reposted from Unist’ot’en Camp
We cannot fight for our space on Mother Earth using colonial tactics; autonomous self-determination includes asserting our responsibility to defend ourselves by any means necessary. No surrender. No compromise.
August 8, 2013 – On the unceded lands of our Beautiful Turtle Island
Emerging from the 4th Annual Unist’ot’en Action camp grassroots members of the present nations have formed an alliance against industrial exploitation within their respective sovereign territories.
We have been suffering assault after assault at the hands of the settler nation since first contact. Our land, water, and freedom are continuously abused for profit to feed the genocidal wave of corporate greed. Indigenous nations are facing an onslaught of industrial exploitation and expansion that is outright killing our Peoples and all that sustains us. We recognize that we are all connected and that our decisions affect other nations. We have an inherent responsibility to ensure our actions are not negatively impacting our neighbouring nations and will not tolerate others who are inflicting harm on our Peoples. Emerging from this responsibility we formed the Indigenous Action Alliance.
We are not represented by illegal colonial systems or tribal/band councils. We are not waiting for colonial authorities to recognize us or solve our problems. We are acting in accordance with the ancient first laws of our lands which supersede the illegal colonial governments; and we are acting now. We have been waiting too long for our co-opted leaders to stand with the people and for the false countries of this continent to rectify the wrongs. We are acting autonomously representing our sovereign, decolonizing nations to create the change that needs to happen outside and within colonial society.
Too many of our people are comfortable with colonization and oppression. We need to leave common ideas of resistance behind us and move forward in a new way with anew vision. Working in a colonial system is soul destroying. We are not concerned with how our revolution will be received by settler culture or desire to be seen in a favourable light. We do not need nor want to be liked. We are more concerned with the work that needs to be done rather than being talking heads for the media and the world. We are working together, as separate and distinct nations, against a common enemy while maintaining our culture and ways of life as opposed to a pan-Indian framework that many of our people subscribe to.
We respect and recognize each nation’s traditional governance and autonomy over their lands including the reinstatement of traditional roles such as warriors.We are working together to empower each other’s sovereignty, authority, and jurisdiction to eradicate the illegal and occupying forces of the military state across this continent. Some nations have entered into Sacred Peace Pipe Treaties according to the oral traditions of the pre-existing Sovereign Nations with the capabilities of carrying the agreements made on a nation to nation basis; they have retained authority over their traditional lands. We do not answer to nor impose our actions on other nations, rather, we work together to empower each other in the struggle for freedom, to strengthen our resistance, and support each other in decolonizing our nations.
We cannot fight for our space on Mother Earth using colonial tactics; autonomous self-determination includes asserting our responsibility to defend ourselves by any means necessary. No surrender. No compromise.
In the embodiment of resistance, Indigenous Action Alliance; Grassroots members of:
Hopi/Comanche,Wet’suwet’en, Unist’ot’en, Ahousaht, Snuneymuxw, Athabasca Chipweyan First Nation, Mohawk Nation of the Grand River Territory, Cowessess First Nation, NuxalkNation, Ulgacho First Nation, Ts’ilhcot’en Nation, Sechelt Nation, SliamonNation, and Stol’o Nation.
For more info contact Ancestral Pride at [email protected], [email protected]
