Dear Friend,

This Thursday marks the 401st “Thanksgiving,” recognized by Indigenous movements on Turtle Island and around the world as a day of mourning — and a celebration of resistance.

We’re so thankful for your continued support for Indigenous movements. From Minnesota’s Line 3 to Brazil’s capital city to Glasgow’s COP26, Grassroots International has stood with Indigenous movements defending their cultures, their territories and our entire planet. Though you may not have given before or in a while, would you join me in offering thanks to these movements with a donation to our New Visions, Continuing Resistance Fund?

2021 has seen many examples of Indigenous resistance in the face of ongoing threats. You, with Grassroots, provided essential support to a number of key mobilizations, including:

• In Brazil, the far-right Bolsonaro regime sought to reclassify hundreds of thousands of acres of Indigenous territories to open them up for agribusiness and resource extraction. But these communities mobilized in Brazil’s largest protests of Indigenous Peoples since the 1980s. Thanks to funds supporters like you provided via Grassroots International, Indigenous organizers from APIB brought busloads of their communities to the capital city Brasilia for weeks of encampments and mobilizations.
• In Minnesota, our grantee ally the Indigenous Environmental Network (IEN) served a key support role in the struggle against the Line 3 pipeline cutting through Indigenous territory. IEN provided communications, media and infrastructure support to encampments on Indigenous land like the Red Lake Treaty Camp. As the struggle moved from the frontlines of construction to capitol buildings, IEN was there sitting-in alongside fellow water protectors — and Grassroots International funds were there every step and “sit” along the way.
• Just recently in Glasgow, Scotland, Indigenous movements from around the world converged to protest the corporate-driven COP26 climate summit. Grassroots organizers exposed the false solutions of “net-zero” carbon trading, and offered Indigenous, worker and peasant-centered solutions to cool the Earth. Donations to Grassroots International from supporters like you provided key travel funds for these activists.

These struggles are just some of the ongoing battles Indigenous communities are facing heading into 2022. Some struggles, like in Brazil, continue as Indigenous communities anxiously await a supreme court ruling there. Others, like in Minnesota, saw devastating setbacks, as pipelines came online despite continued lawsuits. And some, often those movements with the resources to sustain and grow, ended in victory.

These movements continue to need your critical support. They face powerful multinational corporations and the planet-killing opposition that these corps resource with billions. We have the numbers, the moral power of what’s just and good behind us… but we need to pool our resources to strengthen a counter-weight that centers Indigenous voices.

Heading into Thursday I’m thankful for all you do for justice, for the planet, as we accompany Indigenous resistance into 2022. Can you take the next step and make that solidarity concrete?

In solidarity & gratitude, Chung-Wha Hong Executive Director

P.S. In addition to donating to our New Visions, Continuing Resistance Fund, please consider attending (or tuning into the livestream of) the National Day of Mourning in Plymouth, MA.