Monthly Archives: July 2021
Free Winona!
Winona LaDuke and many others have been trying to stop Enbridge’s Line 3 pipeline construction, which threatens the integrity of the headwaters of the Mississippi River area, where Winona and many of the other protestors live. This encapsulates all the major issues of our time: capitalism and fossil fuels vs. living in harmony with the earth, which is casting us off with a pandemic and global warming because we don’t recognize our place in the web of life and support its processes. As a group, the majority in this country also fail to honor non-white lives and cultures — the diversity, which nature exemplifies. I think we need to recognize that man-made laws and the police and military protect the capitalist, racist system and private property, rather than people or Life
Winona is currently in a local county jail, the powers-that-be hoping that the Stop Line-3 movement will fall apart without her on-site leadership. What they fail to recognize is that this is a leader-full movement that I hope will grow and continue. Native Lives and Livelihoods (wild rice, etc.) matter, and so does the earth and water on which all forms of life, including the mostly arrogant Western world, depends.
My 4th of July message
I love my country and consider myself to be even more patriotic than many, since I want us to live up to our ideals. This is why, on this patriotic holiday, I posting Weshoyot Alvitre’s art work, displayed in the Pitzer College Art Gallery, on Facebook. The words on the white lines of her upside-down flag begin, “There is no suffrage in sovereignty. The voting system of the white males who invaded our lands, poisoned our waters, killed our men, raped our women, and stole, murdered, and broke the spirits of our children, does not apply to our way of life. In order to believe justice exists, one must have a history of clear thought and compassion. Their justice lies in mixed interpretations of a violent religious history. Crucifixion is their culture [I would say domination and control]. The basis of their rights in this country’s founding are of taking that which belongs to no one: life, liberty, land, and the pursuit of happiness are all covered in the bloodstains of our ancestors whose life was undermined in the creation of this great nation.”
I would add the undermined lives of enslaved Africans and their descendants and members of the working class.
Patriots must have sobering as well as celebratory thoughts.
Follow Weshoyot Alvitre on Instagram. Her art is varied and wonderful.
We got the numbers 