Indigenous

• Navajo Nation President Buu Nygren was in Washington earlier in April to watch President Donald Trump sign an order aimed at revitalizing the coal industry.

• Coal mines and coal-fired power plants were once steady income sources for the Navajo Nation, but the money dried up with the closure of a key plant and the mines that supplied it.

• Some Navajo organizers say Nygren's support for coal ignores the effects of fossil fuels on the climate and on human health. One expert said Nygren exaggerated the importance of coal.

Navajo Nation President Buu Nygren traveled to Washington, D.C., earlier in April to watch President Donald Trump sign an executive order aimed at deregulating coal production on federal lands and revitalizing the mining industry, signaling what appears to be the tribal leader's support for coal.

In the executive order, Trump asserted that coal is vital to the nation’s economic and national security. He declared that removing federal regulatory barriers to coal production is a national priority and encouraged the use of coal to help meet the country’s growing energy needs.

"Today marks a pivotal moment for energy policy in the United States," Nygren said of the president's action. "As President Trump signs an executive order aimed at revitalizing the coal industry, I want to emphasize the importance of including tribal nations like the Navajo Nation in this national conversation."

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Our reporter Rowan Glass went deep inside one of the world’s most enduring anti-capitalist movements, offering a rare and intimate glimpse into a community that has defied militarisation, marginalisation, and globalisation. Granted exclusive access to the 30th anniversary of the Zapatistas' 1994 uprising, our team captured the group’s commemorations, their political education programs, and their vision of self-governance – built from the ground up by Indigenous communities.

"¡Ya Basta! 30 Years of Zapatista Autonomy" explores the legacy and future of the EZLN, reflecting on how a masked, rural rebellion reshaped Mexico’s political landscape and inspired activists across the globe.

What does revolution look like when it refuses to seize state power? And what can the world learn from a community that continues to build its own system from the ground up?

Consider supporting our independent journalism at www.patreon.com/moderninsurgent.

Find the rest of our work at www.moderninsurgent.org

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Palestinians across the West Bank observed a general strike on Monday protesting the renewed Israeli genocide in Gaza. The strike was observed in all West Bank cities and towns and joined by all civil society bodies. The Palestinian Teachers’ Union announced the halt of all classes, while the Palestinian Bar Association announced that all lawyers and judges were called to abstain from attending court hearings. The “national and Islamic forces,” the coalition of all Palestinian political parties, also called for the general strike. It was observed by all of Palestinian society in the West Bank, including businesses and public transportation.

The strike echoed a global call for a general strike in solidarity with Gaza. Although no central entity called for the strike in Palestine, different Palestinian entities consecutively announced that they would join the global strike a day ahead of when it was set to take place.

But despite the broad participation of all Palestinians in the West Bank-wide action, the protests remained contained and subdued, with some describing the demonstrations as performative or “symbolic.”

In Ramallah and Nablus, thousands of Palestinians marched in the cities’ streets, which remained confined to the city centers and started and ended without incident. One slight exception was when Palestinian police arrested four protesters in Ramallah, claiming that the protesters had raised Hamas flags. Palestinian protesters had gathered in front of the Palestinian police center in Ramallah and demanded the release of the detainees. Two of them were later released.

More marches were reported in several towns and villages in the Nablus and Ramallah regions. Some protests and strikes were observed in other countries, with rallies reported in Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia, while in southern Lebanon, some schools were closed on Monday as part of the strike.

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When Solomon Kahoʻohalahala arrived in Jamaica in mid-March to attend a meeting of the International Seabed Authority, or ISA, he felt the weight of the moment on his shoulders.

The United Nations agency is in the midst of crafting regulations to govern a new industry for deep-sea mining that involves scraping mineral deposits from the ocean floor, often referred to as nodules. But after three years of advocating on behalf of Indigenous peoples, none of Kahoʻohalahala’s or his colleagues’ recommendations had been incorporated into the latest draft proposal.

“It was disheartening and discouraging for us to be absolutely dismissed,” said Kahoʻohalahala, who is Native Hawaiian from the island of Lanaʻi in Hawaiʻi. “There was no option for us except to make our best case.”

On the first day of the two-week gathering, Kahoʻohalahala urged the nation-state representatives gathered at the International Seabed Authority headquarters to consider Indigenous peoples’ perspectives. And to his surprise, many representatives agreed with him.

By the time he flew from the Caribbean back to the Pacific the following week, Kahoʻohalahala felt relieved and hopeful. The ISA had agreed to give him and other Indigenous advocates up until 2026 to come up with further recommendations. Moreover, the International Seabed Authority declined a request from the Pacific island country of Nauru in Micronesia to set up a process to evaluate their application to mine the high seas, and reiterated the authority’s previous commitment to finalizing the mining regulations before allowing seabed mining to proceed.

“That was very, very uplifting,” Kahoʻohalahala said.

But no sooner had Kahoʻohalahala departed Jamaica than he heard the news: The Metals Company, a Canadian seabed mining company, announced it was working with the Trump administration to circumvent the international regulatory process and pursue mining in the high seas under a 1980 United States law.

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The Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) has published mobile phone footage taken by a slain Palestinian paramedic refuting Israel's account of why its soldiers opened fire on a convoy of ambulances and a fire truck on 23 March, killing 15 rescue workers.

. The video shows the vehicles moving in the dark with their headlights and emergency flashing lights switched on. Israeli forces then opened fire on the vehicles for several minutes.

The Israeli military initially denied the vehicles had their headlights or emergency signals on when its forces opened fire on them.

At least two emergency workers can be seen stepping out of the vehicles wearing reflective clothing. The rescuer filming the video with his phone is heard reciting Islamic prayers before being killed.

One rescuer can be heard in the video saying, "Forgive me, mother. I just wanted to help people. I wanted to save lives."

During the attack, Israeli forces killed eight PRCS paramedics, six Gaza Civil Defense workers, and one UN employee. Israeli troops buried their bodies, and the destroyed vehicles in a shallow mass grave dug in the sand.

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The first known Palestinian child to be killed in an Israeli prison, Walid Khalid Abdullah Ahmad, was starved, had untreated diseases, and was repeatedly beaten by guards before he died last month, his autopsy report shows.

The autopsy shows that Ahmad suffered from “extreme body muscle and fat wasting, evidenced by a sunken abdomen,” caused by “extreme, likely prolonged malnutrition,” reported Defense for Children International-Palestine (DCIP) on Thursday. His body also showed evidence that he had been beaten on his chest and abdomen while imprisoned, as shown by air collection, the group said.

At the time of his death, Ahmad also suffered from diseases like scabies and colitis, which likely caused diarrhea and dehydration. He had a number of abrasions and cuts, present on his nose, chest, hip and neck.

His autopsy was conducted in a facility in Tel Aviv. Israeli authorities are withholding his body from his family.

“Walid’s autopsy indicates that Israeli prison guards systematically starved and abused him for months until he finally collapsed, struck his head, and died,” said Ayed Abu Eqtaish, head of DCIP’s accountability program.

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During the Eid el-Fitr, the holiday at the end of Ramadan, Muin Abu Al-Mehza, 58, would usually celebrate together with his family and go visit relatives, as per tradition.

Muin has two sons and two daughters. One daughter moved to Kuwait with her husband. But his other children live close by, and his oldest son, Sami, 31, built an apartment for his family above Muin’s home.

The holidays were always a time for celebration for the family, as it generally is for everyone in Gaza.

But the past two festive seasons have been anything but joyous in the besieged and devastated coastal territory, home to 2.3 million people now facing starvation and Israel’s genocidal military violence again.

Last Ramadan, Muin’s family was struggling with an acute shortage of food. They had been displaced from their home and were struggling for shelter, warmth and water.

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Jill Falcon Ramaker couldn’t believe what she was hearing on the video call. All $5 million dollars of her and her colleagues’ food sovereignty grants were frozen. She watched the faces of her colleagues drop.

Ramaker is Turtle Mountain Anishinaabe and the director of Buffalo Nations Food Sovereignty at Montana State University – a program that supports Indigenous foodways in the Rocky Mountains and trains food systems professionals – and is supported by the United States Department of Agriculture, or USDA.

“The funding that we had for training and infrastructure leading to raising our own foods that are healthy and not highly processed and culturally appropriate, has stopped.” Ramaker said. “We don’t have any information on when, or if, it will resume.”

In his first two months in office, President Trump has signed over 100 executive orders, many specifically targeting grants for termination that engage with diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives and climate-related projects associated with the Inflation Reduction Act. Climate change destroys the places and practices central to Indigenous peoples in the United States, and is exacerbated by droughts and floods that also affect foods essential to Native cultures. Food sovereignty programs play a crucial role in fighting the effects of climate change by creating access to locally grown fruits, vegetables, and animal products.

“It feels like we’re just getting started in so many ways,” Ramaker said.

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Vent, who is Koyukon Athabascan and Iñupiaq, was raised by her great-grandmother and her aunties in Huslia, a village of 300 in the vast, wild country south of the Brooks Range in northern Alaska. No roads traversed the spruce forest and boggy tundra. Rivers scrawled in great loops from the base of the mountains, writing their history across the flats in oxbow lakes and sloughs that gleamed with light. Huslia lay along one of the largest waterways, the Koyukuk. For generations, it and the region’s other major rivers had served as highways connecting the Alaska Native communities scattered in this trackless landscape to one another and to the fish camps and hunting places and berry-picking grounds where residents like Vent harvested much of their food.

Over a decade ago, Vent joined an auntie at a public meeting in Huslia’s community hall, where villagers had gathered to discuss a state proposal for a new road. Maps detailed a route that, if built, would begin northeast of Huslia from the Dalton Highway, the only major road in northern Alaska, and run more than 200 miles west, nearly to the Inupiat village of Kobuk, one of several on the Kobuk River. The so-called Ambler Access Project—led mostly by the state’s economic development arm, the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority, or AIDEA—would allow foreign companies to develop copper mines near Kobuk. Trucks would travel the new road up to 168 times per day, carrying ore concentrate. Once they reached the Dalton Highway, they would transport the ore south to Fairbanks, where trains would carry it to a port in south-central Alaska—a total journey of about 800 miles.

The stakes were high. The road would slice across the Koyukuk, the Kobuk, and nine other major rivers as well as thousands of streams, threatening the peoples’ supply of salmon, sheefish, and whitefish with toxic spills and sediment runoff. It would also interrupt the migratory path of the Western Arctic caribou herd—until recently, Alaska’s largest—threatening another key source of sustenance for more than 40 communities.

Vent was impressed by the elders she heard speak at the meeting. “They knew that showing up was going to help prevent this happening to our land and our animals and our water and our people,” Vent, now 24, told me.

But Vent and other opponents came to believe that the road was about more than the mines at its terminus. It would open one of the largest expanses of unbroken land left on Earth to industrial development. The new artery could be the starting point for yet more roads and mines, and perhaps ultimately allow public access to places long protected by their remoteness. “It’s about the Western world wanting to come in and take from Indigenous people,” Vent said. “Once this road opens, there’s no going back.”

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The Great Bear Rainforest is the largest intact temperate coastal rainforest in the world. It’s been home to First Nations for over 12,000 years. It was an immense achievement in conservation when it became a protected area in 2016. The British Columbia government calls it a “global treasure.” It’s beautiful and rich with life.

All of that is true — but what’s also true is that an abandoned cannery in the Great Bear Rainforest has been leaching pollutants for decades, even after it was protected. Today, some contaminants like mercury are between double and 200 times regulation standards.

Heiltsuk people have been fighting for the cleanup since the 1980s. The site is home to Namu, an ancient Haíɫzaqv (Heiltsuk) village. The Heiltsuk never ceded their land, but much of it, including Namu, was seized and treated as private property. In 1893 a settler named Robert Draney established a bustling cannery. It was an economic success and the centre of a vibrant community, employing many Heiltsuk people, until it was suddenly shuttered in the 1980s after industry profits dropped.

Within the imposed colonial system, Namu traded hands without Heiltsuk permission. The most recent corporate owner is now legally dissolved and the Namu lands have reverted to the Crown.

The Heiltsuk want to protect their land, and to make it habitable again.

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In one of his last official acts before leaving the White House, President Joe Biden released Leonard Peltier from prison. The action is an extraordinary move that ends a decades-long push by Indigenous activists, international religious leaders, human rights organizations and Hollywood insiders who argued that the 80-year-old Native American activist was wrongly convicted.

The commutation was widely opposed by law enforcement who insisted that Peltier’s actions were cold-blooded, and he should remain imprisoned for the rest of his life for murdering FBI agents Jack Coler and Ronald Williams in 1975. The agents’ deaths came at a time when tensions were high over a nationwide struggle between the U.S. government and activists for Native American civil and treaty rights.

“Tribal Nations, Nobel Peace laureates, former law enforcement officials (including the former U.S. Attorney whose office oversaw Mr. Peltier’s prosecution and appeal), dozens of lawmakers, and human rights organizations strongly support granting Mr. Peltier clemency, citing his advanced age, illnesses, his close ties to and leadership in the Native American community, and the substantial length of time he has already spent in prison.” said Biden in a statement today.

Nick Tilsen, the executive director of NDN Collective, an Indigenous led non-profit, says Peltier’s release is a historic moment that comes after many years of organizing and lobbying across the globe.

“Leonard Peltier now gets to go home. Every Indian person ever, ever wanted to do, was go home and back to their people. And now he's going to have an opportunity to do that,” Tilsen said.

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Millions of bison once roamed the grasslands, until colonialism nearly wiped them out. Now, Indigenous people are bringing them back and restoring balance to their homelands

My Métis ancestors hunted and lived relationally with Buffalo, and I can envision how the prairies must have looked hundreds of years ago when millions roamed freely from Alaska’s boreal forests to the western grasslands of Mexico, across the continent from Banff to the eastern Appalachian Mountains. Then colonizers nearly wiped them out, part of a deliberate genocidal effort to starve the Indigenous nations of the plains.

Now, there are far fewer Buffalo to be seen, but Indigenous communities are working to rematriate them to the grasslands. Rematriation, a concept advanced by the late Sto:lo author Lee Maracle, is the process of restoring lands and cultures, done with deep reverence to honour not only the past and present but also the future, and rooted in Indigenous law.

The Buffalo Treaty, signed in September 2014 by eight nations, now has more than 50 signatories and includes 11 articles emphasizing co-operation, renewal and the restoration of Buffalo populations. This cross-border collaboration aims to return Buffalo to their rightful wild status, as they are currently considered “domestic” due to their historical confinement, a word that hardly suits their ancestral legacy.

Buffalo don’t care about borders, and yet, there are rigid regulations in place that stop their movement. The treaty envisions ecological corridors that will allow Buffalo to migrate and roam freely, similar to elk, bears, deer and moose. These corridors are essential for maintaining genetic diversity, supporting the vast ecosystem dynamics of the plains, preserving cultural and spiritual connections for Indigenous peoples and ensuring the long-term viability of bison populations by preventing overgrazing and disease outbreaks.

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Maskwacis, Alberta, Canada - Nadalie Lightning stares out of her living room window praying to wake up from what she describes as a nightmare. In the early hours of August 30, her 15-year-old grandson Hoss Lightning Saddleback was shot and killed by Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) officers after what the RCMP describe as a “confrontation” in the nearby city of Wetaskiwin.

Nadalie is devastated by the loss and struggling to understand how a call for help turned fatal. On the night of his death, Hoss had initially reached out to his grandmother in desperation.

"He was calling me that night. I missed 18 calls," Nadalie revealed, her voice breaking with emotion as the screen on her phone showed her grandson’s attempts to contact her. "He texted me right here at 1:01am, 'Can you come pick me up?' And then it's just, 'I called the police.'"

She had been the one who had always told her grandson to call the police if he was ever in trouble. According to an RCMP release, it was Hoss who had called them, believing people were following him and trying to kill him.

That afternoon members of the Alberta Serious Incident Response Team (ASIRT) showed up at her doorstep asking Nadalie to identify her grandson, one of a string of Indigenous people to have died during interactions with police in Canada since late August.

Speaking to Al Jazeera, the former National Chief of the Assembly of First Nations RoseAnne Archibald, expressed her frustration at what she emphasised was a longrunning issue.

"[The First Nations have] been sounding the alarm bell for a long time - for many, many years,” Archibald said. “This has happened time and time again. They’re just trying to kill us off, it’s maddening. Is that the first way they deal with us, is violence towards us?”

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The Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) is arguably one of the most important non-state actors in modern West Asia. While fighting a brutal guerrilla war against the Turkish government, it has also managed to inspire Kurdish movements in Syria, Iraq and Iran, as well as Iran’s non-Kurdish protesters. In a region where many parties are nakedly sectarian, the PKK has gone from Marxist-Leninist nationalism to a form of radical-democratic “libertarian municipalism” inspired by the late anarchist thinker Murray Bookchin.

For better or worse, the PKK exists today only because the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP), a now-obscure Palestinian force, agreed to shelter some Kurdish exiles in the 1980s. That experience in the Palestinian camps permanently affected the worldview of the PKK’s founding generation. Not only did the PKK learn how to fight a guerrilla war, it also walked away with a strong sense of internationalism.

In fact, some of the PKK’s founding figures spent time in an Israeli detention camp as prisoners of war. Old issues of the party magazine Serxwebun tell the remarkable story of the “Beaufort Castle Heroes,” a group of Kurds who had been training at a Palestinian base in Lebanon when they were captured by Israeli forces in June 1982. (Serxwebun means “independence” in Kurdish.) New Lines is reporting much of their story in English for the first time.

The June 1984 edition of Serxwebun features drawings and poetry from the prisoners, including one Iranian Kurdish fighter. The Iranian Kurd, codenamed Sami, recalled being beaten by an Israeli interrogator who shouted, “You came to kill Jews, you’re lying … Kurdistan, Turkistan, Bangladesh, Iran, Arab, you are all antisemitic, we will kill you all.”

The PKK was just one of many foreign fighter contingents in Lebanon. (Sami was captured alongside a Bangladeshi fighter, and another Serxwebun article mentioned the presence of an Iranian from the left-wing People’s Fedai Guerrillas.) At the time, the Palestinian movement was the international leftist cause celebre, and leftists understood it to be part of an unbroken chain of Third World liberation struggles.

“If you know Vietnam, you know Kurdistan … a new Vietnam in our hearts,” Sami wrote in a poem. “To the defenseless prisoner in Diyarbakir, to the leaf on the tree in Vietnam, to the living being in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, to the orphan baby in Sabra and Shatila.”

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Extra reading: PKK Internationalists in the Palestinian Resistance

• The Indonesian government is embarking on yet another project to establish a massive area of farmland at the expense of forests and Indigenous lands, despite a long history of near-identical failures.
• The latest megaproject calls for clearing 1 million hectares (2.5 million acres) in the district of Merauke in the eastern region of Papua for rice fields.
• Local Indigenous communities say they weren’t consulted about the project, and say the heavy military presence on the ground appears to be aimed at silencing their protests.
• Similar megaprojects, on Borneo and more recently also in Merauke, all failed, leaving behind destroyed landscapes, with the current project also looking “assured to fail,” according to an agricultural researcher.

JAKARTA — Indigenous Papuans say they’ve been caught off guard by helicopters flying over their villages and excavators tearing down their forests in their area, all while accompanied by the Indonesian military.

What they’re being subjected to is one of the largest deforestation projects in the world, which will see the development of 1 million hectares (2.5 million acres) of rice fields in Merauke, a district in Indonesia’s Papua region that borders Papua New Guinea.

The military is involved in the project because it’s led by the Ministry of Defense and has been designated a project of national strategic importance. Defense Minister Prabowo Subianto, who will be sworn in as Indonesia’s next president on Oct. 20, has appointed the hugely controversial Jhonlin Group to help administer the project.

The military’s involvement, coupled with the lack of free, prior, informed consent (FPIC) from Indigenous communities living in the area, have fueled concerns that the project will create new conflicts in the region.

Indonesia has maintained a heavy military presence in the Papua region since annexing it in 1963, with security forces frequently accused of committing human rights violations under the justification of cracking down on a low-level independence movement.

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ONONDAGA NATION TERRITORY (AP) — The Onondaga Nation has regained 1,000 acres (405 hectares) of its ancestral land in upstate New York, a tiny portion of the land members say was unjustly taken by the state beginning in the 18th century.

The heavily forested land is south of Syracuse and near the Onondaga’s federally recognized territory. The land, which includes headwaters of Onondaga Creek, was transferred by Honeywell International on Friday under a federal Superfund settlement related to the contamination of the environment, according to the Onondaga Nation.

The land is part of an expanse of 2.5 million acres (1 million hectares) in central New York the Onondagas say was taken over decades by New York beginning in 1788 through deceitful maneuvers that violated treaties and federal law.

Sid Hill, the Tadodaho, or chief, of the Onondaga Nation, said Monday they were grateful to federal and state officials for working with them to return “the first 1,000 acres of the 2.5 million acres of treaty-guaranteed land taken from us over the centuries.”

“This is a small but important step for us, and for the Indigenous land back movement across the United States,” Hill said in a prepared statement.

“Tansi, today we are going through some random phrases,” Julia Ouellette says to the camera. She holds up slips of paper with English words while repeating the Cree translations quickly and then slowly. “tantahtwaw,” she says, holding a paper that says “how many,” emphasizing each syllable. “tantahtwaw. Repeat after me.”

Ouellette, a grandmother from Makwa Sahgaiehcan First Nation in Saskatchewan, posts Cree-language videos regularly on TikTok, where she has more than 16,800 followers. The videos are casual, with a simple formula: Ouellette, in glasses, with her hair tied back, offers viewers a few Cree words or phrases to practise aloud. In both languages, her voice has the distinct quality of a Cree speaker: rich and resonant, her “r”s and “l”s—consonants not found in Cree—are especially pronounced when she speaks English. A former language teacher at Big Island Lake Cree Nation in Saskatchewan, she started posting videos on TikTok in 2020 that included such COVID-era phrases as “wash your hands” (kasichiche) and “get away” (awas), along with more cheerful ones, like “Merry Christmas” (miyo-manitowi-kîsikanisi). Ouellette never writes out the Cree words or phrases, instead instructing the viewer to repeat what they hear.

Ouellette is part of a growing community of Indigenous-language speakers using social media as a teaching tool. James Vukelich Kaagegaabaw, a descendant of Turtle Mountain, shares an Ojibwe word regularly with his 135,000 Instagram followers. Jonathan Augustine, who goes by RezNeck Farmer on TikTok, shares Mi’kmaw lessons along with folksy videos about gardening. Zorga Qaunaq, under the username Tatiggat, posts on TikTok about daily life, beading, and Inuit culture, alongside how to properly pronounce words like “Inuit.”

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As the helicopter approached Caas Tl’aat Kwah (also known as Serb Creek), a 1,600-hectare (about 3,953-acre) watershed, the forest became a blanket of deep green, cleaved only by yellow-green wetlands threaded with glacial blue streams.

“We want to conserve it for future generations,” said Charlotte Euverman, the Wet’suwet’en woman leading a fight to save this area, which includes a traditional feasting site. “We have to leave them something.”

Like most First Nations here, Wet’suwet’en never signed treaties with the Canadian or provincial governments. Nevertheless, the latter took the land and leased forested acreage to logging companies. Today just 20% of British Columbia’s old-growth forests remain.

In 2020, after decades of activist pressure, the province identified about a quarter of the remaining old growth as at high risk for logging and recommended a pause while deciding their fate. Yet today, logging has been deferred in less than half of the high-risk area

Now Caas Tl’aat Kwah is in the crosshairs of a debate over the scope of First Nations’ agency, biodiversity loss and protection – and the role industrial logging plays in amplifying Canada’s forest fires, the effects of which are being felt across the globe.

In summer 2023, more than 150,000 sq km (58,000 sq miles) burned across the country, an all-time record, carrying smoke across the continent and air pollution all the way to Europe and China.

Caas Tl’aat Kwah is not yet accessible by road, so the helicopter ride was the first opportunity for Nation member Sandra Harris to see it, despite the fact that her great-grandfather, Jack Joseph, once had a cabin there. The pilot set the helicopter down upon a boggy meadow, and DeWit, who is acting director of the Office of Wet’suwet’en, led the way through the trees to a newer cabin, where he gave a framed photo of Joseph pride of place.

Harris explained the significance of seeing the land, saying: “We have a lot of stress in our lives with racism, working with colonial systems that are so unkind to our ways.” The land is healing, she said.

“Today, we can feel our ancestors,” Harris said. “We remember our stories when we are able to put our feet on the land … There’s lots of good medicine there for us.”

Conventional wisdom has long held that increased fire severity is due not just to climate change but also dense overgrowth from fire suppression. The prescription has been to thin forests and set controlled burns. But a growing number of scientists now say that approach fails to recognize the role of industrial logging in increased fire severity: it kills complex communities of life that stabilize the water cycle.

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The highest peak at Great Smoky Mountains National Park is officially reverting to its Cherokee name more than 150 years after a surveyor named it for a Confederate general.

The US Board of Geographic Names voted on Wednesday in favor of a request from the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians to officially change the name Clingmans Dome to Kuwohi, according to a news release from the park. The Cherokee name for the mountain translates to “mulberry place.”

“The Great Smoky National Park team was proud to support this effort to officially restore the mountain and to recognize its importance to the Cherokee People,” Superintendent Cassius Cash said in the release.

“The Cherokee People have had strong connections to Kuwohi and the surrounding area, long before the land became a national park. The National Park Service looks forward to continuing to work with the Cherokee People to share their story and preserve this landscape together.”

Kuwohi is a sacred place for the Cherokee people and is the highest point within the traditional Cherokee homeland, according to the park. The peak is visible from the Qualla Boundary, home of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians. Great Smoky Mountains National Park closes Kuwohi every year for three half-days so that predominantly Cherokee schools can visit the mountain and learn its history.

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The name was changed from a confederate brigadier general to a native name so its a double win

"It was different because there wasn't a lot of education [about] our people," she said. "So I only learned my history through my family members."

Years later, Tenasco is learning much more about her culture and her ancestors at a different kind of school — a federally-funded Indigenous archeological field school called Anishinabe Odjibikan.

The school brings together young members of the Algonquin communities of Kitigan Zibi in Quebec and Pikwakanagan in Ontario to dig up, clean and sort items used by their ancestors thousands of years ago.

Tenasco and her fellow Anishinabe Odjibikan participants learn how to document layers of earth and rocks, identify materials and determine if they're local to the area, use surveyor's tools and clean and reassemble pottery pieces found at a dig site.

Anishinabe Odjibikan is part of a growing trend in archaeology of involving the Indigenous peoples whose lands are being excavated — with the work either being led by Indigenous people, done collaboratively or carried out with their consent.

According to Cree/Métis archaeologist Paulette Steeves, the last century of archaeology has invalidated the pre-contact history of the Americas — and the people who lived there for thousands of years.

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On Tuesday, Energy Fuels Resources, the company that owns a uranium mine near the South Rim of the Grand Canyon, began hauling ore to a mill in southern Utah.

In a statement, the company said the shipments are safe, have low levels of radiation and have been permitted by state and federal regulators.

But the transport route includes a large swath of the Navajo Nation, which opposes the mine and has outlawed uranium hauling through its lands.

Navajo President Buu Nygren quickly sent out Navajo police in an effort to turn the trucks back, but the shipments eventually passed through the reservation on highways regulated by state agencies.

The president has vowed to stop any future uranium hauling and spoke with KNAU’s Ryan Heinsius about the tribe’s response.

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Secondarily there is also another urgent ask for a trailer for our permaculture specialists

https://ko-fi.com/emsenn

@thelastaxolotl@hexbear.net

Here is a bit of an update post for CLN and the many things we have underway, our goals, and plans to accomplish them though it is in slide form, just trying to condense larger documents that are being finalized

Our main goal is to offer an actual Marxist-Leninist position on landback, that is easier to articulate than the current offerings by many groups that all boil to Indigenous self determination and ending of global colonial exploitation

We are a organization based in demcent, and scientific socialism. There are many like minded groups and individuals working towards the collective liberation of the land, and life from the contradictions of colonialism and Imperialism.

Our goal is to go beyond cheerleading, and instead enable people to lead. This was my largest criticism of The Red Nations "The Red Deal" and you can hear more of my in depth thoughts starting Season 8 on the Marx Madness podcast. I offer 40 hours of reading you the book word for word and offering my criticism as openly as I could.

The specific house at risk of seizure is my dad's who is a Union member, and my brother who has a different dad but live with my dad also live there. They have 3 kids in the house and he's a native with a record in a bordertown so the financial situation has been hard after some medical issues occurred, some legal issues, and then some neighbor issues on top of the city raising water rates and their bill being $400 this month so they could really use this help and can even pay people back if you want after they get their tax return which has been delayed for one reason or another due to paper work taking a while to get to them.

Our biggest goal is self determination through dual power systems during a war of position. Through this preparation we demonstrate an ability to build, plan, and lead. This we think is an important ability for any cadre, and we do this through building up cadres in different regions across the world.

One of these groups is in Toronto and is working to send the shipping container we are raising money for to pay back the organizers who fronted the last portions to assure we got the container in time for the deadline.

We are of course most excited about the future so I encourage people to keep their eye out for the website where we will be uploading public viewable financial information, there we will also replace the patreon and liberapay but for now you can find links to those https://linktr.ee/chunkalutanetwork as well as various GFM links to efforts mentioned in the updates

We are doing great things and I think everyone should check out our friends at the Nation of Hawai'i, Black Peoples Union in Australia, and more

Here is a dossier we have been developing for the last year, that's gone through a review by the communities we serve, as well as our organizers, and now it is time for our public review: That is why I am posting this here

Along with videos in development, a further public five year plan, and several theoretical pieces of our unique contribution to the contemporary theoretical landscape, we have joined with the budding Indigenous Anti-Colonial Institute that you can find the first episode on youtube and spotify idk about anything else yet. Already this year we brought a 20' Uhaul full of wood, winter gear, hygiene materials, gardening materials, and whatever else we could fit like a child's bed. We also raised the money to purchase a new home on the land, are in the process of sending 40 lbs of socks to the Rez, raised 500/2500 of the storage container costs we need by the end of the month, are finalizing our Principles of Unity, facilitating 4 nation to nation treaties, are halfway to our goal of 2k a month to support our organizers survival with 500 stipends, and have raised several thousand dollars in the last day to keep folks alive during this deadly weather

I am attempting to bypass the character limit via the photos so forgive me. However we are on a great trajectory and the momentum is undeniable. On https://linktr.ee/chunkalutanetwork you can see several fundraising efforts we are doing and see our liberpay and patreon options to become monthly sustainers of our efforts, our website will be launching later this year, and really get involved. Help out. Theres so many ways and I think we are proving ourselves very capable at organizing great things, and you will see us move mountains this year. So follow our various social medias, and Im seriously going to try to engage here this year. I just hate social media in general and this doesnt give me a bright notification on my phone. We also highly encourage sharing and in our library (once I update the materials available) stuff like this will be readily accessible for your posting pleasure