted in Ṃajeḷ (the Marshall Islands). Some Indigenous people of the islands have all together stopped reproducing due to the severity of cancer and birth defects they have faced due to radioactive pollution.
In 1987 the “U.S.” congress initiated a controversial project to transport and store almost all of the U.S.’s toxic waste at Yucca Mountain located about 100 miles northwest of so-called Las Vegas, Nevada. Yucca Mountain has been held holy to the Paiute and Western Shoshone Nations since time immemorial. In January 2010 the Obama administration approved a $54 billion dollar taxpayer loan in a guarantee program for new nuclear reactor construction, three times what Bush previously promised in 2005.
There are currently 93 operating nuclear reactors in the so-called U.S. that supply 20% of the country’s electricity. There are nearly 90,000 tons of highly radioactive spent nuclear waste stored in concrete dams at nuclear power plants throughout the country with the waste increasing at a rate of 2,000 tons per year.
From the 1979 disasters of Three Mile Island and Churchrock to the 1986 Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant melted down, the nuclear industry has been wrought with mass catastrophes with permanent global consequences.
In 2011 Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant catastrophically failed and began melting down after it was hit by an earthquake and tsunami. It’s been reported that the Fukushima plant has been leaking approximately 300 tons of radioactive water into the ocean every day. Today, the Japanese government is open about its plans to release remaining radioactive waters into the Pacific.
“Depleted Uranium” weapons deployed by the U.S. in imperialist wars (particularly Iraq and Afghanistan) have also poisoned eco-systems, including at proving grounds and firing ranges in Arizona, Maryland, Indiana and Vieques, Puerto Rico. Depleted uranium is a by-product of uranium enrichment process when it’s used for nuclear reactor fuel and in the making of nuclear weapons.
Nuclear energy production is now claimed as a “green solution” to the climate crisis, but nothing could be further from the truth of this deadly lie.
In April 2022, the Biden administration announced a $6 billion government bailout to “rescue” nuclear power plants at risk of closing. A colonial government representative stated, “U.S. nuclear power plants contribute more than half of our carbon-free electricity, and President Biden is committed to keeping these plants active to reach our clean energy goals.” They, along with Climate Justice activists cite nuclear energy as necessary to combat global warming, all while ignoring the devastating permanent impacts Indigenous Peoples have faced.
Due to this “greenwashing” of nuclear energy, we face a push for nuclear hydrogen, small modular nuclear reactors, and High-Assay Low-Enriched Uranium (HALEU) driving a renewed threat of new uranium mining, transportation, & processing.
Though the Obama administration placed a moratorium on thousands of uranium mine leases around the Grand Canyon in 2012, pre-existing uranium claims were allowed. Environmental groups and Indigenous Nations are currently attempting to make the moratorium permanent and push for a new national monument, yet these will do little to nothing for the handful of pre-existing uranium mines that have been allowed to move forward.
Despite these actions, underground blasting & above ground work has begun at Pinyon Plain/Canyon Mine, just miles from the Grand Canyon. Once Energy Fuels, the company operating the mine, starts hauling out radioactive ore, they plan to transport 30 tons per day through Northern Arizona to the company’s processing mill in White Mesa, 300 miles away.
The White Mesa Mill is the only conventional uranium mill licensed to operate in the U.S. The mill was built on sacred ancestral lands of the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe near Blanding, Utah. Energy Fuels disposes radioactive and toxic waste tailings in “impoundments” that take up about 275 acres next to the mill. Since there are limited radioactive waste facilities, White Mesa Mill has become an ad hoc dump for the world’s nuclear wastes that have no final repository.
In so-called New Mexico, a state addicted to nuclear monies for both nuclear weapons and energy facilities, there are two national nuclear labs and two national waste facilities. Along with legacy uranium mines and mills, there was Project Gasbuggy (an underground detonation), a “Broken Arrow” accident near Albuquerque, and countless tons of radioactive waste buried in unlined pits, Pueblo kivas, and watersheds. Currently, there are planned expansions and modifications at Los Alamos National Labs, the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, and Urenco uranium enrichment facility. Most recently, the state has been threatened by two newly licensed consolidated interim storage facilities for “spent fuel” from nuclear power plants in New Mexico and Texas. The federal government continues to push nuclear projects with financial incentives.
Nuclear proliferation continues as the U.S. allows uranium miners and others who are eligible for the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act to die. Many continue to suffer and wait for compensation funds to be allocated or are not eligible due to the limitations of the act.
The devastation of nuclear colonialism, which permanently destroys Indigenous communities throughout the world, is not entertainment. This is the terrifying legacy of nuclear energy and weapons that movies like Oppenheimer and duplicitous climate justice activists advocate.
Indigenous Peoples live, suffer, and continue to resist its consequences every day.
END NUCLEAR COLONIALISM!
###
Recommended links:
https://haulno.com
http://www.dinenonukes.org
https://tewawomenunited.org/programs/environmental-health-and-justice-program
https://stopforeverwipp.org/home
https://www.trinitydownwinders.com/
http://www.cleanupthemines.org
https://www.nirs.org/
https://www.radioactivewastecoalition.org
https://www.dont-nuke-the-climate.org/
https://www.nuclear-heritage.net/index.php?title=Nuclear_Heritage_Network
https://yukiyokawano.com
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vBO_C6GkIpM&t=10s
https://apjjf.org/2022/1/Schattschneider-Auslander.html
Articles:
Red Water Pond Road
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/a-radioactive-legacy-haunts-this-navajo-village-which-fears-a-fractured-future/2020/01/18/84c6066e-37e0-11ea-9541-9107303481a4_story.html
ABQ Museum
https://www.abqjournal.com/lifestyle/arts/albuquerque-museums-online-exhibit-trinity-takes-a-look-at-the-aftermath-of-the-atomic-bomb/article_33d17c15-61c8-5e1f-b32c-99f4ebee5db4.html
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anti-colonial
ICWA & Continued Legislation of Indigenous Existence
Published
2 months agoon
June 15, 2023By
admin
As many celebrate the defense of ICWA, we also must recognize the colonial violence that has demanded & produced it.
ICWA was passed in 1978 due to the rampant genocidal white christian driven legal practice of taking Indigenous children from their homes and placing them with white christian families. The law was created to resolve a problem colonialism created. The settler colonial state didn’t become interested in “keeping Indigenous children with their Tribes” until it was assured that those children would be passively assimilated into its “civilized” order.
Through laws like ICWA, the State continues to legislate and enforce Indigenous existence.
White families stealing Indigenous children should be a non-issue. That any argument for justification for keeping Indigenous children with their peoples is occurring is part of the larger issue of white supremacy, cis-heteronormativity, and Indigenous genocide.
Before ICWA was enacted in 1978:
– 25%–35% of all Native children were being removed from their homes;
– of these, 85% were placed outside of their families and communities—even when fit and willing relatives were available.
– Today, Native families are 4x more likely to have their children removed and placed in foster care than their White counterparts.
(facts from https://www.nicwa.org/about-icwa)
Before 1492 Indigenous children weren’t stolen by colonizing predators.
While ICWA is celebrated as an affirmation of Indigenous sovereignty, in actuality it affirms congressional power to regulate commerce (The Commerce Clause) with Indigenous Peoples and plenary power over “Indian affairs.” A plenary power or plenary authority is a complete and absolute power to take action on a particular issue, with no limitations.
The legal battle over ICWA erases Indigenous children who are not from federally recognized tribes, border communities, & migrants doesn’t address issues of dis-enrollment. Particularly as ICWA specifically “sets federal requirements that apply to state child custody proceedings involving an Indian child who is a member of or eligible for membership in a federally recognized tribe.” ICWA reinforces “Indian” citizenship policies that some Tribal governments have used to exclude mixed race descendants. Regardless of ICWA, child theft still occurs within the foster care system, where Indigenous youth still are most likely to end up.
The discourse around ICWA is also inherently cis-heteronormative as it doesn’t support queer & two-spirit family formations. ICWA defines Indian child as “any unmarried person who is under age eighteen and is either (a) a member of an Indian tribe or (b) is eligible for membership in an Indian tribe and is the biological child of a member of an Indian tribe…”
What justice can we expect from a colonial system that also maintains anti-Indigenous laws sanctioning desecration of sacred lands and attacks bodily autonomy?
Are our cultures and communities so desperate and broken that we celebrate that colonizers can determine if our children belong with us? The apparent “necessity” of ICWA demonstrates the fallacy of colonial laws and the predatory white supremacist violence that constantly looms outside our homes.
That colonial laws are required to stop white people from outright stealing Indigenous babies is the result of a much deeper systemic problem than laws like ICWA can address.
Many of our families & homes are broken due to colonization, more colonial laws won’t fix that.
What are culturally-rooted non-state based solutions to keeping Indigenous children with our families?
www.indigenousaction.org
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