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Native Americans

National Day Of Mourning

Since 1970, Indigenous people & their allies have gathered at noon on Cole's Hill in Plymouth to commemorate a National Day of Mourning on the US Thanksgiving holiday. Many Native people do not celebrate the arrival of the Pilgrims & other European settlers. Thanksgiving Day is a reminder of the genocide of millions of Native people, the theft of Native lands and the erasure of Native cultures. Participants in National Day of Mourning honor Indigenous ancestors and Native resilience. It is a day of remembrance and spiritual connection, as well as a protest against the racism and oppression that Indigenous people continue to experience worldwide.

‘No Indians Allowed’: An Open Letter To The Rapid City Community

For those who have been following the news, they will remember the Grand Gateway Hotel and may have heard about the recent bankruptcy filing. This resulted in a delay in justice and accountability. By filing for bankruptcy, the owners of the Grand Gateway Hotel have bought themselves time and halted the federal civil rights lawsuit against them. While justice is delayed, we are still fighting and holding the owners accountable to our people. This is not over. As we work to challenge the systems and injustices our people face on a daily basis, we also reflect on the impacts such blatant racism has on our community.

Racist Hotel Owners File For Bankruptcy Ahead Of Civil Rights Trial

Rapid City, SD – On Saturday, September 7 the Retsel Corporation, owners of the Grand Gateway Hotel, filed for bankruptcy just before the start of the federal civil rights trial brought by NDN Collective scheduled to begin Monday. NDN Collective filed a federal civil rights lawsuit in 2022 against the Grand Gateway Hotel after it denied service to Native Americans because of their race. The Retsel Corporation filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, which allows the business to remain open as it reorganizes its debts. Under this filing, all other litigation must pause until the business settles in bankruptcy court and that timeline is still to be determined. As a result, the civil rights lawsuit against the Grand Gateway is on hold.

The Lower Sioux Need Homes, So They’re Building Them From Hemp

For now, it’s only a gaping hole in the ground, 100-by-100 feet, surrounded by farm machinery and bales of hemp on a sandy patch of earth on the Lower Sioux Indian Reservation in southwestern Minnesota. But when construction is complete next April, the Lower Sioux — also known as part of the Mdewakanton Band of Dakota — will have a 20,000-square-foot manufacturing campus that will allow them to pioneer a green experiment, the first of its kind in the United States. They will have an integrated vertical operation to grow hemp, process it into insulation called hempcrete, and then build healthy homes with it. Right now, no one in the U.S. does all three.

Indigenous Group Launches Campaign Against New Voting Bills

An advocacy group for Native Americans is putting up billboards in various states to oppose measures that it says would increase voting restrictions. The campaign launched by the Global Indigenous Council comes as more state legislatures are considering voting laws like the one in Georgia that sparked corporate backlash. Tom Rodgers, president of the Global Indigenous Council and an enrolled Blackfeet tribal member, said the goal of the campaign is to draw attention to bills that would limit the number of available polling stations and ballot drop-off spots, calling the measures especially harmful to Native Americans who may not have access to the remaining voting locations.

Water Protector Locks To Enbridge Pipe Yard Gate On Black Friday

Backus, MN - This morning, one water protector locked their neck to the gate of one of Enbridge’s massive pipe yards south of Backus, Minnesota, as other rallied and shoppers consumed on Black Friday. Black Friday falls on Native American Heritage Day. Earlier in the week, the Trump administration approved the last major permits of Enbridge’s Line 3 project, following state approval through 818 wetlands and Anishinaabe treaty territory in northern Minnesota by Democratic Governor Tim Walz’ administration.

Scheer Intelligence: The California Genocide No One Talks About

UCLA history professor Benjamin Madley’s book An American Genocide: The United States and the California Catastrophe 1846-1873 details the killing of tens of thousands of Native Americans as the state was being settled in the 19th century. In their conversation, Madley tells Robert Scheer why he believes these massacres did, in fact, constitute genocide in its 20th century United Nations definition. He talks about white settlers’ dehumanization and paranoia about “the other,” and the exceptions to that way of thinking.

‘This Is What Voter Suppression Looks Like’

Two tribes in South Dakota and a voting rights group are suing four state officials, accusing them of failing to offer adequate voter registration services. The complaint says South Dakota “is depriving thousand of tribal members and other citizens of their federally guaranteed opportunities to register to vote and to change their voter registration addresses when these citizens interact with state agencies.” The Oglala Sioux Tribe, Rosebud Sioux Tribe and Four Directions filed a federal court complaint on Wednesday.

Trump Administration Delays #COVID-19 Relief Funds To Native Americans

The law, also known as the CARES Act, directs the Department of the Treasury to distribute the $8 billion to tribal governments "not later than 30 days" after its enactment. The deadline has come and gone even as outcry over the Trump administration's failure to release the funds grows in Indian Country." Indian Country is tired of waiting for the administration to follow the law by delivering pandemic aid to our communities and our people," President Bryan Newland of the Bay Mills Indian Community said on Monday, more than a week after the CARES Act deadline passed." Our lives and our livelihoods are at stake," said Newland, citing the growing number of COVID-19 cases in tribal communities, some of which have been disproportionately affected by the deadly disease."

Genocide Of Native Americans So Devastating “It Literally Cooled the Planet”

The mass genocide of the Native American people by European colonizers during the 15th and 16th centuries—in which an estimated 56 million indigenous people, or 90 percent of the population, were wiped out by violence and disease—was so complete and devastating, new research shows,that it triggered a planetary cooling. According to scientists at the University College London,the Europeans' mass killing of natives in the Caribbean and the Americas led to the populations' agricultural systems to go untended, leading to an overgrowth of vegetation all over the region.

Native American Leader Leonard Peltier Undergoes Triple Bypass Surgery

By Staff of Tele Sur - “My chest was opened and they took arteries from my legs and placed them in the blocked arteries. I had to be given a liter of blood,” Peltier wrote. Leonard Peltier, U.S. political prisoner and Native American leader, is in stable condition after undergoing triple bypass surgery, his defense committee announced Saturday morning. In a letter published by the International Leonard Peltier Defense Committee, Peltier wrote that he had been “taken to an outside hospital in Leesburg (Florida) for what I was told was a routine heart stress test,” due to shortness of breath. However, medics found “clogged arteries, 3 of them!” An immediate operation was scheduled and Peltier underwent triple bypass surgery. “My chest was opened and they took arteries from my legs and placed them in the blocked arteries. I had to be given a liter of blood,” he said, adding that now he's “back in prison” and getting around in a “wheelchair.” Still suffering from a slight shortness of breath, Peltier nevertheless said he was looking forward to his grandson's visit him next week.

Manifesto For A Naïve Activism

By Rev. Billy Talen for Common Dreams - It is the darkest of times; it is the brightest of times. A mentally ill President slouches toward the nuclear suitcase to mistake a Twitter feed for the big one. But he can see in the windows of the Oval Office, out in streets, the 99% and the Black Lives and the Kayaktivists and the Pussy Power and the Dreamers and the Water Protectors at Standing Rock. This succession of startling movements are the seeds of our revolution. The pattern over the five plus years since Occupy Wall Street is one of peaks and valleys. Up in the visionary light of a life-saving rebellion and then down into the aftermath of months and months of organizing, meetings and marches and rallies…

Right-Wing Think Tank Trying To Bring Down The Indian Child Welfare Act. Why?

By Rebecca Clarren for Investigate West - On the wall above his desk, attorney Timothy Sandefur keeps a copy of The Liberator, a 186-year-old abolitionist newspaper that features an etching of a slave auction on its masthead. Sandefur is the vice president for litigation at the Phoenix-based Goldwater Institute, a nonprofit right-wing think tank with a donor roster that includes the Mercer family (Donald Trump’s biggest campaign contributors) and Donors Trust, a dark-money funnel for the Koch brothers, the DeVos family, and others. Goldwater is largely known for its efforts to limit regulation, promote tax cuts, expand school choice, and advance private-property rights. Recently, the Goldwater Institute has stepped into an entirely different legal arena...

Native American Uranium Miners & Trump Budget

By Robert Alvarez for Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists - For minimum wage or less, they blasted open seams, built wooden beam supports in the mine shafts, and dug out ore pieces with picks and wheelbarrows. The shafts penetrated as deep as 1,500 feet, with little or no ventilation. The bitter-tasting dust was all pervasive, coating their teeth. They ate in the mines and drank water that dripped from the walls and, sometimes, developed chronic coughs. And much worse. Native American uranium miners were essential to the United States’ efforts to create a nuclear arsenal. From the late 1940s to the early 1970s, Indian people dug up approximately four million tons of uranium ore—nearly a quarter of the total national underground production in the United States used in nuclear weapons.

This Native American Tribe Wants To Block Trump’s Wall

By Julie M. Rodriguez for Care 2 - We've heard time and time again about Donald Trump's proposed wall between the U.S. and Mexico and why it's a terrible idea. But there's one potential obstacle the president-elect seems not to have noticed: a Native American reservation the size of Connecticut, located directly in the path of his proposed construction. The Tohono O'odham Nation has existed for thousands of years, straddling the line between the land that is now the U.S. and Mexico.

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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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