Indigenous culture

Meet The Indigenous Leader Using Psychedelic Medicine To Heal Traumas

November 26, 2024 James K. Rowe, Waging Nonviolence. Create! Health Care, Indigenous culture, Psychedelics, Trauma

When you’ve endured a living hell, then a visit to heaven on earth can provide a healing counterweight. This premise underlies Rueben George’s psychedelic healing work with Indigenous peoples harmed by colonial dispossession and violence. Rueben is a well-known Indigenous leader in Canada, having led opposition to a major fossil fuel pipeline that captured national attention and became a flashpoint in multiple election cycles. Despite fierce resistance, the Trans Mountain pipeline was recently completed and now pumps oil from the Alberta tar sands to the Pacific Coast over lands and waters long governed by Rueben’s Tsleil-Waututh Nation.

First Nation Shuts Down Highway Following Discovery Of Human Remains

October 31, 2024 Jon Thompson, Ricochet. Resist! Blockade, Canada, First Nations, Indigenous culture, Parks

Members of Red Rock Indian Band and their supporters brought all traffic to a halt between eastern and western Canada at the Nipigon Bridge for an hour on Monday morning. The shut-down came after pre-contact human remains were found at a nearby park construction site. Demonstrators from across the Robinson-Superior Treaty area called on Parks Canada to cease construction and acknowledge what the First Nation says are systemic mistakes that caused this to happen. In May, four unique sets of human remains were overturned in development of Parks Canada’s $37-million Lake Superior National Marine Conservation Area visitor’s centre in Nipigon, 100 kilometres east of Thunder Bay.

Colonizers Still: It Is Time For Our Relatives’ Things To Be Returned

July 21, 2024 Charmaine White Face, Popular Resistance. Educate! Indigenous culture, Museums, Religious Freedom, White Culture

The word “colonizing” means it comes from someplace else and takes over an area. For example, there are such things as “colonizing plants.” These are plants that were not originally from an area, but their seeds blow in and start growing, cutting off the food and water that was for the original plants. The one that usually comes to mind for me is the Russian Thistle that grows so big with its purple flowers and thorns and can take over an area in a couple of years, killing off all the original plants. It always makes me sad when American white people still try to tell us what to do because that is “colonization.” For human beings it means imposing a way of life, including values from another culture, onto those that have their own culture and ways of being.

ʔÁLʔAL A Place For Connection, Healing, And Growth

June 17, 2024 Rae Rose, Last Real Indians. Create! Indigenous Activism, Indigenous culture, Seattle, Washington

The Chief Seattle Club, CSC, has long since tended to and nurtured the seeds for growth, sowing opportunities, and holding space for healing. It is an important center we need for our Indigenous communities to survive and hopefully thrive in this urban Coast Salish territory of Seattle Washington. For me CSC has always stood as a place our Indigenous Urban community can find resources, give support, and or/ just be, no façade or mask necessary. This is CSC’s foundation, a place for us Urban Indians to connect or reconnect in an otherwise isolating urban setting. My own memories here at CSC go back decades, sitting in talking circles, filming, and learning from amazing indigenous teachers.

Indigenized Education: Reclaiming Language, Culture And Land

June 16, 2024 Brandy Calabaza, NDN Collective. Create! Education, Indigenous culture, Oceti Sakowin, Residential Schools

When you walk through the doors of the Oceti Sakowin Community Academy (OSCA), you are greeted as a relative. The school opened its doors to kindergarten students in the fall of 2022. It is the first of its kind, built on a foundation of Lakota language, culture, and philosophy. Everything that students learn – math, reading, writing – is taught through and with the traditional language of the Oceti Sakowin, giving its students an education that centers their identities. OSCA was developed over several years by tribal and community leaders, educators, students, and parents. The basis for the school is to address the need for culturally relevant curriculum, language and culture revitalization.

Indigenous Community Care: Traditions Of Reciprocity

April 2, 2024 Crystal Arnold, Grassroots Economic Organizing. Create! Education, Indigenous Communities, Indigenous culture, Oregon

Today, Indigenous culture is sustained and celebrated in Southern Oregon through the leadership of people like Teresa Cisneros and Jasi Swick at the SOESD Indian Education program. They gather a group weekly in both Jackson and Josephine counties, and offer the chance for Native families to practice traditional ways, such as talking circles, stories, dances, crafting and beadwork. “As an Indian educator, there are two reasons that I am interested in the Offers and Needs Market: Social emotional learning and place-based education,” explained Teresa.

North Carolina City Takes First Steps Toward Cherokee Cultural Corridor

January 14, 2024 Brittany Moseley, Next City. Create! Indigenous culture, Indigenous People, North Carolina

For decades, the town of Franklin, North Carolina, owned Noquisiyi (later interpreted as Nikwasi) Mound. The mound is the only thing that remains of a Cherokee settlement that dates back to the 16th century. The town’s meeting hall once sat atop the mound. Now, the Nikwasi Initiative is working to protect and honor local sites that play an essential role in the heritage of a regional Indian tribe — including the Nikwasi Mound. The organization, which was founded in 2019, is the byproduct of a conflict that arose between Franklin city officials and members of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, according to executive director Elaine Eisenbraun.

Traditional Indigenous Education Creates Stable Productive Members

August 5, 2023 Damon Corrie, Last Real Indians. Create! Education, Indigenous culture, Indigenous Peoples

I never understood why so-called ‘highly intelligent’ people never merely looked at the man-made non-indigenous educational system and realized it is a totally unnatural way for humans to learn, just because we have sophisticated technology does not mean the modern educational construct creates better human beings who are productive members of society if you were ever as privileged as I am to have seen and lived among TRADITIONAL indigenous societies (not the semi-modernized or modernized ones which are just as corrupted as the non-indigenous societies around them) who still use their own natural educational processes - you will quickly notice they have no crime, no homeless people, no addicts, and no mentally unstable children going on murder rampages in their societies (as happens in the USA every month), yet YOU are utterly convinced of the ‘superiority’ of the non-indigenous educational system. Where fools rule ignorance is bliss!

‘Tiny Ripples Of Change’: An Interview With Tara Houska

March 20, 2023 Susan Maas, Progressive.org. Organize! Indigenous Activism, Indigenous culture, Minnesota, Tara Houska

Minnesota - Through her kitchen window, just outside of Ranier, Minnesota—a tiny town east of International Falls—water protector Tara Houska gazes out at Rainy Lake. Called Gojijiing in Ojibwe, the 360-square-mile lake straddles the border between Minnesota and Ontario, Canada. Among the many islands, capes, and peninsulas around the lake is Bald Rock Point, the site of a sixteen-acre former resort built almost a century ago. Bald Rock Point is also now home to a longtime dream for Houska, a member of Couchiching First Nation. It’s the future location of a “long-term resistance camp” where she intends to raise her infant daughter, host Ojibwe language classes, conduct trainings, hold retreats, and nurture other activists.

Our Relatives’ Things

December 17, 2022 Charmaine White Face, Popular Resistance. Educate! Indigenous culture, South Dakota, Wounded Knee

The other day, one of my granddaughters called and said, “Grandma, did you hear? They’re returning articles from a museum in Barre, Vermont, that belonged to our relatives that were massacred at Wounded Knee.” “What?” I said. “What kind of things?” She said, “Things they were wearing or had when they were murdered at Wounded Knee in 1890. There are even baby moccasins, and little kids’ moccasins in there. The soldiers took them off the bodies and they kept them in a museum all these years. Now they’re giving them back.” As descendants of survivors of Wounded Knee, it is our relatives’ things that we are talking about so it hit home really hard. What was in there that might have belonged to our relatives? Moccasins? A shirt? A shawl? Then she asked, “What do you think should happen to these things?”

How A Reservation School Graduates 100% Of Students

December 4, 2022 Tim Trudell, Flatwater Free Press. Create! Education, Indigenous culture, Nebraska, Schools

Kids in the hallway smile more than they have in the past. Laughs are a little louder than they once were, teachers say. Student pride – and the graduation rate – are on the upswing at Santee’s public school. School leaders trace that success to a new effort to teach the tribe’s culture – the very thing that the education system, generations ago, banned Santee Dakota students from learning. Now, a new cultural program immerses students in the tribe’s language, history and customs for as long as an hour each school day. The program, embraced by most teachers and students, has boosted student attendance and helped the iSanti Community School in Niobrara hit a perfect, 100% graduation rate two years running, school leaders say. This move to embrace the Santee culture at the main school on the Santee Dakota Reservation hasn’t always gone smoothly.

Struggle To Save Oak Flats Exposes Ravages Of Colonization, Capitalism

September 19, 2022 Margaret Flowers, Clearing the FOG. Podcast Capitalism, colonization, Indigenous culture, Oak Flat, Sacred sites

In 2014, Congress used a midnight rider added to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) to hand the Indigenous Sacred Land at Oak Flats in Arizona over to a subsidiary of Rio Tinto, Resolution Copper, to mine, which would destroy the land and pollute the local water. Apache Stronghold and its allies are fighting to protect the land and with it, their cultural identity and religious freedom. A new Bureau of Land Management report and conflict within the Ninth Circuit Court are promising for them. Clearing the FOG speaks with Dr. Wendsler Nosie, Sr. about the significance of Oak Flats and how it exposes the ways colonization and capitalism harm and threaten the existence of most people in the United States, not just the Native American population. Dr. Nosie discusses spirituality, ancient prophecies and the urgent need to work together to change course.

Nakani Native Program: Bringing Back Traditional Ways Of Healing

June 3, 2022 Rae Rose, Last Real Indians. Educate! health, Indigenous culture, Medicines

Nakani is a word that comes from the Tlingit language. Nakani is defined as a person, or entity, which serves as a connector and/ or go between for different people, places, and cultures. This is the role each member of Nakani’s Native Program tries to embody as they help bring together all tribal communities to learn from and about one another. This word is a perfect descriptor for its members and leadership. This description is also a perfect introduction to each of the members I interviewed for this article. Nakani Native Program has undergone many changes since it began as an offshoot of American Friends Service Committee, AFSC. AFSC, is a non-profit Quaker organization founded by the Religious Society of Friends.

Mayans Call For International Action To Halt Violations Of Their Rights

May 25, 2022 Last Real Indians. Resist! Guatemala, Indigenous culture, Indigenous Rights, Mayan People

The Mayan Council Chilam B'alam of the K'iches, the Mayan Council Komon Ajq'ijab', the National Coordinator of the Territories of Life Network (Coordinadora Nacional Red Territories de Vida), the National Ajq'ijab' Council "Oxlajuj Ajpop," and the International Indian Treaty Council (IITC), inform the national and international communities that on May 4th, 2022 they presented a communication requesting urgent action by the United Nations Special Rapporteur in the field of cultural rights, the UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion or Belief, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) Early Warning and Urgent Action Procedure.

Significant Washington Land Returned To The Colville Tribe

May 10, 2022 Owen L. Oliver, Nature. Create! Indigenous culture, Indigenous Peoples, Land Back Movement, Washington

In Washington state, nestled in a habitat corridor linking the Cascades to the Rockies, in the heart of the Tunk Creek Valley, there’s a conservation story that is closely tied to the peoples connected to this land—and continues to breathe with the transfer of Indigenous lands back to the original stewards. It takes place on a large ranch, owned by the Figlenski family for over four generations, who have their own stories connected to the valley. As generations of the Figlenski family began to pass away, Ernie Figlenski knew he’d only let go of the property under the conditions it would still be intact as well as healthily managed—unlike some nearby properties that have been broken apart and transferred without preservation in mind.

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