Following a show of force and unity among Native people and tribal nations, SCOTUS preserved the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA), a federal law designed to stop the colonizer theft of Indigenous children.

Opponents of ICWA, known as the gold standard in child welfare law, attempted to use the case to dismantle tribal sovereignty. But the 7-2 decision in Haaland v. Brackeen averted disaster by confirming that tribes have a right to determine where their children belong, particularly in the face of hundreds of years of removals by state and private actors in the adoption and foster care industries and the government-run and supported boarding schools.

“ICWA protected me and allowed me to return home to my people,” Justin Ahasteen (Diné), the executive director of Navajo Nation Washington Office, said after the decision came out on June 15th at a Native-led celebration at the National Museum of the American Indian on Piscataway lands (“Washington, D.C., U.S.”).

However, the movement to protect ICWA is far from over. Conservative and right-wing organizations have made no secret of their intent to continue fighting ICWA, hoping to take advantage of the majority of anti-Native justices who have invited further litigation that would undermine the rights of tribal nations.

On the morning of  the ICWA decision, June 15, 2023, the high court ruled by a shocking vote of 8-1 that tribes can be sued without their consent, even though you won’t see the word “tribe” anywhere in the federal law at issue in Lac du Flambeau Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Indians v. Coughlin.

The sole dissent reads, “From the founding to the present, this Court has recognized the Tribes’ continued existence as ‘independent sovereigns.’” The “independent sovereigns” precedent is written in the Haaland v. Brackeen decision.

On June 22nd, SCOTUS dealt the people of the Navajo Nation a major setback in their long-running efforts to secure water for the largest reservation in the “United States.” The 5-4 vote in Arizona v. Navajo Nation again highlighted the conservative dominance on the high court, with all of the votes against the tribe coming from conservative justices. 

Approximately 40 percent of the Navajo reservation lacks water. According to data from the U.S. government, the states fighting the Navajo Nation use far more water than residents of the reservation. “The average American uses 88 to 100 gallons a day,” the tribe’s attorney said during oral argument in the case. In contrast, “The Navajo Nation uses about seven gallons.” 

In spite of the Navajo Treaty of 1868 that the U.S. government entered into guaranteeing the Navajo Nation their lands, its resources, and sovereignty, all of the states surrounding the Navajo Nation will have guaranteed access to water while the reservation will not.

The United States government owes special legal obligations to tribal nations and their citizens. These obligations, often described as the trust responsibility, originated in the U.S. Constitution and developed over the centuries through promises made in treaties, federal laws, and other agreements. 

For this reason, programs and services benefiting American Indians and Alaska Natives are supposed to be safe from challenges. But as with the ICWA case, conservative interests are determined to undermine, eradicate, and weaken everything deemed a threat to their hold on power.

The Supreme Court’s decision to end affirmative action in higher education represents a perfect example. The conservative majority on the court voted 6-3 to bar race-conscious college admissions policies even though, as one dissenter pointed out, doing so would “nearly erase the Native American incoming class” at the University of North Carolina, a publicly-funded institution.

It’s not just Native students who will be disappearing at campuses across the nation. Harvard College, a private institution, warns that the number of Black students being admitted will drop from 14 percent to 6 percent with the elimination of affirmative action. Hispanic/LatinX student representation is expected to drop from 14 percent to 9 percent, according to the court’s ruling.

The affirmative action decision came in two cases known as Students for Fair Admissions Inc. v. President & Fellows of Harvard College and Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. University of North Carolina. The Students for Fair Admissions Inc. group was created by a conservative activist whose mission, according to Reuters, is to “erase racial preferences” in American society. 

In another egregious case, the conservative majority dramatically weakened the Clean Water Act, a federal law that previously offered some sense of environmental relief in marginalized communities that are frequently victimized by toxic, health-destroying pollution.

The ruling in Sackett v. Environmental Protection Agency changes everything on a narrow vote of 5-4.  As a result, half of the 118 million acres of wetlands in the “U.S.”  are no longer protected by the Clean Water Act. Individuals and corporations are now free to pollute waterways.

SCOTUS handed down another blow to many marginalized people in the “U.S.” in the Biden v. Nebraska case. By a vote of 6-3, the justices put an end to the student debt relief program to cancel up to $400 billion in student loans, a program designed to provide respite amid the COVID-19 pandemic that disproportionately impacted Indigenous and Black communities.

Why Abya Yala? 

Abya Yala is a term derived from the Guna language of the Kuna nation (what is now the North region of “Colombia” and the Southeast region of “Panama”) which means “land in full maturity” or “land of vital blood” and rejects ideas of the Americas as the discovery of the “New World.” In the 1980s the World Council of Indigenous Peoples during the Second Continental Summit of Indigenous Peoples and Nationalities in Kiruna, Sweden had increasingly referred to the “Americas” as Abya Yala, enacting an Indigenous locus of cultural and political expression to decolonize epistemologies, fostering dialogue and creating alliances. By July 1990, the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE) together with the National Indigenous Organization of Colombia (ONIC) and the South American Indian Information Center (SAIIC) organized the First Continental Conference on Five Hundred Years of Indigenous Resistance. Hundreds of leaders and organizations throughout the continent formed a united front for autonomy and self-government, and Abya Yala gained broader use.

Since then, using Abya Yala has been a way of removing colonial vestiges, reclaiming our millenary past, and destroying the legacy of Spanish colonizers who slaughtered, enslaved, raped, robbed, and forced Christianity upon our ancestors. The defense of our traditions, beliefs, and knowledge is central to the struggle for our definite social liberation as a people. Today thousands of nations, such as the Mapuche from “Chile”, the Quechua from “Peru”, and the K’iche from “Guatemala” have embraced the term because it is a constant act of resistance to the Western world. Abya Yala is part of our ancestral heritage and our connection to our territories as communities. It also acknowledges the relationship between the Original peoples of North, Central, and South America before 1492. It is also about fulfilling our ancestors’ dream of sovereignty and creating a new level of intergenerational collective consciousness. It is about continuing to be the caretakers of  Pachamama (Mother Earth), protecting our lands, respecting wildlife and passing down our food system, spiritual traditions and millennial knowledge to future generations. It is about reclaiming Quiénes Somos (who we are).

How was Somos Abya Yala formed, and what are the thematic areas of focus? 

Somos Abya Yala was born at the continental youth gathering called “Youth Rooted in Resistance, Seeding Sovereignty” held in June 2014 in “Sanare, Venezuela” by SOA Watch, a nonviolent grassroots movement working to close the SOA / WHINSEC to expose, denounce, and end “U.S.” militarization, oppressive “U.S.” policies and other forms of state violence in the “Americas.” Youth from that gathering kept in touch and formed Somos Abya Yala. Two years after we put together our second continental youth gathering called “Youth Weaving Life and Popular Unity in Our America” held in “Petén Guatemala” in March 2016, where our major working areas were formed around the following issues: confronting extractivism, militarism, capitalism, imperialism, and corporate power in the rural areas of our beloved Abya Yala. To stand against powerful economic and political interests driving land theft, displacement of communities, loss of livelihoods, and environmental degradation. Also, to restore the role of hope in social movements. We committed to the fierce struggles of rural working classes led by Original People’s movements, poor peasants, Black communities, landless people, immigrants, and urban communities in resistance against neoliberal global capitalism. During our third continental youth gathering, called “We Are Abya Yala” we reinvigorated our own cosmovisions of buen vivir (living well) that destabilized mainstream notions of the political. We committed to uniting North, Central, Caribbean, and South of our beloved Abya Yala through continental youth gatherings to strategize and build power, nurture solidarity, and forge Un Mundo Donde Quepan Muchos Mundos (a world where many worlds fit) through autonomy as a response to injustices generated by neocolonialism.

Somos Abya Yala takes on this work through a two-pronged strategy using Continental Youth Encuentros for strategic alliances and communications work. Through our communications, we work to build awareness, reclaim the narrative, and shift paradigms, consciousness, and agency. We have the two following media platforms: 

Somos Abya Yala Magazine

Somos Abya Yala Magazine brings you inside cultures and struggles across Abya Yala since 2015. We share our ways of life, spirituality, vision, celebrations, and our fight for dignity and sovereignty all with stunning photography, poetry, art, music, and intimate insights from youth experts sharing about their communities. We have published 23 issues to help support our efforts for our relatives across the continent to keep their lands, languages, and cultures. You are welcome to suggest topics and read our past issues here:

Radio a Desalambrar (Dewiring Podcast)

Radio Desalambrar is produced by youth leaders and adult allies who bring you the latest information on human rights, news headlines, and in-depth interviews with people on the front lines of Abya Yala’s most pressing issues. You’ll hear diverse voices speaking for themselves, providing a unique and sometimes provocative perspective on local, regional, and global events. Listen to, download, and share our 20 programs for free at https://bit.ly/Adesalambrar, on Spotify and YouTube. Our material includes interviews, discussions on social movements, and the strategies that frontline communities use to realize their rights.

Contact Us: info@somosunaamerica.org / somosunaamerica@gmail.com

http://somosunaamerica.org

Jorge Andrés Forero-González, also known as Achiote, is the son and grandson of campesinos with ethnic Muisca heritage from Boyacá, Colombia. He has 12 years of experience in the public sector, specializing in peace building, urban and rural youth programs, human rights advocacy, social movements, and non-profit management.

Forero-González is a co-founder and member coordinator of the international platform, Somos Abya Yala-Somos una América, a board of directors member of Crushing Colonialism, and works as a researcher, writer, and consultant focusing on environmental and land conflicts in Colombia and Latin América.

*English translation credit Natalia Patiño. 

*Editorial English translation credit Lucia Parson.

Seven in 10 Native people in the “U.S.” live in urban areas. The Urban Indian Health Institute (UIHI) conducted the first-ever report on urban missing and murdered Indigenous women, girls and Two-Spirit people in 2018. They found that many MMIWG2 weren’t being properly counted by law enforcement, making it difficult to advocate for policy to end this violence. Media coverage was also found abysmal, resulting in a lack of public awareness. UIHI found 506 cases of MMIWG2. However, the collection of data on violence against Indigenous trans women and Two-Spirits are significantly lower. Of those cases, 25 percent were missing persons, 56 percent were murdered, and 19 percent are unknown. The youngest victim was less than 1 year old, with the oldest being 83 and a median age of 29. Of the 506 cases that the UIHI identified, 153 of them weren’t listed in any law enforcement databases.

“Baltimore” was one of the cities that UIHI looked at. On May 5, 2023 –a national day of recognition for MMIWG2 and Relatives in the “U.S.” and “Canada” – the “Baltimore” Native community gathered to celebrate the lives of two murdered Indigenous women, Tiffany Jones and Yasmine Wilson. The rally was held at the exact spot that the 20-year-old Wilson lost her life. 

On the other side of the “U.S.” “Canada” border, often referred to as the “medicine line” by Indigenous people to the north, the Indigenous community of “Winnipeg” is waging a war against the government to bring home the bodies of several Indigenous women believed to have been murdered by an alleged white supremacist serial killer, Jeremy Skibicki. Rebecca Contois, Marcedes Myran, Morgan Harris, and an unidentified woman named by community elders as Mashkode Bizhiki’ikwe (Buffalo Woman) are believed to be in area landfills, but the government has refused to search for the women. 

In response, Camp Morgan and Camp Marcedes were erected, along with numerous demonstrations and blockades, by the families of the women and local Indigenous community. 

Included here is a photo essay highlighting the community response to remember the women, bring justice to the Indigenous communities and families, and to end the genocide of Indigenous people.

Jen Deerinwater: How did you get into filmmaking?

Theo Cuthand: I got into it when I was 16 years old. I was in a workshop that was part of a queer film festival that was in Saskatoon in ‘95. It was just for that one year. 

We made a video for that weekend called “Lessons in Baby Dyke Theory.” It was about trying to find other lesbians. It was this short, cute video…in the mid nineties, there wasn’t a lot of work being done by queer youth in the video art world. It traveled to all these queer film festivals internationally. 

Jen Deerinwater: Your film Extractions covers a lot of topics in a very intersectional way. The ties between resource extractive industries and creative practices is relatively unknown to many. Many of them (resource extractive companies) fund museums and film festivals. 

Theo Cuthand: I had this issue when I was in the Whitney Biennial. Warren B Kanders was on the board the year I was in the Biennial. He’s a war profiteer who made tear gas that was used in Palestine and on the “U.S.-Mexico” border.

Jen Deerinwater: What advice do you have for Indigenous people, especially our Two-Spirit and queer relatives, who want to get into filmmaking?

Theo Cuthand: There are a lot of film festivals and artist run centers in “Canada” that have programs for emerging artists to make a film or learn. You can also apply to film school, but I think community-based learning is also key for people who don’t feel confident with the education system and want to experience more hands-on learning. If you’re learning editing, you can do a lot with YouTube tutorials.

I’m like a big believer in community-based art practices and teaching emerging Indigenous creatives skills. I come out of a DIY kind of punk community and aesthetic. I guess there’s still part of me that’s a scrappy punk that just wants these communities to not have to play the big art game with all the money people.

You can find Theo’s work at 

vimeo.com/thirzacuthand 

(“Australia”) On October 14th, Australians overwhelmingly voted no on the controversial referendum, known as  “The Voice,”  to change the constitution, which would have potentially led to the creation of a parliamentary advisory body on policies affecting Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. Even many Indigenous people were split on the referendum as some supported it as a path forward towards reconciliation, while others deemed it colonized and racist. 

“80,000 plus years of culture & sacred inheritance is still running through our veins as it was on Friday. As it was Yesterday. As it is Today. As it will Always…Regardless of colonial recognition,” wrote musician and community based activist, Neil Morris (Yorta Yorta) also known as Drmngnow, after the vote.

Sánchez de Lozada to pay damages

(“U.S.”) The former president of Bolivia, Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada, and his former defense minister will pay damages to the families of eight people killed during a 2003 massacre of more than 60 people in El Alto. The murders were perpetrated by the army to squelch the Indigenous-led movement against a proposed natural gas pipeline. 

The lawsuit was brought in civil courts in the “U.S.” by eight Bolivian families whose relatives were killed in the massacre. This case could have serious future implications for international Indigenous and human rights cases. 

Women’s World Cup 

(International) In separate incidents, videos were released online showing the Holland and Spain women’s football teams mocking the Māori haka ahead of the Women’s World Cup, held in Aotearoa “New Zealand” and “Australia.” The haka is a ceremonial Māori dance traditionally practiced when parties meet. This often includes athletic competitions, including the Black Ferns, women’s “New Zealand” rugby team, fixtures. 

Pueblo shooting 

(“Espanola, New Mexico, U.S.”) On September 28, 2023 Jacob Johns, an Indigenous activist and artist, was shot in the chest at a vigil in opposition to the decision by the Rio Arriba County Commissioner’s office to reinstall a monument of Juan de Oñate, the Spanish colonizer responsible for the 1599 Acoma Pueblo massacre of 800 Acoma people. The shooter, Ryan Martinez, wore a Make America Great Again hat that is synonymous with white supremacy and fascism in the “U.S.” Martinez  has been charged with attempted murder and aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. 

“It’s unfortunate that during a prayer filled ceremony that an individual was seriously harmed over this issue,” said All Pueblo Council of Governors (APCG) Vice Chairman Jerome Lucero, the former governor of the Pueblo of Zia, in a press release. “This shows that the historical trauma and pain inflicted on our Pueblo people by Oñate is still here. As tribal leaders, we are very concerned about the possibility of continued violence against Native people who vehemently disagree with the commission’s decision,” Lucero said in the release.