Steeped in centuries of tradition, land belonging to the US’s Indigenous communities is sacred to them.
However, decades of unfettered fossil fuel and nuclear ore extraction are killing the land, while climate change is eroding the soil and increasing temperatures.
But the next generation of Indigenous youth is fighting back, albeit using more modern methods.
In this film, we journey across Arizona and New Mexico with Justine Teba – an Indigenous organiser for The Red Nation, a group of Native and non-Native American activists, educators, students, and community organisers advocating for Indigenous communities in the US.
We watch as she navigates through border communities, interviewing Indigenous people from a range of tribes and community groups who are using traditional methods to reclaim their land and history and fight back against some of the catastrophic consequences of climate change.
On the journey with Teba, we also witness the harsh realities of what it still means to be Native in America.
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14 Comments
They entered the New World in the Pleistocene and annihilated 60 – 70% of the large native mammals with parasites, bacteria and viruses.
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A sorry sight and a sorry past. UK, US, Canada and Australia have commited untold genocide against its indigenous people and continue till today.
If you think they represent white ppl they don't. As a white regular man if I were to buy a home I don't actually get any rights to the land just the house on top. I was never given any land. All I was ever subjected to was double standards.
Natives of now American continents are Asian , Evo Morales look like a Tibetan but he speaks colonial Spanish.
Pollution, global warming, and environmental contamination are all important… and worth talking about… but I think this post will be long enough focusing only on the core ideology of the people interviewed… Repeated in this piece is the concept of "settler colonialism" … this single idea of 'Native land' is engrained in the oral traditions handed down in many tribes… leading modern Indians to develop a strong opinion without any material evidence… Yet when you look at archeological and WRITTEN records… the story is very different… For over 2000 years North America had a large city building culture of millions of people…. This culture built earthen mounds, created elaborate pottery, and even built large 'stacked stone' structures, such as very long stone walls…. but this group had been in slow decline for hundreds of years… when… around the 1400's…. the first European explorers started arriving in meaningful numbers… They brought disease and the local population collapsed… Then mysteriously… the archeological record is replaced in less than 100 years by nomadic tribes from Central America… People that DO NOT build mounds… DO NOT create pottery… DO NOT stack stone walls miles long…. Small tribe size and superstitious beliefs conferred some protection from large scale disease… offering a competitive advantage… This process of cultural/ethnic replacement was mostly over by around 1500… I'm not saying these nomadic tribes for sure did a complete genocide of the culture that came before… neither culture had written language… so obviously there is no recorded history… but all evidence points to this… simply ask any Indian historian about their oral history in the 14 and early 1500's… it's going to be some mystical science fiction sounding story… the sort of story you would tell an inquisitive child.. still too young to know the truth of war… If you have ever heard someone say Indians were 'one with the land' that's precisely because those cultures had just gotten to North America… and foremost to my point is… the claim of land ownership by birthright is an absolute lie… "Settler colonialism" happened among people living in the Americas long before Westerners arrived… You don't get to live for 2-3 generations on a plot of land… and then claim it as ancestral heritage until the end of time…
Brown Lives Matter. The first peoples of North America are brown and not red.
The native Americans were just racists who were afraid of diversity.
What indigenous people need to accept is they’re also colonialists and settlers. They came to this land from Asia and they’re guilty of everything they accuse the white man of!
What amazing Indigenous women and men WARRIORS especially these women.
Chief Crazy Horse's vision will come true. Keep fighting warriors.
I strongly suggest you copy the Black Panter Party and Malcom X – legally buy guns and carry them in expectation for legal self defense. Guns are a deterrent towards predators, aggressors and racists.
The white American inherently disrespectful, indecent and vile. Their minds respond to the following behavior. You all are too respectful with your approach. Incorporate more verbal violence in your rhetoric.
The truth is that the darker you skin is the more democracy doesn't work for you. Whites are 60.20% of the US population as of the 2020 US census. Yet the territory of Puerto Rico marks themselves as 75% white. I believe if all POC told the truth the US will be a minority white country by 2030.
Did you know the majority of Puerto Ricans voted to become a state in 2012, 2017, and 2020?
Looks like they couldn't trick the white Republicans and white Democrats into believe they are a majority white island. Democracy obviously doesn't work for them.
Lastly, if all nonviolent options are exhausted then there must be violence. That's how the white colonizers took the land, no?
It took over 60 years for Taos Pueblo to get back their sacred Blue Lake via costs US court battles.
It took 67 years for African-Americans to get a federal anti-lynching law signed in 2022 after Emmet Till was lynched in 1955.
The Native Hawaiians had their Kingdom illegally stolen by the white devils in 1893, the US government apologized for it in 1993, and they want it back. Yet the white devils keep them from it with backroom sanctions and threats.
Look if you know it will take 500 years from today to get back indigenous land nonviolently, then it's faster, cheaper and easier to resort to violence today.
As of now I believe nonviolence can work, but the longer the white devils/oppressors/colonizers keep caging POC and keep POC from fighting fair as per their sacred democracy, the more I am convinced violence is the correct response.
Fighting to preserve the environment is virtuous and laudable, but native Americans' claim of ownership of the land is just as false as the idea of "manifest destiny." No one owns the planet; it'll still be here long after all of us are gone.
New Mexico is Cradle to Grave Nuclear Weapons/Power Companies. Sacred land like Oak Flat for Copper extraction, in Arizona, just presumed to be OK to mine.
As a White Nationalist, I'll make you a deal:
durango actually comes from euskera/basque from native europeans in spain/france! it’s from ‘urango’ which means ‘well watered place’