By Somaya Jimenez
On July 3, 2020, Indigenous land and treaty defenders held protests on the Black Hills near Mount Rushmore in response to a Trump rally hosted on the sacred Indigenous land without obtaining free, prior and informed consent of local Indigenous people.
Cultural Survival joins Indian Country in celebrating the long-overdue retirement of the racist team name and mascot as the Washington football team’s identity and branding. We are encouraged by progress being made on the national front and hope that other national sports teams such as the Atlanta Braves, Kansas City Chiefs, and Cleveland Indians take immediate steps in the same direction.
By Phillippa Pitts
Organized by Idle No More, an Indigenous rights advocacy group, Cancel Canada Day brought together scholars, poets, parents, musicians, filmmakers, and activists for a three-hour digital convening on July 1, 2020. The event, streamed on Facebook live, accompanied the in-person protests and direct actions happening simultaneously across the nation.
By Phillippa Pitts
In 1852, abolitionist and formerly enslaved American Frederick Douglass posed a question to the audience who gathered to hear him celebrate the signing of the Declaration of Independence. “What, to the American slave, is your Fourth of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is constant victim… This Fourth of July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn.”
For the past 40 years, after the eviction of around 6,000 Batwa people from Kahuzi Biega National Park (PNKB), the Batwa people have suffered extreme poverty and wrongful treatment at the hands of PNKB. Since, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has made no attempt to find the community similar lands, and when the Batwa do try to regain lands in the park or access to traditional resources, park officials have responded with undue force, arresting and even killing those who would not back down.
Cultural Survival apoya la libre determinación y la defensa de los Pueblos Indígenas desde 1972, además motiva a los movimientos Indígenas a empoderarse y a organizarse para acompañar a sus comunidades en el involucramiento de las acciones nacionales, internacionales y así demandar a los Estados puedan garantizar, proteger y cumplir con sus derechos.
Land Acknowledgement
We acknowledge that we are headquartered on Massachusett land, in Cambridge, MA, and we thank the past, current, and future Indigenous stewards of this territory.
