Above photo: Ikiya Collective Facebook Page.
Unceded Piscataway Lands AKA Washington D.C.- As the sun rises an autonomous Indigenous-led delegation of Black, Indigenous, people of the global majority and their allies have shut down the streets surrounding the Department of Interior Washington D.C early this morning painting CLIMATE EMERGENCY in front of the building.
The group is demanding President Biden declare a climate emergency and stop approving fossil fuel projects, including leases, exports, plastic plants, and pipelines. Permitting new fossil fuel projects will further entrench us in a fossil fuel economy for decades to come — and encourage the continued violence and genocide the fossil fuel industry brings to Black, Indigenous and communities of the global majority.
Two provisions buried in the Inflation Reduction Act would require massive oil and gas leasing in the Gulf of Mexico and Alaska, reinstate an illegal 2021 Gulf lease sale and mandate that millions more acres of public lands be offered for leasing before any new solar or wind energy projects could be built on public lands or waters.
As Indigenous peoples we know the devastation our communities are facing from climate chaos is linked directly to the fossil fuel industry and the violence they commit upon our land, they commit upon our bodies, we refuse to continue to be your sacrifice zones.
Statement from the group:
We refuse to be complicit in the demise of our communities through co2colonialism. We know violence to the land results in violence to Indigenous bodies. Our people are dying from climate chaos already and with them our culture, our plant knowledge, our language, our sacred ways.
We are not victims of the United States when we fight for our sovereignty and self-determination. We will not sit by silently as we have our lives devalued by white supremacy, while we are stripped of our sovereignty.
Our struggle to abolish white supremacy and it’s systems that are killing us recognizes the political importance of accountability and refuses to embrace the rhetoric of victimhood, even as we vigilantly keep fighting to bring attention to the continued genocide and oppression of our people.
We are inseparable from nature. We are older than the United States, older than western imperialism, older than colonization.
And still the United States, this extractive and exploitative system, does everything it can to sever our connection to Mother Earth, lying to steal our sovereignty and strip us of our self-determination.
Politicians don’t care about us, presidents don’t take care of us, these systems were created to destroy us.
But we will fight until the natural balance is restored.
For generations, they’ve arrested us, tear gassed us, poisoned us…
But they cannot stop us.
We will continue to fight so that our young will thrive.
Protecting the sacred is our Indigenous responsibility, passed down generation after generation. We are the prayers of our ancestors…
We are the actions of those who walked before us…
Another world is possible.
Expect us.