ANG Press release

ABORIGINAL NEWS GROUP STATEMENT ON THE #MI'KMAQ / #ELSIPOGTOG CRISIS

A Communiqué from the ANG Public Information Bureau:

To the Sovereign People of the Independent Mi'kmaq Nation
To all Colonialised Peoples of the Fourth World

The Aboriginal News Group (ANG) wishes to extend its support and solidarity to the Indigenous warriors standing strong  in defence of Mi'kmaq / Elsipogtog territorial and human rights under Canadian occupation and against the unwanted exploitation of their lands. We recognise their peaceful protest as part of the international struggle in defiance of intentional acts of genocide undertaken against Indigenous / First Nations Peoples throughout the Fourth World and within the occupied territories of North America.

Clearly, the 'Indian Wars' are not over.

Aboriginal rights defenders and concerned residents who have taken non-violent, community control over a roadway that crosses through their Nation in protest of an environmental wipeout of Indigenous land were viciously attacked by Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) state security forces employing fear tactics; rubber bullets and tear gas aimed against unarmed Indigenous Peoples on their own territory. Unnecessary mass arrests of prominent protesters and and the seizing of personal computers and recording devices against (seemingly) targeted members of the independent media has also occurred.

This is not democracy. Nor is it benevolent colonialism.

This is genocide under the provisions of the 'Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide' : (Resolution 260 (III) A of the U.N. General Assembly on 9 December 1948)

And Canada (the 'Peaceful Country') is in blatant violation of these very basic human rights.

We have all watched (mostly in silence) how the Canadian tradition of colonialist exploitation and xenophobic self-centred  importance has resulted in the mass liquidation of millions of First Nations Peoples, legal and extra-legal racial segregation; punishing residential 'de-Indianising' schools; mass incarceration; widespread communal depression and the institution of socio-politically isolated Bantustans designed to rob Indigenous Peoples of our lands, our rights and our very dignity.

This is the basic formula of genocide.

The unapologetic use of state-sponsored violence, social coercion and subvert; psychological repression of speech; cultural and political expression in order to prevent the development of a viable, pan-Indigenous consciousness. In other words, the actions undertaken at Elsipogtog by state authorities is intended to marginalise the autochthonous Mi'kmaq Nation as a sociopolitical entity within Canada by way of force.

This is genocide.

The destruction of the Indigenous population of North America is not new news to the people of the First Nations. We continue to wage the struggle for Indigenous survival through the persistence of our resistance. The racist, enforced displacement and economic exploitation of modern First Nations Peoples, the unpeaceful dispossession of Indigenous lands and the right to protest colonialism are critical issues for all Original Peoples of the Fourth World facing extinction in the name of European and capitalist expansion.

Respect Indigenous Mi’kmaq Human and Territorial Rights!

We applaud the Mi’kmaq Warrior Society and all Original Peoples of the Fourth World courageously and intelligently resisting colonialism and Indigenous genocide.



- Editors of the Aboriginal News Group.

support for our struggle

The Aboriginal News Group is a group I am proud to be a member of. 

The ANG is an international people-powered indigenous-led news guild that exists to provide support and inspiration to independent Aboriginal bloggers, journalists and activists who report on news items of importance and interest to First Nations/Original Peoples.

Both the ANG and its international news-wire the Aboriginal Press News Service (APNS) are cashless, state-less entities that operate without a budget, contributors are not compensated and as a general rule we always use Internet services that provide freely available services to anyone regardless of nationality, race/ethnicity, geographic location or economic capability. We do this to provide an example to First Nations communities and activists without means that it is possible to produce informational media that can educate the international public about their issues and concerns.

Our struggles to achieve tino rangatiratanga are posted on the ANG site for the world to see. Our struggle is the same struggle that many indigenous peoples have - we are not alone - our voices rise up in harmony - our brothers and sisters join our chorus - inclusive and open we welcome all people to support us - we are all on the same waka and we need your voice.

For Immediate Release

ANG Statement of Support For Maori-Led Takutaimoana Hikoi To Parliament In Opposition To the Marine and Coastal Area Bill

At this time, the Aboriginal News Group (ANG) wishes to offer its support to the Maori people of Aotearoa with a statement of Indigenous solidarity and unity with those involved with the 2011 Hikoi (march) on the New Zealand government. We support their right to demand an end to discriminatory legislation and the ongoing colonial subversion of the Maori people and their ancestral territories.

Many of the original people of Aotearoa believe that the proposed 'Marine and Coastal Areas' legislation is unjustly slanted against their community and have chosen to take their grievances to the seat of colonial governance. While this bill ostensibly restores the 'right' under colonialist law for Maori to challenge state ownership of foreshore and seabed regions, it does not extend to the Maori people full, unrestricted ownership of said territories. So in effect, non-Maori interests will still have access to land areas that should rightfully be returned to and maintained by its original owners. A political state of affairs very common, and very detrimental to many Indigenous peoples across the Fourth World.

Before the arrival of Europeans, all of Occupied New Zealand was in the control and stewardship of the Maori and they have never relinquished their claim to Aotearoa. We support their struggle to demand full redress and compensation for their territorial and cultural disenfranchisement and we also commend those non-Maori who realise that by supporting the Maori people they are also standing up for their own best interests and better relations with the Original Peoples of Aotearoa.

We ask that all the peoples of the Fourth World and others of conscience support this peaceful action in defence of Indigenous/First Nations territorial and human rights.

The Takutaimoana Hikoi is due to reach Parliament on March 22nd.

For additional information about this release please contact: Aboriginal News Group (ANG) aboriginalnewsgroup@gmail.com

As we support stuggles overseas, so our struggles are supported from overseas.

Aboriginal News Group Press Statement

Press Release

Aboriginal News Group Press Statement
05.01.2010

“The Pioneer has before declared that our only safety depends upon the total extermination of the Indians. Having wronged them for centuries, we had better, in order to protect our civilization, follow it up by one more wrong and wipe these untamed and untameable creatures from the face of the earth. In this lies future safety for our settlers and the soldiers who are under incompetent commands. Otherwise, we may expect future years to be as full of trouble with the redskins as those have been in the past.” - L. Frank Baum

To the Original Peoples of the Fourth World and all International Press Services:

At high noon today US Army helicopters of the US Seventh Cavalry air division attempted to land their Blackhawk aircraft upon Lakota Sacred Burial grounds in South Dakota. The presence of military aircraft from this unit is a sad and insulting reminder of the slaughter of more than 300 American Aboriginals on December 29,1890 when soldiers of the US 7th Cavalry gunned down more than 300 Aboriginal Minneconjou Lakota refugee children, women, infants and the elderly at what is now called Wounded Knee in South Dakota Indian Country. The military then left the bodies of their victims to decay unburied in the driving snow.

According to reports from Indigenous Rights Movement Radio host Wanblee this afternoon, Lakota resident Theresa TwoBulls was given less than 24 hrs notice that three US Army 7th Cavalry helicopters would make a landing on the sacred burial grounds at Wounded Knee. As of this writing, the US military was confronted by angry but peaceful and steadfast community resistance as the Aboriginal people of the area have so far, according to reports from Lakota people on the ground, managed to prevent the aircraft from touching Indigenous ground.

For all American Aboriginals of the Americas, this is a sacred area. This is the place where the promise of a people died while fleeing from a genocidal US military unit hell-bent on liquidating the continent of its Indigenous population. There has never been any official apology offered for this massacre and the military awards bestowed upon the genocidal aggressors involved in this conflict still stand, as does a physical monument in honour of the US Army killed during Custer’s “last stand” against a defiant and united Indigenous resistance to their own demise.

The history of the US Army 7th Cavalry is important to understanding the level of violence used against Indigenous peoples. It is important to remember that after the US Seventh Cavalry officially ended the "Indian Wars" at home, they were then dispatched to do battle against Indigenous Filipinos struggling to maintain their hard-won national independence from the colonialist Spanish. In other words, the US War Department sent this very same unit to do overseas what was done here to the Indigenous peoples of the Americas. In this historical light, it is only logical for Indigenous peoples to assume that the Obama administration is attempting to make a political point out of this spectacle. Only, what sort of message are you sending by insulting and humiliating a people already suffering from five centuries of continuous pro-Europocentric, anti-Indigenous genocide?

This domestic military action is a deliberate insult and an obvious message of ongoing colonialism, state-sponsored racism and apathetic Indigenous genocide to all Indigenous peoples across the Fourth World; to the whole of the Lakota/Dakota Nation; and to the Indigenous residents of Pine Ridge and Wounded Knee. The symbolism of dispatching the Seventh Cavalry to Wounded Knee in an attempt to land weapons of mass destruction on Aboriginal sacred ground tells us how little this government, and this particular administration, respects the people of Indian Country and our significant historical perspective as survivors of the racist Euro-settler xenophobic purges waged against the Indian in the Americas.

To make matters worse, this action comes on the heels of newly-passed legislation in Arizona state that requires law officers to racially-profile anyone they believe “looks”, “sounds” or “dresses” like an illegal immigrant, a thinly veiled “race law” that directly effects both our Indigenous sisters and brothers native to Occupied Mexico as well as the Native American population of Arizona in the United States. Given that most Indigenous peoples of the Americas share the same general physiotype and more often than not, similar Spanish last names, the passage of this guideline will without a doubt lead to widespread abuses against that state’s brown-skinned population. The legal door now opened, Texas and other states led by neo-confederate constituencies are moving to pass their own anti-immigrant/anti-Indigenous directives that will broadly effect anyone and everyone who could be perceived by the colonial European majority as a “foreign invader”.

The Obama administration has shown America and the world that they are no different than any other previous US government in their view that the American Indian on both sides of the US border is nothing more than a prop or a tool to be displayed only when it is useful to promote the “contemporary” 21st century neo-colonialist capitalist agenda. The Obama administration, an office headed by a man of African descent, has shamed itself and all those who have supported his candidacy in arrogantly dismissing the memory of our people interred at Wounded Knee by rubbing the military might of the historically anti-Indigenous 7th Cavalry in our faces by forcibly entering Indian Country in an attempt to land their machines of war on top of the bodies of our ancestral dead.

Clearly, the culture war against the American Indian is not over. Welcome to the new American century.

- The Aboriginal News Group

For more information on the incident go here