In this post:
- Line 3 water protectors seeing case dismissed
- Native Governance Center online event: Sovereignty and Outdoor Spaces
- Amnesty International on the U.S.’s ongoing failure to protect Indigenous women from sexual violence
- Reflections from a white Evangelical on Native American genocide, the white supremacist terrorist in Buffalo, NY, and Replacement Theory
- Lakota People’s Law Project: Mining is destroying the Black Hills (includes action request)
Line 3 water protectors seeing case dismissals
“In the past few weeks, a number of water protectors have seen criminal cases dismissed by prosecutors in so-called Northern Minnesota for alleged actions taken to stop the Line 3 pipeline in defense of the water, the climate, and the treaty rights of the Anishinaabeg people,” according to the Global Land Alliance.
Native Governance Center online event: Sovereignty and Outdoor Spaces
“Native nations are using their sovereignty in a big way to reclaim and reimagine outdoor recreation and tourism,” the Native Governance Center said.
It’s hosting a free, virtual event: Sovereignty and Outdoor Spaces, on Wednesday, June 22, from noon to 1 p.m. (both Zoom and Facebook Live).
“Interest in outdoor recreation surged during the COVID-19 pandemic; today, the number of Americans adventuring outdoors continues to grow,” the Center wrote. “Unfortunately, the outdoor recreation industry and the mainstream conservation movement have historically excluded Indigenous people.”
The event will explore:
- Examples of Indigenous-designed outdoor recreation efforts
- Ways non-Indigenous folks can support these efforts
- Tips for recreating respectfully
Amnesty International on the U.S.’s ongoing failure to protect Indigenous women from sexual violence
“Sexual violence against American Indian and Alaska Native (AI/AN) women is at epidemic proportions in the USA and survivors are frequently denied justice,” according to Amnesty International’s just released report: The Never Ending Maze: Continued Failure to Protect Native Women from sexual violence in the USA.
Despite piecemeal efforts to address this, the USA is failing in its obligation to protect AI/AN women from sexual violence and is actively restricting tribal governments from doing so. The high rates of violence faced by AI/AN women have been compounded by the USA’s steady erosion of tribal government authority and refusal to untangle the complex jurisdictional maze that survivors face. Further, the federal government has exacerbated matters by chronically under-resourcing law enforcement agencies and Indigenous health service providers.
Amnesty International
The report includes 30 recommendations, from 1) The US government should ratify a number of international human rights treaties, including the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, to 30) The Department of Justice should report annually regarding sexual violence against American Indian and Alaska Native women and criminal justice responses.
Executive Summary here, and Full Report here.
Reflections on Native American genocide, the white supremacist terrorist in Buffalo, NY, and Replacement Theory
Robert P. Jones, author of White Too Long: The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity, was in Minnesota recently, attending a Healing Minnesota Stories Sacred Sites Tour and the “Beyoncé Mass” held at George Floyd Square. It was the same day a white supremacist terrorist killed 10 people in a predominantly black neighborhood in Buffalo, NY because he bought into the hate-filled and false rhetoric of Replacement Theory.
Jones, who is Evangelical, reflects on that day in “The beloved community and the heresy of white replacement” published by the Religious News Service.
The beloved community is the repudiation of the violent theology of replacement germinating in white supremacy. We white Christians must figure out how to drag ourselves and our peers to kneel at the altar of repentance. We must confess our complicity in the heretical and only half-unconscious belief that God has ordained whites to replace — that is to say, to kill and displace — others, and that, once accomplished, white dominance is to be perpetually preserved as the divinely approved state of affairs. …
If our pastors and Sunday school leaders did not talk this Sunday about the 10 human beings killed by white supremacy and justified by a depraved vision of European Christendom, we are responsible.
Robert P. Jones
Jones article quotes Healing Minnesota Stories co-founder Jim Bear Jacobs from the Sacred Site Tour: “I don’t need white Christians to be smarter. I need them to be better.”
Lakota People’s Law Project: Mining is destroying the Black Hills (includes action request)
“[T]oday, the Black Hills’ landscape and water systems are being desecrated by a host of exploratory and mining operations because of an archaic law that favors ease of colonization and extraction over the health of the land, water, and people,” writes the Lakota People’s Law Project.
“The western half of South Dakota is already threatened by contamination, and newly proposed mining at a greater scale — such as the F3 Gold company’s Jenny Gulch Project — will increase the danger and widen its scope.”
The Lakota People’s Law Project is asking people to tell U.S. Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland “to suspend all claims, in perpetuity, until the Lakota’s treaty rights are properly acknowledged and honored.
“The Landback movement seeks to return the Black Hills to the Lakota. But even that will be for naught if the land itself is destroyed before it is home again with the Oceti Sakowin.”
healingmnstories.wordpress.com 