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Historic Investigation Of US Boarding Schools For Native Children

For the first time in its 248-year existence, the United States government investigated its own Federal Indian Boarding Schools, a genocidal element of the racist settler colonial project by which the country was formed. From the passage of the Civilization Fund Act in 1819 up until 1969, the U.S. government stole Indigenous children from their parents, and separated and killed family members as part of a broader policy to steal territory and sever the cultural, economic and spiritual ties between Indigenous peoples. Children were forced into boarding schools to assimilate to the European settlers’ way of life.

Chris Hedges: Organized Oblivion

New York - I am in the The Krikor and Clara Zohrab Information Center next to the St. Vartan Armenian Cathedral in Manhattan. I am holding a bound, hand-written memoir, which includes poetry, drawings, and scrapbooked images, by Zaven Seraidarian, a survivor of the Armenian genocide. The front cover of the book, one of six volumes, reads “Bloody Journal.” The other volumes have titles such as “Drops of Springtime,” “Tears” and “The Wooden Spoon.” “My name will remain immortal on the earth,” the author writes. “I will speak about myself and tell more.”

United Nations Security Council Renews Mission For Western Sahara

What has been described as “Africa’s last colony”, the Western Sahara territory is still waiting to exercise its decades-long desire for national independence and sovereignty. Formerly known as the “Spanish Sahara”, the area has been under the domination of the Kingdom of Morocco since 1975. The liberation movement which grew out of the struggle for freedom is popularly known as the Polisario Front. The organization engaged in an armed struggle and mass political campaign since the 1970s having designated itself as a “government in waiting”.

AES Interrupts A $50b Shakedown In The Sahel

In the shadow of the Aïr Mountains, along the southern edge of the Sahara, a Nigerien town has been poisoned. The lands around the town of Arlit, home to 200,000 Nigeriens, is scarred by an enormous open-pit uranium mine run by a French company known as Orano. Following the 1960's independence struggle in Niger, Orano, a French state-owned enterprise, entered into a number of joint ventures with the neocolonial government of Niger as well as those of Spain, and Japan. These ventures (known as SOMAÏR and COMINAK) have since extracted over 145,000 tons of uranium from the mines around Arlit.

Native Boarding Schools Were Genocidal: Healing Starts With Truth

When I was in middle school, at a majority-white public school in Montana, I was given an assignment to interview a grandparent about their childhood. The questions were designed to help us better understand what we did and did not have in common with each other. When I interviewed my maternal grandmother, I asked her whether there was ever a bully at her school. Her answer surprised me; she said she was the bully. “I always had soap in my mouth,” she said, punished for “talking back” to her teachers—and punished for speaking her first language: Blackfeet. My grandmother was a student at the St. Ignatius Mission and School, a church-run, assimilationist boarding school on the Flathead Indian Reservation in western Montana.

The Question Of Hamas And The Left

Recently, a rash of articles has surfaced criticizing the Western left for “celebrating” Hamas. Most of these critiques say that reducing support for Palestinian resistance to supporting Hamas is a disservice to Palestinians because Palestinians represent a multiplicity of voices with different political dispositions. Instead, these arguments call on the Western left to reckon with the complexity and diversity of Palestinian politics. Bashir Abu Menneh’s article in Jacobin, “The Palestinian Resistance Isn’t a Monolith,” chastises what he claims is the left’s celebration of a “socially regressive” movement such as Hamas in an article that reads more like a hidden critique of armed resistance itself than of Hamas.

France Losing Grip On Another Colonial Possession

Fears are growing that French security forces could remain indefinitely in New Caledonia after being sent to quell deadly violence this week over stalled moves towards full independence from France. As France loses its grip on its colonial possession following recent debacles in West Africa,  French President Emmanuel Macron flew into the Pacific Islands country on Thursday. He was seeking a political solution with local parties following the eruption of protests and violence that included gun battles, which claimed the lives of two Gendarmes (French police) and four civilians. Macron said a 3,000-strong force deployed from France would remain “as long as necessary,” emphasising a return to calm and security was “the absolute priority.”

Apache Stronghold Standing In The Way Of A Massive Copper Mine

In the heart of the Arizona high desert lies a battle for the soul of the land. The ancient, sacred grounds of Apache Native territory are under threat from a looming giant — a massive copper mine that promises riches for the locals, and a pathway to the so-called green transition. But, as is often the case, it comes at a cost. The San Carlos Apache tribe calls it Chi’chil Bildagoteel, English speakers call it Oak Flat. It sits on a mountainous plateau within a 17.3-kilometer oasis in the Tonto National Forest. Rio Tinto and BHP, two of the world’s biggest mining companies, have staked their claim here through a joint venture called Resolution Copper.

Peace Walk 2024: Mindfully Bring The Sacred Back Into Your Journey

Good morning. [Native greeting] Hello, everyone. [Native language]. My name is Sherri Mitchell. My name in my language, Weh’na Ha’mu Kwasset. I am from the Penobscot Nation. My family is Bear clan from the Penobscot Nation and Crow clan from the Passamaquoddy tribe. [Native language] I’m happy to be here with you today. It felt really important for me to come and support what’s happening here for many reasons. As I’ve been thinking about what I wanted to say in these brief comments, this morning, there are a lot of things that I thought about. I have a very dear friend who is currently doing a pilgrimage through territories where only the bones of her ancestors remain: through the Warsaw Ghetto and Auschwitz.

Recent Settler Violence In The West Bank, Explained

Violent Israeli settler attacks against Palestinians in the West Bank have skyrocketed ever since October 7. Before that, 2022 and 2023 were already setting record highs in settler violence, but the nature of settler attacks today is on an entirely different level. Settlers are now expelling entire Palestinian communities from their villages for the first time in decades. According to the UN, Israeli settlers expelled about 1,200 Palestinians from some 25 rural communities across the West Bank, including seven communities that have been completely depopulated.

West Bank On Strike Following Israel’s Tulkarem Massacre

A comprehensive strike was declared across the occupied West Bank city of Tulkarem on 21 April in mourning of at least 19 Palestinians killed by Israeli forces during a three-day raid there. Israeli troops withdrew from the city earlier on 21 April, after inflicting widespread destruction in Tulkarem’s Nour Shams refugee camp. Hamas called in a statement after midnight on Saturday for all people “to ignite confrontations with the criminal Zionist occupation … in the West Bank and Al-Quds, in response to the criminal massacre in Nour Shams camp in Tulkarem.”

Niger: Demonstrators Take The Streets To Protest Foreign Forces

Hundreds of demonstrators took part in a protest against the presence of foreign forces in Niger, including the armed forces of the United States, which has a military base in the north of the country. The demonstrators gathered in the center of the capital city of Niamey, at the call of civil society organizations close to Niger's ruling military junta whose members took part in the demonstration. “We have called for the departure of the Americans and all foreign forces from Niger, and the CNSP (acronym for the organization of the military junta of Niger) has taken our concerns into account, and it is in this context that we have come to support and reaffirm our support for the CNSP

Maori Activists Use Radical Protest To Dismantle Colonial Narratives

On Dec. 11, 2023, members of the protest group Te Waka Hourua defaced the English part of “The Treaty of Waitangi: Signs of a Nation” exhibit at Te Papa Tongarewa, or the Museum of New Zealand, with power tools and spray paint. The exhibit introduces museum visitors to the Treaty of Waitangi, Aotearoa New Zealand’s founding constitutional document, via two large sets of wooden panels which present the Māori and English texts of the treaty. The protesters argued that Te Papa Tongarewa, commonly known as “Te Papa,” had not sufficiently highlighted the differences between the English and Māori texts and their unequal legal status, instead representing them as accurate translations of each other that had equal status in law.

Palestinian Resistance Demands ‘Land Back’ On Land Day

Land Day was a qualitative, cumulative event in the context of the ongoing and comprehensive battle that our people are waging against the Zionist colonialist and racist settler project. On this day, the Arab masses in the occupied interior demonstrated their insistence on clinging to their land and not abandoning it, and the unity of the land, identity and destiny. We call on our masses in the occupied territories in 1948 to unite and confront the racist Zionist policies and laws, and the necessity of abandoning any illusions regarding political, electoral and parliamentary participation in the enemy’s institutions...

Palestinians Will Remain on Palestinian Land

On 15 February 2024, Jared Kushner (Donald Trump’s son-in-law and former senior advisor during his presidency) sat down for a long conversation with Professor Tarek Masoud at Harvard University. During this discussion, Kushner talked about ‘Gaza’s waterfront property’, which, he said, could be ‘very valuable’. ‘If I was Israel’, he continued, ‘I would just bulldoze something in the Negev [desert], I would try to move people [from Gaza] in there… [G]oing in and finishing the job would be the right move’. Kushner’s choice of the Negev, or al-Naqab in Arabic, is interesting.

Urgent End Of Year Fundraising Campaign

Online donations are back! Keep independent media alive. 

Due to the attacks on our fiscal sponsor, we were unable to raise funds online for nearly two years.  As the bills pile up, your help is needed now to cover the monthly costs of operating Popular Resistance.

Urgent End Of Year Fundraising Campaign

Online donations are back! 

Keep independent media alive. 

Due to the attacks on our fiscal sponsor, we were unable to raise funds online for nearly two years.  As the bills pile up, your help is needed now to cover the monthly costs of operating Popular Resistance.

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