Reflections from Mapuche Territory
Moira Millán, author, activist and traditional Mapuche weychafe (warrior, guardian) has been living the quarantine in the isolation of her remote lof (community) in the Patagonian mountains, a community slowly being built on stolen land that she and her people have reclaimed. To send this piece she had to face roadblocks, hide from spying neighbors, […]
Live from Huichol Country: Susana Valadez & Friends
UPDATE: Zoom Into the Huichol Center was a huge success with thousands joining from across the globe as Founder Susana Valadez and her team reported live from the Center’s remote headquarters in Mexico’s Western Sierra Madre. Susana shared with us the ways in which Covid-19 is transforming the continued operation of the Huichol Center, an […]
From Beads to Seeds at the Huichol Center
Last year’s Nobel Peace Prize nomination seemed like the moment Susana Valadez had worked for her whole life. The founder of the Huichol Center for Cultural Survival had spent the past four decades weaving together with painstaking care the components of an organization that provided the Wixárika people with culturally relevant employment and training, a […]
'The Condor and The Eagle' Takes Flight
From the tar sands of Alberta, Canada, to the oil fields of Texas, to the Ecuadorian Amazon, The Condor & the Eagle tells the story of the collective struggle of the Indigenous peoples of North and South America in their fight to preserve their communities and to protect the Earth from climate change. It took […]
Lakota leaders defy governor’s order to remove Covid-19 checkpoints
Pine Ridge Matriarch’s Mother’s Day message: ‘This is our land, so you cannot say anything!’
KXL Pipeline loses permit, but construction goes on
Ten U.S. states and the federal District of Columbia joined tribal government opposition to the KXL oil pipeline construction on May 7, calling for a moratorium on all permits for fossil-fuel infrastructure projects during the Covid-19 pandemic. The request follows an outcry in Indian country over ongoing Keystone XL Pipeline construction despite the most recent […]
#StayAtHome with new Indigenous Media Library
The free 100+ entry Voices of Amerikua Indigenous Film Library was born when #StayAtHome mandates began rolling out across the globe, and Mexican media producer and activist Iván Sawyer García began getting inquiries from friends and readers: Do you have any recommendations for indigenous films we can watch while we are sheltering in place? As a matter of fact he did — as founder of the bilingual collaborative documentary and multimedia lab Voices of Amerikua, indigenous films and media projects are his life.
"An opportunity to reconnect with our origins"
Due to the novel coronavirus pandemic, many Indigenous people have returned to their ancestral territories. These vulnerable communities are now isolating themselves in efforts to block the entrance of this highly infectious respiratory disease.
From Encampment to Ecovillage at Standing Rock
Editor’s Note: Standing Rock movement founder LaDonna Allard left this life on April 10, 2021, after a battle with brain cancer at the age of 64. Mourners from around the world joined hearts on social media for days afterwards. Here we share a telephone interview with LaDonna from August of 2019. When LaDonna Brave Bull […]
Lakota grandmothers fight man camps amid pandemic
The threat “causes eerie memories for us with the infected smallpox blankets that were distributed to tribes intentionally in the 1800s,” said Faith Spotted Eagle, a member of the Brave Heart Society and Yankton Sioux Tribe. “It is absolutely similar, whereby we lost thousands of people in our tribes along the Missouri River.”
Native leaders, civic groups blast rollback of bedrock environmental law
WASHINGTON, D.C. – The Creature from the Black Lagoon loomed over the offices of the Interior Department last week as non-profit consumer advocate Public Citizen joined the chorus of voices condemning the proposed rollback of the bedrock National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA. “Trump’s Interior Secretary is an Oil Lobbyist,” declared the giant video […]
Lyla June candidacy takes aim at addiction to fossil fuels
Indigenous Water Protector, environmental scientist, internationally recognized musician sets sights on the New Mexico House of Representatives.
Heathy Children, Healthy Future in Ecuador
Indigenous Kañaris place the child at the center of the Andean world
Lyla June on The Truth of Thanksgiving
As we come together to celebrate family, food and a tradition that is largely fiction, many of us have been delving into deeper truths about our nation – because we are ready, because those who hold those histories are ready, and because it’s time.
Lyla June on the Forest as Farm
Science reveals that ancient foodscapes were cutting-edge regenerative agriculture
Lyla June on Renovating Native Foodways as a Path to Sovereignty
Lino Pichasaca and I walked the rough footpaths, the chakiñanes in Kichwa, around the Hacienda Guantug in the province of Cañar, Ecuador. It was 1967, and the Ecuadorian agrarian reform was getting started. Leaders like Lino saw great possibilities and huge obstacles.
Native Flower Rebellion in Argentina
As the Extinction Rebellion shuts down the system in the North, Indigenous women in Argentina stage an uprising of their own. The Native Flower Rebellion, they are calling it: an occupation of “self-convoked” Mapuche, Qom and other Indigenous women have traveled from all corners of the republic to demand an accounting from their government, and to unite in a powerful message: The Terricide must stop.
Amid sweat and tears, Esperanza is born
Here in the darkness of the temazcal, sweat, steam and mud become one with the throbbing beat of Teresa’s drum. The heat bears down, melting away the boundaries between us. Rhythms from her Mayan heritage rise in the air with the incense-like scent of copal, her voice carrying us to a place beyond time. She […]
Heroes in Ponchos and Sombreros
“Superheroes don’t wear capes. They wear ponchos and sombreros.” The Andean phrase is being invoked once again in Ecuador.
From Sunset Strip to the Sierra Madre to a Nobel nomination
As the founder of the Huichol Center for Cultural Survival and a lifelong advocate for their cause, Susana Valadez was chosen by an Amsterdam-based nonprofit, the Drugs Peace Institute, to represent the indigenous Wixárika (Huichol) people, whom the group nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for “their efforts in favor of a sociable, ecologically friendly and peace-promoting use of mind-altering substances.”
Greta and Tokata at the Front Lines
On a world tour for climate justice, Swedish teen activist Greta Thunberg visited Native America Oct. 6-8, attracting a gymnasium full of enthusiasts at Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, leading a march on Rapid City Hall alongside youth climate leader Tokata Iron Eyes, and speeding off to the Standing Rock Sioux Indian Reservation.
On Funding, Fossil Fuels and Femicide
Today in honor of Climate Week we share a powerful interview by Ayana Young, founder of the innovative For The Wild podcast. As Standing Rock and the ongoing Water Protectors movement across the continent have made clear, the devastating impacts of the fossil fuel industry fall disproportionately on Native people. And as indigenous leaders Rachel […]
Bolivia is on Fire, Too — And You’re Part of the Problem
Esperanza Project collaborator Kayla Mi-kyung Vandervort has been working with indigenous leaders in Bolivia to create a campaign to support their work. These tribal peoples on the front lines of the devastation have not been getting the support they need and are desperate need of supplies and help for the communities that are being displaced, […]
How the Women of Standing Rock Are Building Sovereign Economies
For Sicangu Lakota water protector Cheryl Angel, Standing Rock helped her define what she stands against: an economy rooted in extraction of resources and exploitation of people and planet. It wasn’t until she’d had some distance that the vision of what she stands for came into focus. “Now I understand that sustainable sovereign economies are needed to […]
Women of Standing Rock: LaDonna Brave Bull Allard
In the harrowing days of the Standing Rock resistance to the Black Snake, LaDonna Brave Bull Allard — Tamakawastewin, or Good Earth Woman — became an icon, though she’s quick to step away from such titles with her self-deprecating humor. The Lakota historian’s fight to stop the Dakota Access Pipeline from plowing past her son’s […]
One day in July 2017, Marianna Treviño-Wright was driving her car by the levee that crosses the private property of the National Butterfly Center. Then she saw something unsettling. Surrounded by the dense Texas thornscrub that grows on either side of the levee, she pulled over, got out of her car and confronted five government contractors […]
Garet Bleir has spent the last 100 days living out of a tent beside the Carrizo/Comecrudo Nation and allies in the Esto’k Gna’s villages near the U.S.-Mexico border. He is there investigating the humanitarian and environmental devastation caused by the border wall sweeping through South Texas. This story was made possible with a grant from […]
Sovereign Sisters in Lakota Lands
Lakota Spiritual Activist Cheryl Angel believes in listening to her dreams – the ones that come to her at night as she sleeps, and the ones that arrive as messengers from the road as she travels the globe. She has been traveling extensively over the past two years, connecting with indigenous and non-indigenous women and […]