Native Movement Blog
Tending to the Light Nov. 29th
We are excited to introduce you to several new and established organizations that are advancing our diverse movements in Alaska. These organizations are Native Movement Community Affiliates (fiscally sponsored groups) who bring invaluable expertise to our shared work of building community and people power.
The networks and organizations we are proud to be fundraising with this year include: Herring Protectors, Mother Kuskokwim Coalition, Tlaa Deneldel, Fairbanks Climate Action Coalition, Alaska Climate Alliance, and more.
These Community Affiliates bring invaluable expertise and visionary strategies to the beautiful shaping of Alaska for all communities. Join the “Tending The Light” virtual celebration to hear directly from these highlighted Community Affiliates and to learn more about our Regranting Fund. This is an especially meaningful time to gather and collectively tend to the light in our lives.
Native Movement’s support of Community Affiliates and the Regranting Fund is a commitment to building grassroots leadership beyond just one organization – we believe in Movements for Justice shaped by many!
Every person, regardless of the amount you are able to donate, is a meaningful part of this movement. Community and individual donations are vital to us in so many ways – we feel your partnership and we can cover the costs of organizing and advocacy.
You can donate directly to this work right now: Native Movement REGRANTING FUND. You can also mail a check to “Native Movement”, please add in the memo line: “Regranting Fund” and send to PO Box 83467 Fairbanks, AK 99708.
We look forward to seeing you at the Tending Our Light Celebration, RSVP HERE! Mahsi' choo, Quyana, Tsin'an, Enaa Basee', Anaá Maseé, Gunalchéesh, Quyanapak, thank you for partnering with Native Movement and our partner collective!
Remember Their Names
On Nov. 20, 2022, five lives were lost, eighteen lives traumatized physically and mentally, and the entire queer community of Colorado Springs, CO and the United States shaken to its core. This is yet another instance of targeted violence against queer and trans bodies, in a larger national trend where 2SLGBTQ bodies are four times more likely to fall victim to violent crimes. That the shooting at Q Club fell on the eve of the annual Transgender Day of Remembrance adds a certain cosmic insult to injury, and added to our collective grief. Our hearts are with the victims, and their blood and chosen families. Say their names with us:
Raymond Greene Vance (he/him)
Kelly Loving (she/her)
Daniel Aston (he/him)
Derrick Rump (he/him)
Ashley Paugh (she/her)
We grieve alongside our queer and trans kin at the lives lost due to institutionalized violence faced by our 2SLGBTQ community all over the world. We rage, not only at the utter inaction of the state to protect our civil rights, but at current leaders who have the power to prevent violence against our bodies and our sacred spaces, as well as gun violence in schools and communities across the country, but choose not to.We deserve better, and we will fight for better. Our collective grief and rage is valid, cathartic, and sacred, and is one of the things that binds us together in our larger movement towards social, political, and economic equality for 2SLGBTQ people in this country. But in the process of reclaiming our bodies and our right to exist equally with others, we must not allow the oppressors to take away the most important thing we have to sustain us in this fight: JOY
Joy as liberation and an authentic celebration of who we are. Joy as a community builder and life-sustaining force for one another. Joy as defiance to institutionalized patriarchy and violence. Joy that we must create, sustain, and pass down to future generations of queer and trans kin, if we are to create a brighter tomorrow for our community.
You can learn more about Trans Day of Remembrance and watch last weeks livestream session here:
Support and Donate to Alaska Orgs that advance belonging and safety for our LGBTQ2S family:
Trickster Times: Indigenous fashion shines at AFN
Here's the last episode of our Trickster Times AFN coverage this year! Take a look at just some of the amazing Indigenous fashion at AFN this year, and also a look into the subsistence resolutions that seek to help chum and king salmon return back to healthy populations in Western and Interior Alaska. Thanks for watching!
Despite local outcry, state sells Nenana land to highest bidders
NENANA, ALASKA, October 20 – The State of Alaska opened the sealed bids yesterday and announced the outcome of the Nenana-Totchaket land sale: 160 bids were received on 24 of the 27 parcels. This sale moves to privatize public land despite concerns raised by local residents. Numerous statewide entities joined local Nenana and Native leadership in asking that Alaska Department of Natural Resources pause the Nenana-Totchaket land sale until appropriate analysis and Tribal consultations can be completed.
“The land sale - if we do get a parcel, it’ll be bittersweet. That means the sale went through – which, we didn’t want it to. We didn’t think the land sale was viable – environmentally, technically, or economically. It’s bittersweet because it means other people are coming into our lands.” said Nenana resident and Alaska Native community leader, Eva Dawn Burk, when asked about the sale before the auction.
Burk is the director of the Tlaa Deneldel Community Group, a Nenana-based community group focused on food sovereignty and cultural revitalization. Tlaa Deneldel is administratively supported by Native Movement, a state-wide non-profit organization. Native Movement placed bids in the auction on behalf of Tlaa Deneldel Community Group in an effort to protect ancestral lands. The group was able to crowd-source funding from donors throughout Alaska in order to bid. Native Movement was announced as the winning bidder on two parcels, while also losing the bid on other parcels.
“The vision for the Tlaa Deneldel Community Group is to help, not just my own village, but other villages as well, to develop land use or land management plans. I like to call them land relationship plans. The goal is to show other tribal entities that we can train our young people on how to get back to traditional use areas and regain skills that are still useful today,”said Burk. “[Engaging in this auction] gives us an opportunity to show other tribes what food sovereignty means in the future. We’re just at those crossroads right now, and I’m really fortunate to be Alaska Native. We have the last wild king salmon runs in the world and I'm gonna keep fighting for the fish.”
Ultimately, Burk says “What’s so disturbing is the amount of money being spent without foresight… This environment isn’t meant for that type of agriculture. Industrial agriculture will ultimately destroy this environment.”
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Native Movement
Native Movement supports grassroots-led projects that align with our vision, that dismantle oppressive systems for all, and that endeavor to ensure social justice, Indigenous Peoples’ rights, and the rights of Mother Earth. Native Movement is dedicated to building people power, rooted in an Indigenized worldview, toward healthy, sustainable, & just communities for ALL.
Contact:
Lindsey Mailard, lindsey@nativemovement.org 907-987-6567
Enei Begaye Peter, enei@nativemovement.org 928-380-6296
Honoring Survivors
Photo by: Lyndsey Brollini / Native Movement
On Oct. 1, the first day of Domestic Violence Awareness Month, a healing totem and panel carved by Wayne Price was unveiled and celebrated in Alaska’s capital city, Juneau. The totem and panel honor survivors of domestic and sexual violence, as well as missing and murdered Indigenous persons and their families and communities.
Alaska has had the highest rate of women killed by men in the nation for seven years now. Alaska Native women bear the brunt of this unacceptable statistic. They are 10 times more likely than white women to be killed.
This is absolutely unacceptable. Domestic and sexual violence are remnants of settler colonialism inflicted on our communities through boarding schools and the taking of Indigenous lands. Healing from historical trauma is extremely hard yet necessary work. We know there are also many healthy and vibrant Alaska Native families who are breaking the cycle.
Photo by: Lyndsey Brollini / Native Movement
This totem and panel remind us that in our work to end domestic and sexual violence in our communities, we must center healing. We must believe victims when they share their stories. We must support bodily autonomy and grow a culture of consent including with our young people. We also know that holding accountability is an act of love in effort to heal as a whole. We must create healing pathways for restorative justice. While we work on systemic issues we also know that the most powerful work begins in our homes and those closest to us.
The story of this totem shows a family of survivors on their healing journey together.
“We uplift all survivors who have courageously come forward and shared their stories. We believe you. This month must be more than just raising awareness- we need actions now. I call on each and every person who reads this to find an actionable item they can do to stop this violence,” said Aqpik Apok, Gender Justice and Healing Director at Native Movement.
The breaking of silence can be the first step on a healing journey. We urge you to find out how you can support the survivors you know. The culture of silence is a barrier to truths being told. Be a safe person for someone experiencing abuse to talk to, and believe survivors when they tell their stories. And if you are a survivor, there are resources you can utilize and people who love you and will support you without judgment.
At the unveiling celebration, people wrote the names of those they want to direct healing towards onto cedar pieces from the healing pole and put them in the fire. Our traditional ways, teachings, and culture offer many healing pathways. We uplift those who have been courageous to share their stories so others can come forward and be heard. The raising of the totem and panel are a beautiful illustration of healing led by our Indigenous people. May we carry that hope and intention forward this month and always.
Photo by: Lyndsey Brollini / Native Movement
Photo by: Lyndsey Brollini / Native Movement
Photos & Story By: Lyndsey Brollini, Native Movement Narrative Coordinator
Trickster Times: finding unity to defend our ways of life
Not at AFN this year? The Trickster Times brings you a video recap of Day 1 at AFN, the Defending Our Ways of Life rally, a few policy updates, and some updates about Ambler Road, the Nenana Totchaket land sale, and nuclear energy.
Doomer Mentality and the Importance of Organizing with Joy
Spending time in the Alaska Botanical Gardens during a Just Transition Collective convening. From left to right: Michaela Stith, Brittany Woods-Orrison, Gunnar Keizer. Photo Courtesy of Gunnar Keizer/ Just Transition Collective
Doomer Mentality and the Importance of Organizing with Joy
By: Gunnar Keizer
Maybe you have also experienced something like this: Feeling like you committed a war crime for buying a plastic bottle of water; or treating yourself to a spa day and then not being able to enjoy it when you wonder what the experience could have meant to someone in real need.
Maybe you scroll through Instagram or TikTok and see stories of crisis or injustice next to cute puppies or funny memes, and become desensitized. Maybe you think you don’t want to have children because the world is burning and the future is bleak.
There are so many problems in the world and it is hard to not feel like anything you do matters. Some days, it’s hard to be a human being or feel empathy for others when everything sucks.
These are ideologies of a doomer. Doomerism is damaging to mental health and personal well-being, but it also damages our community organizing, as it stifles the creativity and care necessary to envision a just world that we all can see ourselves in. I think the doomer mentality is being weaponized by those in power that don’t want the world to change away from oppression. We must combat doomerism with joy and optimism in our organizing.
It can be so easy to fall into a doomer mentality, particularly for us youth who grew up on the Internet. Our social circles thrive online, where the lines between leisure and news sources are blurred – leaving us desensitized to world issues and hopelessness.
At the Alaska Just Transition Community Summit this summer, we heard from Gopal Dayaneni who posed the question, “What if we are already winning and we don’t even know it?” He went on to say that the scale of the solutions do not have to match the scale of the problem –meaning any of our actions, as small as they may seem, can add up to huge systemic changes.
We need to hear and share the stories of how we are winning. When feelings of hopelessness set in, just being in community with one another is enough to find reason to fight for a better world. We, as Indigenous people, already know how to live in right relation with each other, the lands, waters, and other-than-human kin.
We can center our Indigenous ways of knowing, model what community care looks like, and be joyous. Our values and all the small actions we take can add up to create solutions that together can match the scale of the problem.
As we organize for a bright future, we must be optimistic and joyful. We must be visionaries and lead by example. Events that have concrete goals or products can show how what we do is impactful. Community art or days of action that bring people together can fight the darkness, and instead, model the bright future we deserve.
Hand-in-hand, joyous and bright, following the original instructions bestowed upon us by our ancestors, we can overcome doomer mentality and create a world in right relation that we want to live in.
Trickster Times: In-person AFN and Elders & Youth? We love to see it!
AFN and Elders & Youth are already so much fun this year! Here's our first Trickster Times video with a partial re-cap of all the goodness we witnessed at Elders & Youth. We only say partial, because there is just so much happening this week! Big shout out to First Alaskans Institute for creating this critical convening for our communities to come together. And tune in for a peak at some of the awesome vendors at the Alaska Federation of Natives convention.
When the fish go, a river runs quiet
The Tanana River is unusually quiet this summer due to low salmon returns for the third year in a row. Photo by Jeff Chen/Native Movement.
When the fish go, a river runs quiet
By: Jeff Chen
Elder Vernell Titus remembers the Nenana shores of the Tanana River as a lively place when summer would arrive each year – fish wheels churning, noisy birds all around, and boats zooming up and down.
“Usually there’s thousands and thousands of seagulls just making all kinds of noise – wanna get to that fish,” she says, gesturing to a modest fish rack drying nearby. “Right now with all that fish hanging there, you don't see not one seagull. It's strange – very very strange.”
Fish returns on the Tanana River have been abysmal since 2020 – both chum and king salmon numbers so low that Alaska Department of Fish & Game (ADF&G) closed the river to subsistence fishing for the third year in a row (2021-2022 summer chum salmon closure and 2020-2022 fall chum salmon closure). Meanwhile, commercial fishing in the South Alaska Peninsula remained open, harvesting a sizable portion of salmon bound for western and interior Alaska rivers.
A handful of community members nearby cut, dry, and smoke salmon. This year and last year’s salmon were donated from North Soul Salmon in Bristol Bay through a program called Fish for Families.
When the fish don’t come back, Titus says everything changes. On a recent trip to Lake Minto, she observed that only one lone swan drifted by, where normally a whole ecosystem thrives. As she teaches students how to sew birch bark, Titus repeats to them what her elders predicted, “The world is coming to a big change.”
Despite a quiet river, a group of roughly 50 people showed up each day for two weeks in July at a culture camp along the shore, put on by the Nenana Native Council. Most days, parents dropped off their kids to an intergenerational crew of elders, culture bearers, and advocates to share skills and knowledge of the Lower Tanana Dene – beading, crafting with birch bark, learning songs and dance, and studying plants.
The camp came alive in recent years as cultural advocates like tribal member Eva Burk and Nenana Native Council First Chief Caroline Ketzler sought funding and in-kind donations for the community to coalesce around culture.
On a sunny afternoon, Ketzler visits with camp organizers and helps with potlatch preparations. From cutting meat, preparing gifts, and serving elders, Ketzler expects a sense of community to emerge, something she says has wavered this last decade. “I'm really happy to see all of our hard work coming together and people getting that sense of community back, and just realizing that everybody is a person, an individual themselves. And even though we may not agree with each other, we can all come together and celebrate together.”
Families begin to arrive at the potlatch and get seated along the shore, just down the road from a former church mission, which eventually washed away with the river. “This land held significance before it was mission land. If you look at the pictures of our traditional chiefs in this area, you'll see them take photos right in front of that hill.”
At the same time that cultural revitalization is steadfast, subsistence opportunities have conversely dwindled. Hunters at camp who went to look for moose came back without any luck. Nenana residents talk about how their family’s traditional hunting areas aren’t the same as they used to be.
And now, the State’s nearby effort to sell 140,000 acres of land – the Nenana Totchaket Agricultural Project – threatens those traditional hunting grounds. The State has been looking to sell the land west of Nenana for decades, and this summer, the bidding began.
A range of views on the development exist, but Ketzler says industrialized agriculture activity will disturb the land, create runoff, and likely impact the adjacent land owned by the Toghotthele Corporation and also the waterways.
She believes the State has the development project already planned, and says the State sent consultation paperwork to Nenana Native Council during Christmas, when nobody was in the office.
Even as soil studies have yet to be completed, the State’s first auction for 27 parcels closed on October 4, 2022. “To buy that amount of land on that large of a scale, you have to have significant money,” Ketzler says.
A Nenana food sovereignty project called The Tlaa Deneldel Community Group was formed recently to make a bid on some of the land in order to build local tribal agricultural projects on.
Back at camp, 14 year old North Pole High School student Michael Burk and a friend help carry a couple boxes of frozen salmon to the cutting table. “It’s peaceful down here next to the river, and you get to talk to people,” Burk says. “We're just around the city most often. And once you come down here in Nenana, you honestly get to experience firsthand how to do things by hand.”
As the potlatch begins, elder Virgil Titus of Minto, stands up, beaming with pride. He’d just arrived from the Doyon 50th anniversary potlatch in Fairbanks. To the gathering, he speaks. “You’re holding your Alaska together. We love you for that, and we’ll never forget you. That’s all what we’re trying to pull our young people together for,” Titus says. “Believe me, this is the best camp I ever seen for a long time.”
The State of Alaska is currently auctioning off traditional subsistence lands for industrial agriculture. Donate today to support the Tlaa Deneldel Community Group, a Nenana food sovereignty project. www.NativeMovement.org/Landback.
This week, Native Movement and Always Indigenous Media brings you The Trickster Times . You can pick-up a print version at the Elders & Youth and Alaska Federation of Natives conventions. Some stories are more newsy, some are more commentary, and all are written from the heart and for our community. We welcome you to join us as we build people power, rooted in an Indigenized worldview, toward healthy, sustainable, & just communities for ALL.
Never Alone, Reflections from a Circumpolar North Indigenous Youth Leadership Workshop
David Clark speaking alongside Indigenous leaders and Norwegian dignitaries on a panel regarding circumpolar Arctic cooperation, geopolitics and climate change. Photo courtesy of David Clark/Native Movement.
Never Alone
Reflections from a Circumpolar North Indigenous Youth Leadership Workshop
By David Clark
I stepped out onto the deck of the large houseboat that we had all settled into mere hours earlier, and took a deep breath of crisp, southern Norwegian air. The harbor in Arendal, Norway, was ornamented with houses that reflected the golden morning sunlight under ribbons of muted baby blue sky and wispy clouds. After soaking in the sight, I stumbled back into the boat for coffee and a light breakfast with my roommate, whom I had met only hours before.
The day prior, Indigenous youth had all traveled to Arendal from across the circumpolar North to participate in a weeklong intensive leadership training, designed to empower young Indigenous people with the leadership skills and connections necessary to become the next generation of climate action leaders for their communities. All of us – from Alaska, Canada, Greenland, Sweden, Finland, and Norway – woke up blurry-eyed, parched and exhausted from the multiple borders and timezones we crossed to reach our destination. Slowly, as we sipped our coffee and ate our breakfasts, we began conversations that would spark lifelong connections with one another.
I sat down with my roommate, who is Sámi, at the breakfast table. Our conversation started out light; laughter was shared as we exchanged stories of our lives back home and how we had met the night before in a state of dazed exhaustion. I got to learn a little bit about how Sámi families manage their reindeer herds. I got to share about the time I ate freshly-caught seal on Nuchek Island, how it tasted like the salt water I was learning to be in relationship with, and what it was like visiting Prince William Sound.
The more commonalities we drew in that initial conversation eventually led us to more in-depth topics, not all of them happy ones. I learned about fornorskning – the official policy of the Norwegian government that targeted Sámi and Kven peoples in northern Norway for total assimilation. I learned that Sámi children were also forcibly removed from their communities and forced into boarding schools; oftentimes, they would not return home, feeling a deep sense of shame and believing that they were honestly better off having become Norwegian. I shared how that same colonial strategy at the hands of the U.S. government is something that Alaska Native peoples continue to grapple with, as well; how some of us (like myself) have grown up disconnected from those roots as a result of that policy, and how so many of us yearn to return but can’t, because it’s not that simple.
It was clear from that initial conversation that we both experience intergenerational trauma in the same ways, and that the hurt we experience in ourselves and our families is just the same, and that those experiences aren’t isolated. As the week wore on, almost all of the students in our international cohort would share personal stories and anecdotes to the same effect.
Naming the harmful effects of western colonialism and how it affects us was an important bonding experience that made our worlds much smaller and brought us a sense of healing and community. It would also set the tone for the week ahead, as we’d learn conflict negotiation and crisis management skills when dealing with imminent threats to socio-ecological welfare.
Norway is a world leader in development of renewable energy, or the “green shift” - which is ironic, seeing how petroleum accounts for around 40% of their annual exports and over 10% of their GDP. What most may not consider, though, is that producing renewable energy often involves extraction of critical minerals to produce machinery such as windmills, solar panels, and rechargeable batteries. Mining for these minerals, which already disrupts local ecosystems, also produces tailings – which are powdered byproducts that are extremely toxic to the environment, and are often disposed of by simply dumping them into open landfills or adjacent bodies of water.
Because of the severe public health risks that mining presents, mining projects in Norway are rarely slated close to populated cities and towns, but rather, sparsely populated areas that constitute the birthing grounds of reindeer herds – thus, the heart of Sápmi—Sámi homelands across Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Russia. (Sound familiar?...)
Norway has a long history, dating back to as early as 1974, of violating Sapmi’s inherent sovereignty in favor of extracting resources and minerals with little in reparation to the Sámi people. This means that, over the last few decades, reindeer herds have shrunk dramatically, there is much less access to wild salmon fishing, and the government has a vested interest in allowing development to continue.
As Norway continues with its “green transition,” threats to Sámi communities and lifeways persist. Their fight continues today with some success; within the past decade alone, the Norwegian Supreme Court sided with the Sámi Parliament to halt operations of two wind farms in the Fuson region central Norway, citing violation of international conventions on Indigenous cultural rights, as well as provide Sámi in the Fosen region USD $10 million in damages caused to local reindeer herds as a result of windfarms. Other fights are more unclear; as of today, the Nussir Mine case in Kvalsund has been halted indefinitely, thanks to the large turnout in 2021 of Sámi and environmental activists across the country to stop mining. However, permitting for the project – which proposes marine disposal of copper tailings directly into the fjord – has not been rescinded, and the project continues to be the subject of ongoing litigation.
Had it not been for that initial conversation that I had with my roommate over breakfast on the first day, then it surely was learning about threats to Sámi sovereignty and life ways that cemented my understanding of commonalities in colonialism and state violence against Indigenous peoples, not only in Alaska but across the circumpolar North.
I found myself reflecting on controversial projects like Pebble Mine and drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. I thought about how contentious it is to come up with equitable solutions, yet so easy under western capitalism to bypass that process. I lamented on how money speaks more to power, rather than deep, intimate knowledge and relationship to the land. I found myself thinking about how deeply ironic it is that the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act – which granted corporations (not tribes) title to around 10% of Alaska’s total land area as settlement for future land claims. ANCSA robbed Alaska Native tribes of the right to exercise land-based sovereignty, and created deep divisions between Alaska Native tribes and Alaska Native corporations. I found myself seething yet again at how we live under a system where money overrides morality, and where decisions are often made by the moneyed elite, with a shortsighted gain in mind rather than the future wellness of the collective. I found myself hurt that the same western colonialism, that spurred the intergenerational trauma I’ve experienced within my own family, is continuing to harm our planet.
Our last hope lies within a Just Transition, whose central principle is that a “healthy economy and healthy environment can and should coexist” through recognizing that “Indigenous Peoples have an inherent right to clean air, water, land, and food in their workplaces, homes and environment.” In the development of fair, just and equitable policies, it is necessary that frontline communities that stand to be most affected by pollution, ecological damage and economic restructuring play a critical role where negotiations are held and decisions are made (For more about Just Transition concepts, visit jtalliance.org).
In Alaska, this would call for accountability on the part of Alaska Native corporations and the state of Alaska to look beyond short-sighted economic gains from oil and gas development, and more toward positively impacting environmental sustainability and the communities in which they serve. It would require them to eschew values of western capitalism that have allowed them to grow to be very successful, at the expense of the Indigenous Peoples they purportedly serve, and start considering projects and decisions with long-term sustainability and community health in mind. It would require the U.S. government to not only treat Alaska Native communities as equal decision makers in terms of climate and energy policy and environmental remediation, but seeking radical and affirmative consent. It would require the government to also radically reconsider what they value in building out the economic and environmental future of the U.S., and whether or not status quo corporate liberalism—where decisions are made among corporate and governmental elitists—is worth sacrificing sustainable communities, habitable climates, and the 500 Indigenous tribes to which they have a trust responsibility, within Alaska and across the country.
Those demands are not unique to Alaska alone. As I’ve learned through my own research and spending time with Indigenous youth from the circumpolar North, we ALL need a Just Transition. Just as we’ve all suffered intergenerationally at the hands of state-sponsored colonial terrorism, we all continue to suffer from an Arctic that is warming four times faster than the global average rate, and governmental administrations that continue to charge forth with policymaking, with little-to-no inclusion of the first stewards of those lands.
A Just Transition is undoubtedly going to take time, as it is unrealistic to expect Alaska Native corporations alone to radically change the way they engage in economic development and still remain among the top economic performers in our state, in an economic climate that rewards extraction.
Together, we must imagine and work towards a future that considers the seven generations ahead, and the world we leave for them. Creating such a world must begin at the grassroots level—aligning ourselves, our families and kinship groups, and our communities with our traditional values, and creating communities and lifestyles that reflect those values. As we continue as a community to grow and unite under Just Transition values, we continue to build the power base necessary to expand the Just Transition movement to more structural levels.
In our off-time in Norway, you could find our cohort spending quality time together. Our afternoons and evenings were filled with laughter as we ate Sámi food together, explored the small but beautiful town of Arendal, sang karaoke and shared stories of “back home.” These moments throughout the week reminded me of an important lesson that I’m learning through my work in community organizing and movement-building: no matter how urgent the fight may be, we are still inherently worthy of laughter, joy, and rest.
Perhaps this is another important component of Just Transition that again applies all across the circumpolar North; if we seek long-term environmental sustainability and healthy communities for our kids to enjoy, should we not reach out and claim for ourselves some of the joy and continuity that we seek to build for the next seven generations?
This week, Native Movement and Always Indigenous Media brings you The Trickster Times online . You can pick-up a print version at the Elders & Youth and Alaska Federation of Natives conventions. Some stories are more newsy, some are more commentary, and all are written from the heart and for our community. We welcome you to join us as we build people power, rooted in an Indigenized worldview, toward healthy, sustainable, & just communities for ALL.
Growing Beyond our Indoctrinated Histories of Extraction
Canoes landing at Auke Bay in Juneau, Alaska for Celebration 2022. Photo by Lyndsey Brollini/Native Movement.
Growing Beyond our Indoctrinated Histories of Extraction
By: Lyndsey Brollini and Anaan’arar Sophie Irene Swope
For thousands of years Alaska has been stewarded by Alaska Native peoples. People with rich knowledge systems who for centuries have navigated these lands from a culture of sharing, of regeneration with little to no waste, using each item as a sacred gift of the Earth.
With the first European explorers began the practice of extracting and exploiting Alaska’s natural resources.
Russian and then French explorers came to Alaska bringing with them diseases which caused near population collapse. The resilient few were placed into a society of forced labor, where the Russian extraction around furs began a critical shift in the natural world as a commodity to capitalize on for wealth garnering.
The Russian contact significantly diminished the animal populations of Alaska and brought new systems of belief and the ideology of money to Alaska Native people.
During the United States’ Western expansion, the U.S. illegally purchased Alaska in 1867 for the tactics of war, bringing leverage on the Pacific front. As time passed and settlers explored, it led to the 1896 discovery of gold.
This discovery brought a stampede of 100,000 prospecting miners to Alaska during the “Klondike Gold Rush” from 1897- 1898.
Alaska Native lands continued to be prospected by outside influences. Alaska became a state in 1959, and seven years later in 1966 the Alaska Federation of Natives organized for the first time. That same year, a “land freeze” was imposed to protect Native occupancy and use of Alaska lands. This all changed in 1968 when oil was discovered in Prudhoe Bay.
Discovering oil in the Arctic triggered fervor within the state economy. With oil in mind and no existing settlement over land, the 1968 “Alaska Land Claims Task Force” began Alaska's Indiginous journey to settlement.
In 1971, Congress signed the Alaska Native Claim Settlement Act (ANCSA) into law. It mandated the creation of 13 regional corporations and hundreds of village corporations that represent Alaska Native people in a foreign economic system. ANCSA extinguished Alaska Native claims to 90% of their lands in the development of Alaska Native Corporations (ANCs).Which extinguished indigenous hunting and fishing rights, and laid the foundation for undercutting Tribal governance and self-determination in Alaska
Alaska Native people, as always resilient and adaptive, navigated the foreign system, attempting to negotiate the system to meet their needs of survival and change it to be more aligned with their values and traditional ways of life.
But the colonial and capitalist systems ANCSA put in place have become embedded in Alaska Native communities today, and are a major reason why our communities are so deeply divided.
This is most literally shown through the ongoing debate about blood quantum. When ANCSA originally passed into law, a 1/4 blood quantum requirement was in place with the colonial goal of eliminating our Nations. That, despite our continued growth of our populations, the legal recognition of "tribal blood" would in fact lessen.
That requirement was removed in later amendments to ANCSA, but many regional and village corporations still use that requirement – keeping future generations from having a say in what happens to the land their ancestors stewarded for thousands of years. Tribal Governments who are federally recognized as sovereign entities and policy makers, are completely separate from the ANCs, and yet even Tribes adopted blood quantum requirements.
It is unnecessary to hold onto an outdated and counterproductive policy. If we look to our values, we love children and the expansion of our families and communities. The growth of the communities does not mean we must enforce a shrinking system.
ANCs and Native Tribes: Are They Benefitting Equally?
ANCs started extracting from their lands through oil drilling, mining and clear-cutting old-growth forests for timber. These are non-renewable industries that hold impacts that will remain for all of time.
The Exxon Valdez oil spill was a particularly devastating demonstration of this. In 1989, a 987-foot oil tanker struck rock while transporting 53 million gallons of North Slope crude oil. This incident brought total collapse of the local marine population, which is the core sustenance to many, if not all, Alaska Native populations. This was a detrimental time to the Alaska Native people of the area.
Despite the fact that oil and minerals are already running dry and have caused irreparable harm in the past, ANCs are still pursuing non-renewable resource projects.
These projects have a possibility of short-term gains but come at a huge cost to the Earth and our ways of life. Our coastal villages are being threatened more often by severe storms, and the long sustained ways of life are dwindling and as weather patterns are becoming more unpredictable.
It is possible to return to our teachings of being in harmony with the land. Some ANCs are starting to move away from extracting from their land and aligning business more with Native values.
While some ANCs are slowly incorporating more socially conscious entrepreneurial practices, wealth inequality is still prevalent, a strong departure from a history of sharing and cultural “mutual aid”.
The leaders who fought for ANCSA did the best that they could with the resources they had – which was hardly any resources at all in the beginning.
ANCSA was the biggest land claims settlement in the history of the U.S.. ANCs provide jobs for their shareholders and fund culture camps and language revitalization. It is important to acknowledge that it has been an important vehicle in economic development that is unprecedented in other parts of “Indian Country”.
But still, it wasn’t quite a win either. Most Alaska Native lands were taken and with many Tribes having little or no legal land claims currently.
Furthermore, hunting and fishing rights were extinguished with the passage of ANCSA Instead the Alaska Department of Fish & Game (ADF&G) has failed to protect “subsistence” hunting and fishing. ADF&G has continually opted to side with commercial fishing interests.
A transition must be made away from extractive business-as-usual practices, we must look to our history of thousands of years of successful earth stewardship as we build forward.
So What DOES a Just and Equitable Transition Look Like in Alaska?
In May 2022, hundreds of Alaskans gathered at the Nughelnik Just Transition summit to talk about all the ways regenerative economies are already being shaped in the state.
Just Transition is a framework that the International Labour Organization describes as “maximizing social and economic opportunities of climate action, while minimizing and carefully managing any challenges – including through effective social dialogue among all groups impacted.”
Many organizations that participated in this year’s summit are building food distribution systems and utilities that center community care over individual gains, and have engaged in mutual aid since the beginning of the pandemic in 2020.
In 2021, the Alaska Native Heritage Center organized a fish drop, giving 25 pounds of salmon to families during the pandemic. Community farms and greenhouses funded by community organizations and Tribes are emerging all across the state. And the network of reciprocity displayed every year during herring egg season is an impressive model for how communities can share resources with relatives across the state.
Tribes are also building their own broadband internet access systems. The Akiak tribe started their own broadband network, and Wrangell is a starting point for the Central Council of the Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska to build their own broadband service to communities in Southeast Alaska.
Alaska also has a lot of opportunity to invest in renewable energy – a field that harnesses infinite forms of energy – instead of investing money and technology in extracting hard-to-find deposits of oil and gas.
A transition to renewable energy is not just possible, it is necessary. Alaska Native communities are at the forefront of the devastating effects of climate change. Extreme weather patterns that caused the deadly landslide in Haines in 2020 and the storm that tore through Western Alaska in September 2022 are becoming more common as the ocean warms.
Some Alaska communities already demonstrate that it’s possible to rely on renewable energy. Juneau’s electricity is already almost entirely renewable, relying on hydroelectric power supplemented by diesel fuel. Since 2014, Kodiak Island Borough has successfully gotten over 99% of their energy from wind and hydropower resources immediately available to them.
People may not be able to envision a future without an extractive economy, but the roots of it are already here. Alaska Native knowledge has created systems of care for the community and environment for thousands of years.
Alaska Natives and countless ancestors were the true stewards of the land for time immemorial and are the inventors of the only system that worked in preserving fish populations. It needs to be known that we are not economically depressed; we have every resource necessary to thrive.
Being self-sustained by switching to renewable energy and growing food on our immensely fertile soil creates lifetimes of jobs and provides food security. That is more rich than a 30 year mining project that provides only for a single generation, while also destroying the lands and foods they already provide.
We must recognize when our current systems are not working or leaving many people out, and we deserve better. When corporations become truly accountable to Tribes and our tribal communities, then perhaps we can lead all of Alaska with traditional values that embrace communities of care for each other and for Mother Earth then a better future is guaranteed for everyone.
This week, Native Movement and Always Indigenous Media brings you The Trickster Times online . You can pick-up a print version at the Elders & Youth and Alaska Federation of Natives conventions. Some stories are more newsy, some are more commentary, and all are written from the heart and for our community. We welcome you to join us as we build people power, rooted in an Indigenized worldview, toward healthy, sustainable, & just communities for ALL.
A bright new mural builds Indigenous Joy on Lower Tanana Dene lands
Happy Indigenous Peoples' Day — we are celebrating the joy of community art creation and representation.
The art wall at the Native Movement Fairbanks office features Minto elder Vernell Titus and the knowledge she shared this summer with young people at the Nenana culture camp. The mural text reads, "What the hands do, the heart learns."
Gratitude to everyone who helped create and celebrate — an expression of Indigenous joy today and every day — Happy Indigenous Peoples' Day!
Gratitude for the collaboration between Native Movement, NDNCollective, Fairbanks Climate Action Coalition, and so many community members!
MMIWG2S+ Alaska Run for Healing + Justice
We invite you to participate and honor Missing and Murdered Indigenous Womxn, Girls, Two Spirit+ and all relatives through healthy healing. The 3rd annual MMIWG2S+ Alaska Run for Healing, Run for Justice is a virtual 5K run, walk, or other physical activity dedicated to honoring missing and murdered Indigenous women, girls, and all relatives. This is a free virtual event open to all to share their participation between September 19th-24th. This event is meant to raise awareness and provide a healthy healing activity for our community to join.
Register using this link: https://forms.gle/q8qTqhdGTroooWnq7
To receive your bib and packet.
While this is not a race or competition, you can share your participation in the FB event and registered participants will be entered into a drawing for a swag bag! Check out the FB event each day to see others participation and posts from the working group on how to stay involved!
If you’re in the Anchorage area on September 24th, join us for an in-person participation at 1:00pm at the Alaska Native Heritage Center Lake Tiulana. We are looking for a few volunteers to help us with set-up and breakdown! (Volunteer Form Here). We encourage people to have runs with others in their own communities as well!
EVENT: Fairbanks Community Mural Project Celebration
Please join us Tuesday Sept. 13th, 12:00PM in Fairbanks at 60 Hall St. to celebrate the creation of our first community mural project as we recognize the artists, and featured community members including local elder Vernell Titus, local Native youth, and Native Movement staff leader, Naawieyaa Tagaban (Lingit). There will be food, hot drinks, and a community blessing led by our community organizers.
The photographs used in this mural were taken by Native Movement staff photographer Jeff Chen. The mural installation was a collaboration between Native Movement, Fairbanks Climate Action Coalition, and NDN Collective. The featured phrase – “What the hands do, the heart learns” – is a principle of the organization Movement Generation.
The mural focuses on large photographs taken during the recent Nenana Youth Culture Camp in July and was in collaboration of many hands in our community. There will be a performance by a local drumming group with song and prayer to bless the collective effort that went into the creation of this prominent art piece at the intersection of Wendell Ave and Hall St. across from the Morris Thompson Cultural Center.
This is the first phase of a collaborative community project and we want you to be involved! Submit to our interest form here.
Community Demands Pause of Nenana-Tochaket Road Development
Nenana, AK - As the leaves flush yellow on Toghotthele, a group of local Tribal members and land owners gathered inside the Nenana City School gymnasium with less than a week of notice from the Alaska Department of Transportation (DOT) to hear about the proposed Nenana Tolchaket Road expansion. Four tables are lined with plans for a 15 million dollar road project funded by the State of Alaska. The 20 miles of new road would open 140,000 acres of traditional use lands for industrial agricultural production from the Native Village of Nenana on the George Parks Highway to the Kantishna River bordering Denali National Park and Preserve.
Christina Sunnyboy, Chair of Toghotthele Corporation, Caroline Ketzler, 1st Chief of Nenana Native Village and Toghotthele Board Member, and Eva Burk, Vice Chair of the Toghotthele Corporation, Executive Director of Rock Crossing Consulting and Graduate Research Assistant with Alaska Center for Climate Assessment and Policy, spoke in a circle as a small group created their own public forum with the project staff. Burk said, “You are not considering the cumulative impact of this entire project. It’s not just this road and not just this agricultural land sale. On top of it all, our fish are already crashing. The key message is, this is not the time. The land and the waters are telling you. That’s why we are here.” As Burke spoke to the room, others unfurled a large banner decorated with hand-painted blueberries that read ‘No Consent. No Road’.
Christina Sunnyboy spoke next, “ there is not a total ‘in-support’, no one has asked us officially ‘are we with the project?’, but now that comment has reopened, we have a chance to make our voices heard. DOT has contacted us for possible road work, but what it does, It opens up Toghetelle lands, and I don’t believe it’s worth it to our shareholders.”
Community Member, Kathleen Demientieff, Nenana Tribal Council Member, continued in the circle, “ I was born and raised in Nenana. I am subsistence fisher-woman, I am subsistence hunter and trapper, you name it. I am very discouraged by the State of Alaska. Very disrespectful against our tribal members. Even with Josh (Mayor) . We weren’t notified. We would have fought this. And now you have a schedule. I will call my representatives. I’m going to stop it.”
For nearly 3 hours the community exchanged passionate concerns on the rushed public process, unfinished environmental reviews and inadequate consultations with the Nenana Tribal Council from Alaska DOT. The most common message from the group was clearly around the lack of Tribal and community consultation, as well as an aggressive schedule of development on fragile wetland ecosystems that have been stewarded for generations.
First Chief Caroline Ketzler of the Nenana Tribal Council pulled the attention of the circle as she shared her story. “My family fought for their rights to hunt and fish on these lands and they won years ago against the state. Now you guys are opening it up to anyone and everyone. What do you think is going to happen out there? Exactly what happened in the Minto flats. Decimation. That’s exactly what it is. We are losing our animals and our fish right now. All of my life growing up I heard chiefs talking at the potlatches and they would tell me and everyone else in the room that ‘one day our animals will be gone from this land and all you will have is the land itself.’ That’s today. We run the risk of having people from all over in a pristine area that we’ve kept that way for generations. It’s not just you guys pushing a road in there. It’s way more than that. That’s my heart and soul in that country.”
Josh Verhagen, Mayor of the City of Nenana also spoke with the room, “ It’s not like I’m just lock step with everything the State wants to do. I’ve shared my concerns and have some pretty severe concerns with the agricultural project and this project, and some of them they have listened to. I think there is a more effective way to collaborate and it is to share our knowledge and share our resources. To find a way to make this a better situation. ”
As the meeting neared a natural closing, Johnathan Hutchinson, Principal Engineer and Project Manager for DOT, said “ If we can’t present this community with additional information and vice versa and network and share this information, we are not moving forward at all.”
Missing from the DOT delegation was a representative from the Office of History and Archaeology. The assessment of cultural use sites is necessary to upholding free, prior and informed consent under the the United Nations Declaration of Indigenous Peoples. The State plans to begin assessing cultural sites on Monday, September 12th despite the call from stakeholders present at the meeting for a pause in the process. Public comment is open through Sept. 30
Press Contacts:
Eva Burk, Vice Chair of the Toghotthele Corporation •
edburk@alaska.edu, 907-322-7467
Caroline Ketzler, First Chief Nenana Tribal Council •
carolinejketzler@gmail.com, 907-371-5277
Brandon Hill, Native Movement Communications Co-Director • brandon@nativemovement.org, 207-632-0861
Response to the Inflation Reduction Act
Holding Climate Gains Hostage to the Fossil Fuel Industry is NOT Climate Justice
Last week, Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Senator Joe Manchin reached a deal on long-sought climate legislation by releasing the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 (IRA). While the bill contains some energy production and carbon emissions reforms for which frontline communities have worked and organized, it holds much-needed measures hostage to continued subsidization of extractive industries.
The Inflation Reduction Act is a wolf in sheep’s clothing. It masquerades as a win for the climate while perpetuating the oil and gas industry and other corporate-supported false solutions to the climate crisis like carbon capture and storage, biofuels, nuclear energy, and blue or gray hydrogen. Among the most insidious provisions is a requirement that all new solar and wind energy development on federal lands and waters must have a prerequisite oil and gas lease sale. The bill also mandates oil and gas lease sales in the Gulf of Mexico and Cook Inlet, Alaska, where the federal lease sale was canceled earlier this year because of lack of industry interest. Mandated drilling in these special places perpetuates the treatment of them as sacrifice zones. Sacrifice zones are incompatible with a Just Transition, period. We cannot support the continued destruction of Alaskan ways of life in exchange for promises of lower emissions elsewhere.
Frontline communities fought for and won many historic investments in this bill. These include dozens of environmental justice programs, support for community-led efforts to clean up toxic pollution and adapt to climate change, and justice and labor standards. But these communities did not fight so hard only to trade these gains for giveaways to the fossil fuel industry that will continue to cause them harm.
We call on Congress to remove all harmful provisions in the bill, and we call on President Biden to utilize every tool available to him to mobilize the federal government to respond to the climate crisis in ways that invest in communities and do not perpetuate environmental racism.
Our Rights Won’t Be Taken by Alt-Right SCOTUS
Within the course of a week, the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) undermined Tribal sovereignty, opted out of combatting the climate crisis at the federal level, stripped bodily autonomy of people with uteruses, as well as revoked accountability if/when police not issue or honor Miranda rights.These recent decisions make it clear that SCOTUS’s primary purpose is to perpetuate white supremacy and patriarchy.
This is nothing new for Indigenous, Black, brown and LGBTQ2S+ people. This country was founded on genocide, stolen land, and stolen and enslaved peoples — not on the principles and practices of legitimacy, equity or justice. And today, the current majority of SCOTUS judges undoubtedly believe in upholding the original intent of the all-white, slave-owning men who wrote the constitution.
Last week, SCOTUS dealt a blow to tribal sovereignty, ruling that states have “jurisdiction to prosecute crimes committed by non-Indians against Indians in Indian country”(Castro-Huerta v. Oklahoma). SCOTUS is rarely a beacon for upholding Tribal Sovereignty, yet the sovereignty and self-determination of Indigenous Nations continues to be inherent, regardless of a colonizer’s approvals.
At the end of last week, SCOTUS ruled the Environmental Protection Agency does not have authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from power plants because Congress has not specifically authorized EPA to do so in the Clean Air Act (West Virginia v. EPA). During a time of increasing climate crisis, SCOTUS is crippling the most basic climate mitigation strategies.
Amongst the onslaught of SCOTUS decisions was the disregard for 50 years of protected bodily autonomy — the right to safe abortion (Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization). While this decision is truly staggering and laden with racism, misogyny, transphobia, and classism, many knew this day was coming. Congress has failed to codify abortion rights, and without federal protections, the right to body autonomy for people with uteruses is now subject to the whims of state politics.
The Vega v. Tekoh decision flagrantly reduces the accountability of police when they dishonor the Miranda rights of citizens in police custody. The reduction of accountability means that if taken into questioning, a person can be subjected to unjust interrogating and coercion, which may impact their trial and they would have no avenue for redress to hold police accountable nor change the impact the acts have on a trial. Although the decision does not reduce the obligation to issue Miranda rights, this decision will exacerbate the racist biases that funnel people into the prison industrial complex.
The undermining of Tribal sovereignty, the disregard of the increasing climate crisis and the attack on our rights over our own body’s has long impacted Black, Indigenous, People of Color, queer, and lower income people at disproportionate rates. These recent decisions perpetuate systemic racism further.
These recent decisions were only a few in a SCOTUS storm, and while they may feel like deep losses, we must remember that this was the result of actions by a few and we are many. We are engaged community members – relatives, friends, co-workers and neighbors. We will continue to pick up signs and rally. We will continue to venture into the halls of our local governments. And we will continue to call and write our elected leadership.
We must vote our values, and we will continue to build safety and security for ALL people. Our work to give voice to the rights of Mother Earth and all those who have long been marginalized or disregarded is more urgent than ever.
What Can YOU Do?
Get engaged - Find out who has been organizing in your community already and get involved. People already organizing on these issues need fresh energy. We need you. Host a sign making event, organize your neighbors to visit your elected leadership, and know the candidates in the next elections (local, state, and national).
Work on Healing - It’s okay to feel hurt. We need to move through grief in order to heal. To fight injustice, we must be healthy, whole people. We must continue to take care of each other and our communities during hard times. Particularly as People of Color, Black, Indigenous, queer, and economically oppressed people, healing is not a luxury - it is a necessity. In the words of Audre Lorde, “Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.”
Donate to Planned Parenthood Alaska: Donate Online Today
Abortion funds: https://www.plancpills.org/donate;
Birthworkers, such as the Alaska Native Native Birthworker Community: https://secure.everyaction.com/IXCe_XZI5kSPSlpzgTdCVQ2
Our human rights and the sovereignty of Native Nations are INHERENT, yet we have witnessed before the rolling back of inherent and hard won rights. We know that we must continue to both advocate for and exercise our rights.
Native Movement believes in grassroots community organizing and the power of people collectively advocating for justice. Native Movement will continue to uphold and acknowledge Native Nation’s sovereignty, fight for our human rights and resist the settler colonial powers that try to suppress our rights.
Closing Thoughts from Arts in Action Fellow
As Claire wraps up her Arts in Action Fellowship Program with Native Movement, we wanted to express our deepest gratitude to her for her work and support during the past three months. We look forward to seeing where her art practice takes her! Here are some final reflections on her time with us:
My time as Native Movement’s Arts in Action fellow is coming to a close. It has been a three month journey in which I have spent a week in Sitka with the team, attended the Just Transition Summit in Anchorage, learned to screen print, and have worked independently to create a piece to share with Native Movement.
I am so grateful to have had the opportunity to create a piece of art that reflects my shared values with Native Movement. I decided to make a piece on language revitalization. I am so excited that it will be shared within the community.
Though I have enjoyed the entire three months, a highlight that will remain with me is our first week together in Sitka. I loved that the organization’s annual planning meeting was centered around an important community event; the yaaw ḵu.éex’. That initial week was a good indicator of how the rest of my experience would be. Native Movement is a truly community focused organization and I am so happy that my art is in good hands with them.
The Arts in Action Fellowship with Native Movement is a 3-month part-time position which provides hands-on experience working with our team. The goal of this Fellowship is to give space to be creative in a collaborative environment, build capacity in our communities for Arts in Action, and support BIPOC, and queer artists/creatives who are interested in expanding their skills around Arts organizing.
Act of Continued Colonialism
Written by
Aqpik Apok, Gender Justice Director
Enei Begaye, Executive Director
cover photo: Illuminative
US Supreme Court Decision is an Act of Continued Colonialism, a Historical Step Backward
The Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe V. Wade is sickening, it is an abhorrent attack on human rights and the sovereignty of choice that people with wombs have over their own bodies. Native Movement is outraged and aggrieved at this historical backward step in the work to secure body sovereignty, autonomy of choice, reproductive justice, and fundamental rights to health care. Access to abortion is a basic human right, it is responsible healthcare. Reproductive choice is a fundamental right of all those with uteruses.
“The loss of 50 years of hard fought protections should enrage all who believe in freedom, access to safe healthcare for all, and ultimately just systems,” said Enei Begaye, Native Movement Executive Director.
In Alaska the US Supreme Court decision will not impact Alaskans’ legal rights to abortion, just yet. The Alaska Supreme Court has a history of continued protection of legal rights to abortion.
“While we applaud the Alaska Supreme Court, there continues to be steep inequalities to safe and accessible healthcare particularly for women and trans people. More needs to be done here in Alaska. This national action only underscores the importance of protecting hard fought for rights locally AND the need to continue advocating for increased accessibility, safety, and affordability of reproductive health care for all. We call on Alaskan elected leaders to make their stance pro-choice” said Aqpik Charlene Apok, Native Movement Gender Justice and Healing Director.
“We stand in outrage and grief with all those across the country, particularly in states without any protections outside of the national protections, who have been stripped of their rights to bodily autonomy and access to safe healthcare. We stand with our relatives across the country who are facing the imminent loss of rights and access over the next month. This Supreme Court decision is an act of national terrorism and enables racism to thrive,” stated Enei Begaye, Native Movement Executive Director.
Eliminating safe access to abortion is equally political, economic, and racist. Lack of access to safe and affordable reproductive healthcare often keeps people with uteruses in lower wage earning jobs and ensures future generations remain chained to the system of economic disenfranchisement. This Supreme Court decision removes the agency and autonomy of already strained and stressed people from marginalized communities, furthering inequities in a country that does not provide universal healthcare, living wages, and paid parental leave. The impacts of the Court’s decision will continue the perpetuation of systemic racism that disproportionately funnels people of color through state agencies and the prison industrial complex.
As Indigenous peoples we know all too well a history of taking. The actions of the U.S. Supreme Court continues to take; the taking of our body sovereignty and self determination is a glaring act of colonialism which seeks control, abuse of power, and profit. We must remain aware and engaged by mobilizing and supporting actions locally and in solidarity across the nation.
“Today there is palpable grief, anger, and suffering as already patients are being turned away in tears at clinics across the nation. This decision is already starting a crisis on top of the on-going Covid-19 pandemic, our current climate emergency and economic instability. We remind one another at this moment that we stand together and affirm collectively that no one controls our bodies,” said Princess Johnson, Native Movement Board Member.
Native Movement is partnered with organizations throughout Alaska and nationally; we are asking people to join a national day of action on July 9th, 2022. Alaska events are planned for Anchorage, Fairbanks, Juneau, & Homer.
“Until all of us are free, the few who think they are remain tainted with enslavement.” -Lee Maracle (First Nations writer)
#BANSOFFOURBODIES #abortionishumanrights #ourbodiesourrights #RoeVWade #AbortionIsHealthcare #reproductivejustice #SCOTUS #votePROchoice