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Urgent solidarity needed #Elsipogtog Shared from: Native Voices United - USA/Canada online radio’s

photo. 3 WOMEN HIT BY SWN, INJUNCTION EXTENDED, AND HIGHWAY 11 BURNS… DEC 2- Today along highway 11 things got rough. RCMP blocked off the road, arrests were made, there were reports of police dogs chasing people in the woods, and an SWN security vehicle hit 3 women. An ambulance was called and 2 women were sent to the hospital; meanwhile the RCMP did nothing. In the court house, the Judge dismissed arguments made by Melissa Augustine of behalf of all Jane Does named in the injunction, as well as arguments of other defendants, calling them “opinions”. SWN’s injunction was thus extended until december 17. Protestors outside of the courthouse reacted by putting blue tape over their mouths and linking arms. Someone shouts that they will go join the protestors on the highway. Footage emerges from the road of women being assaulted and arrested by RCMP. Soon after, highway 11 was set ablaze with flaming tires as protestors enacted their own permanent blockade. They now ask for support, people, and supplies. The burning tires have been called “smoke signals”. Cop cars are still reported accumulating. They need support stat. SAY NO TO SHALE GAS IN NEW BRUNSWICK!

N. J. VIDEO video part 1 https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=243384562491686&set=vb.100004604315873&type=2&theater part 2 https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=243385795824896&set=vb.100004604315873&type=2&theater M. A. VIDEO another video from same time https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=10152045837655280&set=vb.605865279&type=2&theater J. A. VIDEO (FIRE) https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=10152061015730631&set=vb.627855630&type=2&theater K. C. VIDEO (FIRE) https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=10152086296457363&set=vb.511947362&type=2&theater (Photo: Jonathan Augustine) #elsipogtog #elsipogtogsolidarity #shutdowncanada #nb

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We fully support the First Nations Child and Family Caring Society of Canada’s campaign to make their government provide equal and culturally based child welfare services to Native children! The number of Native children in foster care there is 3 TIMES HIGHER than at the peak of Indian boarding schools. Learn more and become a witness: http://lakota.cc/17QzEm7 Petition: http://lakota.cc/172NUI3

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The Canadian government is withholding documents concerning the torture of native children

http://www.vice.com/read/the-canadian-government-is-withholding-documents-concerning-the-torture-of-native-children

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What does it say about safety in Indian country when a television plot featuring meth distribution incorporates tribal land? Breaking Bad might give Indian country the new name of “Broken and Bad” after the brutal television series, featuring tribal lands, exemplified a continuing public safety crisis…Sure, television is fanciful, but it’s true that criminals have found that doing business in Indian country is profitable because of the remoteness, the lack of officers on patrol, and the jurisdictional tangles created by non-Indian crime on Indian land. Tribes struggle constantly with violent crime and drug trafficking committed by non-tribal members…How do cartels know that Indian country is the best place to commit crimes? To come around full circle, we can thank the media, from NPR to the New York Times, for sensationalist coverage about reservation crime. Breathless coverage of a Mexican drug trafficking organization on the Wind River Reservation, who exploited Native women to move meth, spurred copycat cases across the country. Evidence collected in one cartel bust actually yielded a Denver Post article discussing how hard it is for drug dealers to get busted in Indian country.

Breaking Bad, or Already Broken? Drug Crime on the Rez is All Too Real (via nitanahkohe)

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slavery & sex trafficking of Native women remains widespread in the good ol’ USA

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An American researcher says First Nations women from Thunder Bay, Ont., have been sold on ships in the harbour at Duluth, Minn., a notorious trafficking port.

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Andrea Smith, “Not an Indian Tradition: The Sexual Colonization of Native Peoples,” (2003) https://anonfiles.com/file/80a0b43094bfab30e18cde9ebd496ef0

Andrea Smith, “Boarding School Abuses, Human Rights and Reparations,” (2004) https://anonfiles.com/file/86a4ce3b16a160e79b1866d934a091f5

Andrea…

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TRIBE IS FAMILY, STATE IS NOT!  Do you know children who’ve been taken by the Department of Social Services? Do you know your rights under the Indian Child Welfare Act? Are your kids living with non-Indian foster parents?  Please come to learn your rights under ICWA & share your story if you feel you’ve been wronged *742 Indian kids are taken per year by DSS *South Dakota receives approx 100 million per year for foster care from the federal government *90% of Indian kids taken go to non-Indian homes/institutions for varying times This summit is hosted by the BIA in conjunction with Lakota/Dakota Elected Tribal Leaders from the 9 Reservations in South Dakota, various congressional reps, former Sen. Jim Abourezk (a primary ICWA author), Asst. Sec. Of Indian Affairs. 100s of our people will convene at the Best Western Ramkota Hotel for 3 days of learning. NPR explained the crisis in our state in late 2011…NPR will be covering this summit as well. We will also host 2 free buffalo feeds from 6-9pm (Weds & Thurs. at Mother Butler) *for more information please see www.lakotalaw.org

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Disempowerment of Native women specifically was a primary goal of the colonizers, with the intent of destabilizing and, ultimately, exerting colonial dominance over each indigenous nation. For example, among the Cherokee, a traditionally matriarchal society, the British decreased the power of women by ‘educating’ Cherokee males in European ways, encouraging marriage to non-Native women, and privileging mixed-blood male offspring in nation-to-nation negotiations. During the 1970’s, the Indian Health Service (IHS) oversaw the nonconsensual sterilization of approximately 40% of Native women of childbearing age. More recently, Native women’s anecdotal reports indicate that Medicare has denied funding for the removal of Norplant contraceptive devices, despite their high risk for the deleterious side effects in women with diabetes. The cumulative effects of these injustices have been characterized as a ‘soul wound’ among Native peoples and constitute considerable ‘historical trauma.’

Karina Walters, Reconceptualizing Native Women’s Health: An “Indigenist” Stress-Coping Model (via homininae)

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[When] Thursday, April 4, 2013 [Time] 2:00pm in EDT

[Where] Bureaux de PF Résolu / Resolute’s office - 111, rue Duke, Montréal

Depuis des décennies, l’industrie forestière coupe massivement dans la réserve faunique La Vérendrye et ailleurs sur le territoire algonquin. Les Algonquins qui vivent de la forêt voient leur mode de vie traditionnel disparaître en même temps qu’elle. Elle leur procure nourriture, médecine et éducation, en plus d’être essentielle à la pratique de leur spiritualité. L’été dernier, des familles algonquines se sont levées pour tenter de faire cesser les coupes à blanc sur le territoire absolument vital de …

Manifestation en solidarité avec les Algonquins / Protest in solidarity with the Algonquins | Facebook

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Activist, Andrea Smith

Andrea Smith (Cherokee) is a longtime anti-violence and Native American activist and scholar. She is co-founder of the Boarding School Healing Project and INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence, a national grassroots organization that utilizes direct action and critical dialogue. Smith has published widely on issues of violence against women of color and is one of the nation’s leading experts on the topic, as well as a highly-sought after speaker.

Smith currently teaches in media and cultural studies at the University of California, Riverside. In addition to Conquest: Sexual Violence and American Indian Genocide, Smith authored Native Americans and The Christian Right: The Gendered Politics of Unlikely Alliances and helped edit INCITE!’s two anthologies, The Revolution Will Not Be Funded: Beyond the Non-Profit Industrial Complex and Color Of Violence. She has also contributed to South End Press’s two forthcoming anthologies, The Revolution Starts at Home, and Sovereign Acts.

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Approximately one third, or 70* Thunder Bay Police Officers, are on this year’s Ontario “Sunshine List.”  The Sunshine List includes public employees making $100,000 or more. Thunder Bay Police are being paid an obscene amount of money, especially considering that they are refusing to take the hate rape of one of our sisters seriously.  To all appearances, Thunder Bay has two serial rapists on the loose. These women and men in uniform on this list are collectively being paid about $10,000,000 and are doing nothing whatsoever about Thunder Bay’s serial rapists problem.

HTML Source

For a PDF Source, click here, then go to “Municipalities and Services” -> PDF under “Salary Disclosure 2013″

opthunderbirdinfo | Our Sister are Beautiful. Our Sisters are Powerful. Our Sisters should Expect to live Without Fear.

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Arming Sisters…not with weapons, but with the courage and knowledge to fight back.

Upon working with Tahrir Body Guard (a group dedicated to ending sexual harassment in Egypt) setting up compact women’s self defense courses across Cairo, it hit me. Literally, mid joint lock, a light bulb flashed above my head. Sexual assault rates across North America towards indigenous women are at a sickening high.

For every 1,000 indigenous women in a district, 330 of them will be assaulted.

1 in 3 will be raped.

2 in 5 will experience domestic violence.

3 in 5 will be physically assaulted.

The most unique thing about these statistics? 88% of the time, the perpetrator is non indigenous. Meaning one thing: We’re being targeted. Targeted to flawed laws, racism, and deep rooted corruption in the institutions set up to protect and serve the public. Up until recently, 7 March 2013 recently, when the Violence Against Women Act was reauthorized including tribal provisions, tribal governments had no authority to properly address cases.

Keep in mind, while the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act is a huge step, it only covers our indigenous sisters in the United States, leaving our indigenous sisters in Canada on the same continuing path. Aside from legal protection not being able to cover the indigenous women across Turtle Island, a signed bill, regardless of borders, will not bring down the rate of assault for years to come, or delete the racism and corruption from society.

Back to the light bulb. Compact self defense courses. If they could be set up in Egypt, and laid out to the point where any woman could walk away with valuable information to save her life in the span of a 6 hour class, why not do this across Turtle Island? I couldn’t find a single reason as to why this couldn’t / shouldn’t be done, so I set out with the following aim…

Crowdfunded. Non-profit.

2 day compact women’s self defense course talking on awareness and mentality as well the physical application of 10 moves that could save a woman’s life…they have mine.

Top 20 most populated reservations across Turtle Island. 10 stops in the United States, 10 stops in Canada spanning the late Summer months / early Fall.

Should this goal be completed, we will directly reach 2,000 women, and thousands more as they share their knowledge. Since this project is run from funding, should funding go over the set goal, courses will continue to move forward as there over 900 reservations throughout Turtle Island, the stops are, to a degree, infinite.

Help us protect our sisters. Because an act of violence against women anywhere, is an act of violence against women everywhere.

About Arming Sisters

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**TRIGGER WARNING: Rape, other forms of sexual violence** Here in Minneapolis, a growing number of Native American women wear red shawls to powwows to honor survivors of sexual violence. The shawls, a traditional symbol of nurturing, flow toward the earth. The women seem cloaked in blood. People hush. Everyone rises, not only in respect, for we are jolted into personal memories and griefs. Men and children hold hands, acknowledging the outward spiral of the violations women suffer. The Justice Department reports that one in three Native women is raped over her lifetime, while other sources report that many Native women are too demoralized to report rape. Perhaps this is because federal prosecutors decline to prosecute 67 percent of sexual abuse cases, according to the Government Accountability Office. Further tearing at the social fabric of communities, a Native woman battered by her non-Native husband has no recourse for justice in tribal courts, even if both live on reservation ground. More than 80 percent of sex crimes on reservations are committed by non-Indian men, who are immune from prosecution by tribal courts. The Minnesota Indian Women’s Resource Center says this gap in the law has attracted non-Indian habitual sexual predators to tribal areas. Alexandra Pierce, author of a 2009 report on sexual violence against Indian women in Minnesota, has found that there rapes on upstate reservations increase during hunting season. A non-Indian can drive up from the cities and be home in five hours. The tribal police can’t arrest him. To protect Native women, tribal authorities must be able to apprehend, charge and try rapists — regardless of race. Tribal courts had such jurisdiction until 1978, when the Supreme Court ruled that they did not have inherent jurisdiction to try non-Indians without specific authorization from Congress. The Senate bill would restore limited jurisdiction over non-Indians suspected of perpetrating sex crimes, but even this unnerves some officials. “You’ve got to have a jury that is a reflection of society as a whole, and on an Indian reservation, it’s going to be made up of Indians, right?” said Senator Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee. “So the non-Indian doesn’t get a fair trial.” Leaving aside the fact that most Native defendants tried in the United States face Indian-free juries, and disregarding the fulsome notion that Native people can’t be impartial jurists, Mr. Grassley got his facts wrong. Most reservations have substantial non-Indian populations, and Native families are often mixed. The Senate version guarantees non-Indians the right to effective counsel and trial by an impartial jury. What seems like dry legislation can leave Native women at the mercy of their predators or provide a slim margin of hope for justice. As a Cheyenne proverb goes, a nation is not conquered until the hearts of its women are on the ground.

Louise Erdrich, “Rape On The Reservation,” NYT.com 2/26/13 (via racialicious)

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Download These Slides and Take Your Picture with Them To Help Raise Awareness

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By Kenneth Jackson and Keith Laboucan - APTN National News

Edmonton – A startling revelation came out in an Edmonton courtroom Thursday when an 18-year-old First Nation girl said she had been raped five days earlier but when police were called she was the one who got arrested.

On top of that, no rape kit was performed until three days later.

It’s not immediately known where her alleged attackers are. The young woman can’t file a criminal complaint with police until she is released from custody.

The bombshell was dropped in Youth Court when the young woman, who APTN National News is not naming as of now, said she’d been raped at a west end motel on Sunday. She was bloodied, bruised and had a front tooth knocked out in the attack according to both her lawyer and a youth court worker.

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Bloodied First Nation woman claims she was raped but Edmonton police arrest her instead | APTN National News