Honoring Indigenous Resistance
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This week many in the US celebrate the “Thanksgiving” holiday, even amidst the growing isolation of social distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic. Critical Resistance sees this holiday as an opportunity to center the experiences of Indigenous communities and honor centuries-long struggles of Indigenous people here at home and around the world against the violence of colonialism and for cultural regeneration and self-determination.

The COVID-19 pandemic has disproportionately devastated Black and Indigenous communities, with Indigenous peoples experiencing COVID-infection rates at 3.5 times higher than white people in the US ([link removed]) , impacting Native youth at higher rates than white youth according to the Center for Disease Control. This is certainly the result of US settler-colonial project, deploying generations of genocidal policies stripping Indigenous communities of living conditions for healthy, sustainable lives. From forced relocation, to confinement, imprisonment, monitoring, criminalization, policing, political repression, dispossession, disenfranchisement, torture, forced sterilization, disappearance, and death--the prison industrial complex (PIC) has been instrumental in maintaining colonial control over Indigenous peoples and land in the US and around the world. Today, Indigenous people in the US continue to make
up the largest group per capita imprisoned in jails and prisons. Leonard Peltier, from the Lakota & Dakota peoples and a former member of the American Indian Movement, remains the longest-imprisoned political prisoner ([link removed]) . Free Leonard Peltier!
Photos (above & below) by Ilka Hartman of the Alcatraz Occupation. Above (from left): Harold Patty, Oohosis, Peggy Lee Ellenwood, and Sandy Berger. June 11, 1971. Below: The Proclamation of the Occupation of Alcatraz.

As November 20, 2020 marked the 51st anniversary of the historic 1969-1971 occupation of Alcatraz island in Ohlone territory now referred to as the San Francisco Bay Area, we at Critical Resistance reflect on the many lessons from a vibrant movement of Indigenous resistance. Throughout this trying year of global economic and public health crises, advances from Indigenous struggles for self-determination and decolonization reached new heights this year, surely impacting generations to come.

In July, Sioux leaders engaged in another instance of ongoing resistance for land reclamation ([link removed]) at the Black Hills site in Keystone, South Dakota that was targeted by state repression. Northern California’s Yurok and Hoopa Valley Tribes made advances in their fight for self determination ([link removed]) , winning a landmark deal to remove several dams that have ruined salmon runs integral to the tribes’ survival and practices. The US Supreme Court ruled in favor of Muskogee Creek ([link removed]) and other Indigenous peoples in Oklahoma, bolstering their capacity for self determination and resisting the PIC
([link removed]) . O’odom water and land defenders recently led a protest ([link removed]) against militarization of the borderlands in Tucson, Arizona. Throughout the summer, there was powerful political solidarity and commitment to fighting policing ([link removed]) demonstrated by Indigenous people in Minneapolis, Minnesota during the George Floyd protests. Lastly, the Indigenous peoples of Nigeria waged a powerful fight against poverty and the violence of policing ([link removed]) , protesting SARS, the notorious Special Anti-Robbery Squad.


These battles not only push forward significant advances in the struggle for decolonization, but also in the struggle for PIC abolition, as abolition is a strategy for the ultimate goal of community self-determination and liberation. In the words of Pit River Tribe organizer and long-time cherished friend of Critical Resistance, Morning Star Gali: ([link removed]) “Abolition is more than an idea. Abolition is decolonization. Abolition on stolen land, as this is for Indigenous communities, is a radical dismantling of the carceral state.”

Toward liberation,
Critical Resistance
Resources:
We also offer three resources for political education uplifting Indigenous resistance that we hope you will check out if you haven't already:

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Our Abolition Now Network’s teach-in “Black & Indigenous Liberation Through Abolition” ([link removed]) , a virtual workshop on the relationship between settler colonialism, racial capitalism, and imperialism that ties the threads of Black and Indigenous resistance through abolition of the PIC.

* Issue 32 of The Abolitionist on Decolonization & Abolition ([link removed]) is now up on our website for download in English and Spanish.

* Indigenous Abolitionist Study Guide, by Toronto Abolition Convergence ([link removed])

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Mural by Leslie “Dime” Lopez at 4400 Telegraph Ave, Oakland, CA, 2019.
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