Tag: Indigenous Rights

How to paint our own mural: the need for transnational solidarity in the undocumented peoples’ struggle

Juan Pablo Blanco
TCCS Student ’19

A mural in Belfast, Ireland with "Ireland stands with Catalonia" written on a peace wall.
Mural in Falls Road, Belfast supporting Catalunyan self-determination. Photo Credit – Extramural Activity 2017.

I remember walking down Falls Road in Belfast, Ireland in the spring of 2015. I was still dumbfounded by the sight of the “peace lines”, the harrowing barbed wired steel walls that separate predominantly republican neighborhoods from loyalist neighborhoods.

However, as I walked through what is referred to as the international wall just a few blocks over, my mood changed and I could not help but feel empowered by the messages of solidarity and strength that these murals proclaimed. From Palestine solidarity messages, support for the self determination of Catalunya and the Basque Country, to the image of a smiling Leonard Peltier, one can see that the message was that Irish liberation could not happen without it also working for the liberation of all oppressed peoples.

This was my first trip outside of the U.S. since I had migrated 16 years prior due to my undocumented immigration status. Back then, as someone who was just starting to get involved with organizing and activism, I could not help but think why there didn’t seem to be any transnational movement like this uniting undocumented peoples around the world.

I am originally from Argentina, a country that as of 2010 had 1.5 million undocumented people living within its borders (statistic from the Council on Hemispheric Affairs), and I have seen the racist and xenophobic narratives on immigration that are prevalent among many Argentinians being carried to the U.S. as people migrated even when many of them become undocumented themselves.

Photo from a march with undocumented immigrants in Argentina holding sign that reads, translated, as "Migrant Workers Present."
Undocumented immigrant activists and allies in Buenos Aires mobilizing against Argentine president Mauricio Macri’s controversial mandate to limit immigration. Their sign reads “Migrant Workers Present.” Photo Credit – Prensa Roja Internacional 2018.

This false consciousness makes people think that their experiences are somehow categorically different from that of other irregular migrants throughout the world. What could a transnational movement of and for undocumented peoples and people with precarious migratory statuses do that these movements alone cannot?

What could a transnational movement of and for undocumented peoples and people with precarious migratory statuses do that these movements alone cannot?

I don’t have a definite answer to that question yet. However, as globalization has internationalized the economic systems that often become catalysts for migration patterns, why shouldn’t an international problem be faced with a transnational solution?

This does not mean that local groups will stop working on their particular campaigns, since after all the socio-political paradigms of the states they reside in will dictate what will work and not work for them. What it means is that this local work can continue to happen and a space where perspectives could be shared, tools and strategies worked out, and solidarity and cooperation be fostered can be created to make each local movement more powerful and revolutionary. We only need to pay attention to other movements that have become transnational in scope and how that has affected the kind of work they are able to do.

The Indigenous peoples struggle can be a very salient example. As Guillermo Delgado, human rights activist and anthropologist at UC Santa Cruz, writes: “ …a cross-border indigenous movement in the Americas needs to be seen as an intellectual space that allows for the ample circulation of proposals, including the need to press for dialogue on policies—especially those sponsored by the international financial institutions—that directly affect indigenous peoples.” Bodies like the World Council of Indigenous Peoples, or the Indigenous Peoples’ Network, have shown that solidarity and cooperation have not only been able to achieve changes in international law, but more importantly have allowed Indigenous people to put pressure on states in a more profound way than they would have solely from within that state’s borders.

A photo of a mural in support of Kurdish self-emancipation and resistance in La Plata, Argentina.
Mural in support of Kurdish self-emancipation and resistance in La Plata, Argentina.
Photo credit: Comité Solidaridad con Kurdistan – La Plata 2016.

I was lucky enough to be invited to a panel at the University of Toronto on Canadian undocumented youth and access to education. The panel, “Reality of Shadows: The Reality of Undocumented Youth,” brought together students, activists, an immigration lawyer, a sociology professor at the university and the co-founder of a Toronto refugee center.

This was an incredible opportunity to not only get myself acquainted with the barriers undocumented migrants are facing in Canada but also see the ways people are mobilizing and organizing against these same barriers.

For example, undocumented students in Canada, even if they graduate from a Canadian high school, have little chance of being able to enroll in a college or university. In response to this, FCJ Refugee Center has created a pilot program called Access to Education at York University in Toronto giving access to 10 undocumented students without having to apply as an international student, the first of its kind.

This is incredible work that is happening across our northern border where undocumented people as a whole are not part of the national conversation as they are in the U.S. A way for activists and organizers in the U.S. to learn from the work that is being done in Canada needs to be created because the mainstream media is not paying attention to this issue.

A lot can be learned by activists and organizers in the U.S. from what is happening in Canada, and vice versa. This struggle needs to go beyond the borders that deem us undocumented in the first place, and bring together the incredible mobilizing that is already happening all across the world. The big question for me at the moment is how exactly this can begin.

To Mourn and Give Thanks: Some Thoughts on November

Dr. Cedric Woods, Director for the Institute for New England Native American Studies (INENAS)

For many Americans, November conjures up images of turkeys, pies, and English colonists with large black hats with buckles, with Native Peoples joining these Puritan dissenters in a feast. President Lincoln institutionalized a uniform celebration of this American myth in 1863, a time of deep division and civil war in American society.  

In his establishment of the day of Thanksgiving and Praise, Lincoln encouraged his fellow citizens when “offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also… implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquility and Union.”*

Picture showing sign at National Day of Mourning protest reading "Dismantle the Discovery Doctrine"
National Day of Mourning, November 2017 (photo credit: Myles Green)

Frequently, contemplation of the relationship between Native Peoples and Puritan immigrants that gave rise to the legend of Thanksgiving is neglected. Instead, Thanksgiving is a time for food, family, and shopping. If there is a thought to the Native Peoples–in this case, the Wampanoag, who served as hosts to the English immigrants –it is around what they brought to the feast, or if the feather headdresses used by the children in local plays look authentic.

Rarely do we discuss what became of those Native Peoples in subsequent years at the hands of those they sheltered. Rarely is any thought given to what became of the Indigenous hosts of the Puritans, and how they fare in their homelands today.  

This ignoring of the history of Native Peoples in America led to alternative programming around this day called “The National Day of Mourning,” in Plymouth, MA. Plymouth is viewed as the location of the events around which the contemporary American Thanksgiving holiday is based (http://www.uaine.org/).

At the National Day of Mourning, many contemporary indigenous People and their allies gather to remind America that Native Peoples still exist, if only as a shadow of our former numbers before sustained contact with Europeans.  

The National Day of Mourning is a call that in the middle of the day of Thanksgiving and Praise, contemporary Americans remember the harm brought by their ancestors upon the Original Peoples of the Americas through direct actions of warfare, enslavement, and dispossession, or as Lincoln would describe it, “national perverseness and disobedience.”

A crowd listens to speakers at the annual National Day of Mourning 2017
A crowd listens to speakers at the annual National Day of Mourning 2017, Plymouth, MA (photo credit: Myles Green)

It is easy to become locked in the binary of which to commemorate: the near extinction of the Wampanoag and other Native Peoples via a National Day of Mourning; or the celebration of bounty and Thanksgiving that focuses only on the contemporary blessings of the American nation state, while ignoring the cultural erasure of Indigenous Peoples.

Programs like TCCS challenge faculty and students to move beyond this false binary via critical analysis of the past and present, and a visioning for the future.  

As such, we examine the complexities of relationships, not just between Europeans and Native Peoples, but also African Peoples and Native Peoples, and enslaved peoples and free peoples. We explore how these interactions continue to shape who and what we are today.

In this spirit, we recently hosted a panel discussion this week: Indigenous and African Intersections: Emerging Topics, Experiences, and Shared Histories. This event was co-sponsored by TCCS, the Trotter Institute, and the Institute for New England Native American Studies.

Engaging diverse perspectives of Native elders, leaders, and a descendant of enslaved Africans of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, we will look at how the past still impacts our present, and how we can avoid repeating the mistakes of our ancestors. We will expand the conversation about how these lessons do, or should, impact future relationships with our contemporary neighbors. .  

Rather than focusing on self-interest or a zero sum game of politics and power, we can develop relationships based on reciprocity and respect.

I challenge us all to think of this time of harvest as an opportunity to move beyond attacking or supporting the myth of the original Thanksgiving to develop “a concept (where Thanksgiving) [is] a state of being. [Where we] want to live in a state of thanksgiving, meaning that you use the creativity that the Creator gave you.”**

* Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, edited by Roy P. Basler et al.

**Ramona Peters in “The Wampanoag Thanksgiving Experience,” Indian Country Today.

Bringing Their Ancestors Back Home

Taina Teravainen, TCCS ’19

On October 7, citizens of Nipmuc Nation gathered to commemorate the forced removal of their ancestors from South Natick in 1675, during King Phillip’s War. This bloody period of armed conflict between the New England colonists and the Wampanoag, Podunk, Narragansett, Nashaway and Nipmuc nations led to massive amounts of human casualties and destruction for both sides. The Native peoples had attempted to push the colonists out after enduring years of unfair land and arms deals.

Participants in the Deer Island Commemoration launch from Boston Harbor to paddle to Deer Island
Participants in the Deer Island Commemoration launch kayaks from Boston Harbor to paddle to Deer Island

Many of the Nipmuc people had converted to Christianity, but the colonists remained distrustful of them during the war. At least five hundred Nipmucs were put in shackles and transported by water to an isolated concentration camp on Deer Island, without enough food, proper clothing and shelter to carry them through the harsh winter. Most of the Nipmucs died on the island; few were able to make it back to their homeland at the end of the war.

I was there for this year’s memorial on Deer Island, along with other non-native people and native people from other nations, as a spectator, a witness, and as a form of support. 24 people were retracing the Nipmuc ancestors’ water route in reverse, paddling in two canoes from Deer Island back to the falls in Natick. Around five volunteers were walking around 11 miles from Brighton to meet up with the paddlers. It was to be a long grueling journey – but one that also allowed the participants to recall what had been inflicted on the Nipmuc ancestors.

Commemorative plaque on Deer Island (Boston, Mass.)

I’m an American that only began living in the U.S. at age 19. It’s been seven years since I moved to this country, and I’ve realized that I’m not alone in my ignorance about the histories of Native peoples in the U.S. There is a frustrating lack of acknowledgement, awareness and discussion of the past and present experiences of Native peoples within education and social contexts, barring environments where there is a concerted effort to do so.

Since I began living in Massachusetts, I have had the privilege to spend great swaths of time contemplating what I wanted to do here. I’ve never really stopped to think about under what circumstances I am able to do so. I’m currently taking a graduate course called “Community Formation and Development” with Dr. Cedric Woods, the director of the Institute for New England Native American Studies at UMB, and a citizen of the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina. However, he still identifies himself as a guest of the Native peoples of this state. His words reminded me that I too am a guest – so many of us are – and that I have responsibilities as one.

Marcus Hendricks, grandson of Nipmuc sachem Mary Anne Hendricks, wasn’t taking part in the sacred paddle or walk this year, but was part of the logistics and support faction. He was one of the Nipmuc citizens present who spoke of their people’s connection to the water in the Boston Harbor and their hopes to leave the world in a positive state for future generations. They spoke of resistance – some were thirteen generations removed from the internment, but they were still there and still standing. They spoke of being able to continue gathering, year after year, to bring their ancestors back home.