By  Serena Mendizabal, Audrey Huntley, Melina Laboucan-Massimo, and Terri Monture

Tkaronto (“Toronto, Ontario, Canada”) Indigenous community members and members of No More Silence gather for the ceremony in the Hummingbird Lodge with Wanda Whitebird. Photo credit: Audrey Huntley, Summer 2023

At the heart of this collaboration lies the recognition that healing justice is essential not only for addressing the historical traumas inflicted upon Indigenous peoples but also for combating the environmental injustices that threaten their lands and ways of life. Indigenous communities across so-called “Canada” continue to bear the brunt of the devastating impacts of climate change, from the loss of traditional territories to the degradation of vital ecosystems. As stewards of the land, their struggles for justice are intertwined with the fight against environmental degradation.

Sacred Earth Solar and No More Silence, an Indigenous-led organization based in Tkaronto (“Toronto, Ontario, Canada”), understand that true justice cannot be achieved without addressing the root causes of these interconnected crises. By centering healing as a fundamental component of their work, they aim to cultivate resilience and resistance within Indigenous communities while advocating for systemic change on a broader scale. Healing justice acknowledges the deep wounds inflicted by colonialism and reclaims traditional practices as a means of healing and empowerment.

Together, projects like the Hummingbird Lodge saw Sacred Earth Solar and No More Silence joining forces to install a 7.2-kilowatt on-grid solar system with sixteen panels. This initiative provided No More Silence with a safe space where 2SLGBTQ+ individuals, survivors of gender-based violence, individuals with disabilities, and MMIWG2S families could participate in traditional healing ceremonies and reconnect with their cultural roots. The lodge prioritizes disability justice as well by being fully accessible to individuals using mobility devices.

Audrey Huntley from No More Silence, Serena Mendizabal from Sacred Earth Solar, and solar installer Mike from Solar Associates installing the solar panels for the Hummingbird Lodge. Photo credit: Audrey Huntley, Fall 2023

Since installing the solar energy system, No More Silence leaders have shared with Sacred Earth Solar that they now generate surplus electricity to fully power their building. Their electricity costs have plummeted by over 95%, allowing them to redirect funds toward supporting Indigenous families, including those in Tkaronto’s (“Toronto, Ontario, Canada”) urban Indigenous community.

“My family has a long tradition of serving in the community, and before my dad passed he gave his blessing to have the lodge here, finding the idea of a community healing space important,” said Terri Monture, a member of No More Silence who offered the use of farmland at her home on Six Nations of the Grand River for the lodge.

“He would have loved seeing the solar array built, he had long talked about doing it at the house to better prepare our household for climate change, and this makes me proud that we were able to place the lodge here and have the solar array power it.”

The Hummingbird Lodge now hosts the Strawberry Ceremony, a national day of action honoring Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls, Trans, and Two-Spirit individuals. It has been a source of support for the Laboucan family as they navigate the healing process following the tragic death of Bella Laboucan-Mclean. Bella was discovered deceased on the mezzanine level of a downtown condo building in Tkaronto (“Toronto, Ontario, Canada”).

Melina Laboucan-Massimo and the Laboucan-Mclean family gather in the Hummingbird Lodge gathering space before their family’s ceremony for Bella. Photo credit: Audrey Huntley, Fall 2023

Melina Laboucan-Massimo, Bella’s sister, felt the support No More Silence provides and wanted to help. As the Founder of Sacred Earth Solar, Melina, and her organization focused on empowering frontline Indigenous communities with climate solutions. This shared mission led to the establishment of a formal partnership between Sacred Earth Solar and No More Silence. Together, they collaborated to provide clean, accessible electricity for the Hummingbird Healing Lodge. Now, the lodge is equipped with heating, lights, a kettle, and electrical outlets for year-round ceremonies, and is open to urban Indigenous peoples who cannot access ceremonial spaces in the city.

When Indigenous peoples have access to healing, they can reclaim decolonial practices for justice. The systems causing harm to Indigenous women, 2SLGBTQ+ individuals, and our lands, waters, and climate are intertwined. To safeguard our home territories, Indigenous peoples need access to healing, resources, and support. This ensures that we do not perpetuate further harm while striving for sovereignty and climate justice.

From left to right: Amanda Blackhorse from the Navajo Nation; Gaylene Crouser from the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe; Rhonda LeValdo from Pueblo of Acoma; Fawn Douglas from Las the Southern Paiute Tribe, at The Nuwu Art Gallery + Community Center, in “Las Vegas”, where the press conference was held. Photo credit: Acee Agoyo, February 11, 2024

In a remarkable display of extravagance, a whopping 882 private jets flew into Southern Paiute land (“Las Vegas, Nevada, U.S.”) for the most recent Super Bowl featuring the San Francisco 49ers and the Kansas City Chiefs. This marked the second-highest influx of private jets for a Super Bowl, following last year’s game in Arizona, where 931 private jets took flight.

According to a 2021 study conducted by the Transport and Environment Organization, the climate impact of aviation is fast growing. The report highlights a startling statistic: a mere 1% of individuals bear responsibility for a staggering 50% of global aviation emissions, particularly concerning the emissions generated by short-distance flights. Similarly, Greenpeace reported that a lone private jet journey generates approximately ten times the CO2 emissions per person compared to an average commercial flight.

There are 28 federally recognized tribal nations and communities in “Nevada.” The legacy of colonialism has left many Native lands polluted or suffering from the climate crisis. The 2023 Super Bowl was held on the lands of the O’odham and Piipaash (“Phoenix, Arizona, U.S.”), where part of the Navajo Nation’s reservation resides.

Not too far from the buzz of the Super Bowl, tribal nations are dealing with serious environmental problems because of colonialism. Take the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe in “Nevada”, for instance. They’re facing a drought caused by a dam built by the government, which means less water. The Truckee River used to get its water from melted snow, but with temperatures going up, there’s less snow, and less water is flowing downstream to the tribe.

On Western Shoshone lands, in “Nevada”, it’s believed that over 900 nuclear bombs were detonated. In “Arizona”, where part of the Navajo Nation reservation is located, there’s a severe water crisis. According to the Navajo Water Project, 30% of reservation residents lack access to running water. In the Supreme Court case, Arizona v. Navajo Nation, the court ruled that despite the Navajo Treaty of 1868 guaranteeing the Navajo rights to their lands, resources, and sovereignty, they aren’t entitled to area water resources. Instead, the state governments in the region have legal authority to utilize the water for themselves.

During the press conference in “Las Vegas”, Native people explained how the use of Native-themed mascots is demeaning, perpetuates stereotypes of Native people, and falls in line with mass cultural appropriation. Photo credit: Acee Agoyo, February 11, 2024

The environmental impact of Super Bowl LVIII was compounded by troubling instances of anti-Native racism, particularly concerning the use of Native mascots and the controversial “chop” gesture associated with the Kansas City team. This gesture, resembling chopping with a tomahawk, has faced criticism from Native communities nationwide, who have consistently urged an end to such racist portrayals.

In response, Not in Our Honor convened a press conference at the Nuwu Art Gallery, followed by a protest outside the Super Bowl venue. Rhonda LeValdo, representing the Acoma tribe, referred to the event as the “genocide bowl” during the press briefing, highlighting the grave consequences of perpetuating harmful stereotypes. Local advocates echoed these concerns, calling for the immediate retirement of the Kansas City Chiefs’ name and logo. Their stance reflects a broader movement aimed at addressing racism in sports.

By Tony Enos

The environment is an inevitable casualty of modern political conflicts. Wars are no longer fought in a field with wooden shotguns like they were centuries ago. The modern technologies used in warfare now are more devastating than ever. When we speak of environmental damage, it is important to remember that people and the environment do not exist separately, or independently of one another. The people of a land, the prior generations that have worked that land, the present generation who cares for it and survives off of it, and even the generations that are yet to come are all integral parts of an ecosystem. Drinking water, plants, animals, crops, and “weather, landscapes, biotic or living parts, abiotic factors, or nonliving parts,” are all factors in an ecosystem according to the National Geographic Society. Ecosystems like those

have been meticulously cared for by the Palestinian stewards of the land for generations before the beginning of Israel’s occupation in 1948. It is important to understand the gravity and the holistic totality of what environmental damage and disruption really are.

According to research done by David Butterfield, Jad Isaac, Atif Kubursi, and Steven Spencer for McMaster University and Econometric Research Limited, “agriculture is the largest sector of the Palestinian economy, generating over 22% of the Gross Domestic Product of the West Bank and Gaza and providing employment to over 15% of the population.” As the landscape sustains more and more traumatic assaults, Palestinians in Gaza are left with no sustainability after a demeaning and degrading 76-year-long occupation by Israel.

Journalists from Al Jazeera reported that “according to the Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, Israel has dropped more than 25,000 tonnes of explosives on the Gaza Strip since October 7th, equivalent to two nuclear bombs.” The technology of chemical warfare such as the white phosphorus used in the Bunker Bombs that the “United States” has supplied to Israel can cause burns and irritation, liver, kidney, heart, lung, or bone damage, and death according to the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR).

The radiation of missiles and bombs along with heavy metals and chemicals such as Uranium-235, a chemical agent used in nuclear bombs that has a half-life of 700 million years – the time any substance takes to decay by half of its original amount – according to the CDC, all have an unfathomable impact. These bomb components seeping into the ground, and running off into drinking water with the rains are enough to impact generations to come with fatal cancers and altered genetics of plants, animals, and the very ecosystems they all need to survive.

Though the British had to exercise a bit more ingenuity than just direct bombings when they began genociding the Indigenous peoples of “North America” in 1587, certain parallels are gut-wrenchingly similar.

When colonizers came to Turtle Island (what’s now known as “North America”) from Spain in 1492, followed by several other invading nations, and ultimately the British, Indigenous Nations experienced agricultural and environmental devastation. The loss of over 90 million acres of ancestral lands, displacement, population devastation brought on by diseases like smallpox – which the government harnessed as warfare against the Indigenous Nations of the time – and invasive species of animals such as pigs and sheep from the white settler-occupation brought “the old ways” of Indigenous living and thriving to an end as our ancestors knew it.

Pigs from Europe for example quickly grew in population size and destroyed crops and ecosystems. As Climatehub cites, “They are a destructive, invasive species that cause extensive damage to natural ecosystems, croplands, pastures, and livestock operations.” Along with the desecration of the Earth for its riches and natural resources by the settlers, and the ramifications of colonizer warfare, the environmental impacts of these industrial sins such as deforestation, and lost crops, seeds, plants, and grasses, are ones that we are still healing from, and working to reverse today.

While it’s a known fact that governments profit from war, the burden of healing and creating anything in the way of sustainability always falls back on the people who are suffering the most, consistently with little to no accountability or help from said government. With examples such as the survivors of the 1945 American bombing of the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki according to Time Magazine, the gravity of grown men playing war games and the hell on Earth that its victims are made prey to are agonizing facts of war and occupation.

Though Jews and Arabs may have commingled in Palestine for thousands of years, perhaps we’re unclear on what an occupation is. Israel forcibly removed Palestinians from their ancestrally owned homes and lands in 1948 so that Jewish families could live in those homes, along with the ethnic cleansing of such Palestinian villages, and Israel imposing and enforcing its government infrastructure on the Palestinian people is an occupation.

Similarly, Indigenous people in Turtle Island were forced from their lands, put into holding camps, and herded onto reservations to endure the newly imposed infrastructure of the “United States” government. Surviving off of small government rations, the irreparable results were starvation and a deep traumatic loss of a people and their way of life such as the outlawing of Indigenous spirituality and ceremonies, possession of sacred objects, and songs and traditions, with no corrective action taken by the American government until the Religious Freedom Act of 1978 as cited on the U.S. Government Information website.

As Gaza experiences one of the most horrific genocides in modern history with almost 30,000 people killed since Israel’s war strikes began in October according to PBS, 2.2 million people are in crisis or worse levels of food insecurity, and 576,600 people face catastrophic hunger and starvation in Gaza as cited by the UN World Food Programme. Islamic Relief Worldwide states, “On the internationally recognized 5-phase scale used to classify food crises, more than half a million people in Gaza – a quarter of the entire population – are now believed to be at the most severe Phase 5 ‘catastrophic’ level, meaning a high risk of mass starvation and death.”

The fact that these unspeakable humanitarian and environmental atrocities are being allowed to happen anywhere is a threat to all of us everywhere! As Samira Homerang Saunders, a researcher at the Centre for Climate Crime and Climate Justice at Queen Mary, University of London cited, “War creates a toxic biosphere . . . In 2013, the head of Oncology at Al Shifa Hospital in Gaza said he expected the cancer rates to double within five years after Israel used uranium in the 2008-2009 war. He referred to that campaign as an ‘environmental catastrophe’.” The West Bank in Palestine has had its share of strikes from Israeli forces also, but with the last being in December of 2023, it’s clear that Gaza is being disproportionately targeted.

A 2017 census reported Gaza’s total population to be 590,481 people. That means almost a quarter of Gaza’s population has been systematically wiped out. A haunting echo of America’s original sins, as over 10,000 Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Muscogee, Seminole, and other Native American nations died on the Trail of Tears forced removal according to the National Parks Service. Just a fraction of the American government’s total colonization body count.

As was our fate as Indigenous people of Turtle Island, Palestinian children and families will now have an unspeakable intergenerational trauma, and deep spiritual and psychological wounds to heal from. Along with a long and painful road back to sustainability and security in any sense. It is unimaginable that environmental and ecological healing will happen any time soon for the Palestinian people until there is a permanent ceasefire and a two-state solution in motion. Not “in talks” or “on the table,” but actual movement in an existing infrastructure that provides the Palestinian people a life of thriving with dignity, opportunity, and its own economic and ecological security. Ethnic cleansing and the genocide of the Indigenous people of Palestine can not be a part of that path forward.

If we’ve learned nothing else from the past 500 years of colonization here on Turtle Island, we know that when we lose Indigenous knowledge and ways of life, the world loses a part of itself. Ways of living, caring for, and preserving land, songs, stories, traditions, and the essence of a people is the irreconcilable price of genocide. The world needs all of us. The environment needs all of us. What we do today really does impact the next seven generations, especially if what we’re creating to pass down to them is intergenerational trauma, nationalist and spiritual insanity, and the idea that any life is more important than another.