Juneteenth has #Indigenous history. When Black people who escaped slavery in Florida joined the Seminole Tribe, they became Black Seminoles. They're also called Mascogos b/c they migrated to Mexico, where slavery was already abolished. The Mascogos built the town El Nacimiento in 1852, but still interacted with Seminoles in Texas who brought them Juneteenth in the 1870s. Black Seminoles in Mexico had to survive slavery, the Trail of Tears, & the US-Mexico Border to celebrate #juneteenth#history
BNSF Railway must pay nearly $400 million to the Swinomish Tribe in Washington state, a federal judge ordered Monday after finding that the company intentionally trespassed when it repeatedly ran 100-car trains carrying crude oil across the tribe’s reservation.
The route crosses sensitive marine ecosystems along the coast, over water that connects with the Salish Sea, where the tribe has treaty-protected rights to fish.
#Indigedon reply to this post with dono links, your projects, etc etc! Or just use the hashtag in a post and I'll hopefully be able to find it!
Everyone else, BOOOOST and feel free to DM me stuff you'd like me to share that's #Indigenous related! It'd be super helpful if you'd stop using the #Native and #Indigenous tags... but I know y'all whites in particular love taking up space that ain't yours :blobfoxbreadsnootgoogly:
Today in Labor History June 17, 1876: U.S. army soldiers attacked an encampment of Lakota and Cheyenne in Rosebud, South Dakota. Led by Crazy Horse, the native warriors routed the Americans. The Cheyenne called it the Battle Where the Girl Saved Her Brother because the fight involved Buffalo Calf Road Woman, who courageously road out into the middle of the battle, grabbed her brother, and carried him to safety. The area had been promised to the tribes through treaties, signed after they had won previous battles. However, when gold was discovered in the Black Hills, the U.S. government wanted the land. Buffalo Calf Road Woman also fought at Little Bighorn, alongside her husband, Black Coyote. She was the one who struck the blow that knocked Custer off his horse, resulting in his death.
Went to an Indigenous event yesterday in San Francisco where they built a fire with volcanic rocks to make acorn mush. The guy doing it said it’s important to get these round, tumbled rocks and they usually come from east of the Sierras. They ran a very inclusive event yesterday where different Indigenous groups came and asked the Yelamu people for permission to come ashore (into the Bay). Everyone shared their songs and stories. I learned a lot.
Encounters With Indigeneity: Writing About Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples by Jeremy Beckett, 2014
Jeremy Beckett has carried out long-term field research with Australian Aboriginal people and Torres Strait Islanders. He is the author of Past and Present: The Construction of Aboriginality and Wherever I Go.
Giving Two-Spirit people a safe place - Lakota couple opens Rapid City, S.D.’s first Indigenous Two-Spirit space
RAPID CITY, S.D. – Two women embraced each other on the north side of Rapid City surrounded by around 30 community members as they opened the city’s first Indigenous-led LGBTQIA+ center, Uniting Resilience, on Thursday, Feb. 29.
'The deliberation on parole takes place in a moment where Peltier’s health is declining. The now 79-year-old political prisoner struggles with diabetes, loss of vision in one eye, has had open heart surgery, has suffered from an aortic aneurysm, and experiences lingering effects from contracting COVID-19.
'Activists have emphasized that President Joe Biden has the power to grant Peltier clemency at the stroke of a pen. “This administration, the Biden Administration, has said that Native American rights are a priority to them, and yet they’ve got the longest sitting Indigenous political prisoner locked up and we’ve seen no action from the federal government,” said Nick Tilsen, leader of the NDN Collective, an organization building Indigenous collective power in the US, speaking to ICT News. “If he dies in prison this will forever be a part of that administration’s legacy as it relates to Native people.”'
Peoples Dispatch:
The longest held political prisoner in the United States just got his first hearing in over a decade
#PHXPD routinely uses excessive force & discriminates against #Black, #Hispanic [#Latino] & #NativeAmerican [#indigenous] people, part of a broad pattern of unconstitutional policing in America. #Justice investigators also found that the PHXPD violates the rights of the #homeless, improperly arresting them & destroying their #property.
Today in Labor History June 8, 1917: The Granite Mountain/Spectacular Mine disaster killed 168 men in Butte, Montana. It was the deadliest underground mine disaster in U.S. history. Within days, men were walking out of the copper mines all over Butte in protest of the dangerous working conditions. Two weeks later, organizers had created a new union, the Metal Mine Workers’ Union. They immediately petitioned Anaconda, the largest of the mine companies, for union recognition, wage increases and better safety conditions. By the end of June, electricians, boilermakers, blacksmiths and other metal tradesmen had walked off the job in solidarity.
Frank Little, a Cherokee miner and member of the IWW, went to Butte during this strike to help organize the miners. Little had previously helped organize oil workers, timber workers and migrant farm workers in California. He had participated in free speech fights in Missoula, Spokane and Fresno, and helped pioneer many of the passive resistance techniques later used by the Civil Rights movement. He was also an anti-war activist, calling U.S. soldiers “Uncle Sam’s scabs in uniforms.” On August 1, 1917, vigilantes broke into the boarding house where he was staying. They dragged him through the streets while tied to the back of a car and then hanged him from a railroad trestle.
Author Dashiell Hammett had been working in Butte at the time as a striker breaker for the Pinkerton Detective Agency. They had tried to get him to murder Little, offering him $5,000, but he refused. He later wrote about the experience in his novel, “Red Harvest.” It supposedly haunted him throughout his life that anyone would think he would do such a thing.
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The idea that voting for Biden is going to save us from fascism was again betrayed by the man's own actions, this time with his executive order yesterday to shut down the southern border. So desperate for voters that he's making moves right out of the Trump playbook.
And this is directly connected to the Israeli Genocide in Gaza, for which Biden continues to give his "unwavering" support.
How?
Since 2014, the Israeli company Elbit Systems has provided U.S. Customs and Border Protection the same high-powered radar, underground sensors & facial recognition software used against Palestinians. Thus, they are one of the biggest beneficiaries of the increased surveillance & militarization of the U.S. southern border.
Much of this surveillance is on Tohono O’odham land, forcing the Tohono O’odham people to live under constant surveillance by the U.S. and Israel. But it's not just Indigenous people living in the U.S. who are subjected to the scrutiny and violence of Israeli technology. Thousands of U.S. state and federal law enforcement officials have been trained by Israeli police and security agents. LAPD uses Israeli drone technology to surveil it's lower income communities of color. And there has been considerable collaboration between Israeli military and Cop City, in Atlanta.
The Isanti nation (colonizer name Santee Sioux) along the border of so-called Nebraska and South Dakota has been depending on bottled water for five years. The groundwater is contaminated with manganese - which means boiling it only makes it worse. More bad news: grant funds for pallets of water for their 1,000+ relatives has run out, so the tribe is now bleeding funds - AND their supplier has been coming up both late and short on their deliveries. And it's 45 minutes to the nearest hyvee or walmart.
While the tribe fights to get funding for a pipeline to connect to clean water in south dakota, supporters have launched an emergency water drive. Collection is at the Indian Center in Lincoln, NE at 1100 Miitary Rd. Monetary donations are requested via venmo @IndianCenter or @ThreeCrows, or via paypal @BlueHeronTiospaye - label donations as "water". #indigenous#water#mutualAid
Today in Labor History June 4, 1932: Chilean politicians and the military carried out a coup d'etat, installing Marmaduke Grove, who declared Chile a "socialist republic." However, workers were given no means to participate. The Communist Party and many unions opposed the new government because it was run by the military and not by the workers. However, the “socialist” government did temporarily halt evictions and ordered the “Caja de Crédito Popular” to return tools and clothes that workers had pawned there. They also pardoned everyone who participated in the Sailors' mutiny of 1931, when enlisted men rebelled against their officers and the state. Furthermore, they provided free meals to the unemployed. Twelve days later, the military ended the "workers republic." That same year, Farabundo Marti led a short-lived, but successful communist revolution of indigenous peasants in El Salvador. It was violently suppressed by General Martinez a few months later in La Matanza, a genocide of up to 40,000 mostly indigenous people. Martinez then became the first head of state to officially recognize Hitler as leader of Germany.
#TwoSpirit people were the first targets of attempts to assimilate Native people into white culture because our identities were so incongruous with European values. Two Spirits represent the #Indigenous view of gender and sexuality-- one that is fluid, not fixed, not sex essentialist. #Queer people are essential to #Native communities.
Today in Labor History June 1, 1916: The predominantly immigrant iron miners of the Mesabi Range, Minnesota, participated in a seemingly spontaneous strike in response to overpriced housing and goods, long hours and poor pay. The group was led by radical Finns who quickly drew the attention and aid of the IWW. Wobbly organizers, including Carlo Tresca, Joe Schmidt, Frank Little, and later Joe Ettor and Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, came to help local strike leaders draw up a list of demands which included an 8-hour day, timed from when workers entered the mine until they were outside; a pay-scale based upon the actual hours worked; paydays twice monthly; immediate back-pay for hours worked upon severance; abolition of the Saturday night shift; abolition of the hated contract mining system. In the Contract Mining system, the bosses hired and paid “skilled” miners to do most of the mining. The contract miners then had to hire their own laborers and pay them out of their meagre wages. The contract miners were often native-born people, while the laborers were usually immigrants. This created a racialized two-tiered system that divided the workers and made it harder to organize. The bosses would routinely offer the contract miners a small concession to get them back to work, while offering the even more poorly paid laborers nothing, destroying their solidarity and ending the strike. Flynn would later go on to cofound the American Civil Liberties Union. Tresca would go on to became a leading organizer against both fascism and Stalinism. He was assassinated in 1943, possibly on orders of the Genovese crime family, possibly on orders of Stalin, and possibly Italian fascists. Frank Little, who was Native American, was later murdered by vigilantes during a strike in Butte. You can read my biography of Frank Little here: https://michaeldunnauthor.com/2024/04/05/frank-little/
Today in Labor History June 1, 1873: Captain Jack (Kintpuash), who led a band of 52 Modoc warriors against the U.S. army near Tule Lake, California, finally surrendered to U.S. troops. The fight was part of the Modoc Wars, in which the Modoc tribe (southern Oregon and Northern California) resisted domination by the U.S. This was the most expensive Indian War in US history. Initially, the Modocs were highly successful, at least until the U.S. brought in significant reinforcements, encircled them, starved them out, leading many of Captain Jack’s own warriors to join with the U.S. forces to help capture him. It was also the only time Indigenous Americans killed a U.S. general. For decades, Kintpuash’s head was displayed in the Smithsonian Museum in Washington, D.C.
I've not been gaining much traction on Mastodon so I thought it was time for an #Introduction! I am creeping up on my mid-fifties, I am a Life/ADHD coach, I was diagnosed with #ADHD at 51, I've been diagnosed with #HealthAnxiety, I enjoy #CanPoli and #ABPoli but the polarization as of late stresses me out, I am a #hockey fan first, #EdmontonOilers second, I am an ally of #LGBTQ and the #Indigenous People of Canada. Give me a #follow and I'll return the favour!
Indiana University's "Liberation Commencement" was a celebration of the students' brave commitment to fighting powerful institutions and their involvement in challenging Zionism and the Palestinian genocide.