Today, on Indigenous Peoples’ Day, we at Critical Resistance (CR) join communities everywhere to honor native peoples’ ongoing legacies of struggle for decolonization in Turtle Island and across the world. In the face of the Palestinian people’s ongoing resistance to genocide and settler colonialism, it is all the more crucial that we take time to reflect on, learn from, and take action in support of Indigenous communities globally.

We find deep inspiration from the unbreakable solidarity over this last year demonstrated by Indigenous people in the imperial core of the US with Palestinian liberation, from Tacoma, Albuquerque, Oakland, and all over the country. Native organizations such as The Red Nation and NDN Collective have continued to offer all of us powerful analysis that makes clear the connections between anti-colonial movements internationally. In the same vein, as Palestinians have been leading the fight to stop the US-backed Israeli genocide, they have not missed an opportunity to reiterate their commitments to the decolonization of this land.

Native peoples’ struggles for decolonization serve as a pillar for all our movements, as it it is entirely impossible to separate them or their importance from the myriad of issues facing our communities today. The recent destruction caused by Hurricane Helene across many states in the Southeast show us the need of fighting climate change through a just transition framework that centers Indigenous people. This need was made ever more clear when FEMA announced a $9 billion shortfall as a result of their disaster response on the same day that the US government approved to send $8.7 billion to apartheid Israel. The increasing importance to resist the West’s imperialist policies and actions against Indigenous and Third World peoples that both drive forced migration from the Global South while militarizing border enforcement is all the more evident with rising attacks on immigration by both Democrats and Republicans. Those in power continue to double down on increasing policing, a system that continues to kill Native people in the so-called US and Canada at a rate higher than any other group.

 While we understand imprisonment, policing, criminalization, and border militarization have long been used as tools of colonization and repression, we seize and amplify opportunities to make sure that our campaigns to abolish the PIC advance wins for Indigenous sovereignty too. Our statewide campaign in California to close several prisons with Californians United for a Responsible Budget (CURB) also aims to rematriate the land that California’s prisons are on to Indigenous hands. Similarly, on the East Coast, our CR New York City chapter is working with the Abolish ICE New York New Jersey coalition to situation the campaign to pass Dignity Not Detention legislation for the state of New York which would effectively end the state’s collaboration with ICE in a growingly anti-immigrant context within the broader struggle against border imperialism.

Moreover, we know that militarism, war-making, imperialism, colonization and the PIC are all inseparable, thus dismantling all of these overlapping systems and forces is an Indigenous people’s and solidarity issue. Our next issue of The Abolitionist - Issue 42 on anti-war organizing, and dedicated to our late and beloved Masai Ehehosi who passed in April of this year- covers a range of timely struggles - many Indigenous led - from organizers in Hawai’i to Mexico, Puerto Rico, Atlanta, and Palestine resisting the permanent war imperialism and capitalism wage on our communities, uplifting the historic people’s victories along the way.

Onward toward liberation,

-Critical Resistance

More Announcements