Land Back

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Some are concerned that 'From the River to the Sea' or a picture of the region from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea on Palestinian protest signs is a blatant call for genocide. I hope this clears things up a bit.

Also:

Brandon, 28, is studying environmental science at Oklahoma State University while also working as Watershed Fire Ecology Planner for the Chickasaw Nation, where he is an enrolled citizen.

His family’s home sits on the same plot of land his family has called home for more than six generations. The Blue River, known for its abundance of rainbow trout and bass, runs right through the heart of their land, keeping the soil healthy and fertile, which allows Brandon to nurture the small garden just off the house into a vibrant homage to his ancestral heritage.

In addition to the Chickasaw red corn, Brandon has grown Seminole pumpkins, Wichita squash, Anasazi beans, okra, tomatoes, cucumbers and wildflowers to attract pollinators.

It’s a small garden, but Brandon believes it could represent a unique intersection of his identity, sustainable and healthy living and an appreciation for nature.

“This is my passion and what I want to do,” Brandon said. “I want to help people through protecting and educating them about the environment. I think you gain a deeper understanding of the value of our land when you help cultivate it.”

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/8031810

Hey! Our tabletop role-playing game tries to integrate into its vision of the future an assumption of the restoration of Indigenous culture and agency on Turtle Island. As we're getting ready to release, we'd really appreciate getting more eyes on it and letting us know how it reads and if there are any changes we can make to improve its quality.

The main section which I'd like thoughts on is below. This taken from the section of the World Guide describing major historical events and turning points. Constructive feedback would be appreciated. Feel free to copy, share, repost, ect. to any other forum where it may get attention, and direct folks to contact us through any social media or email channels on our website (https://fullyautomatedrpg.com). And thanks!

2042 - The Yurok People v. The Bureau of Land Management

In 2028, congress passed the Federal Ordnance for Restoration of Environments for Sustainable Territories (or FOREST) Act. The FOREST Act was a massive compromise legislation which created new programs to encourage forestry management. It included terms to make preserving and expanding forests as carbon sinks financially competitive with logging and mineral extraction by allowing companies to sell carbon offsets; funded construction of new parks; relaxed limits on hunting; and provided dozens of other favors for the various stakeholders needed to secure passage. One of its 35 sections even contained a largely symbolic gesture to American Indian tribes which would return neglected land to them under conditions which were believed unlikely to ever be exercised. The effects were mixed. By 2038, millions of additional acres of land had been set aside as protected reserves. Many policy experts believed that the reduction in drilling and fracking that occurred was driven more by local bans and a rapid decline in financing as the banking sector began to recognize that new carbon infrastructure had become such frequent targets of sabotage that their risk wasn’t worth the declining returns. Eventually, the carbon offsets market crashed in 2041 following the Second Paradise Fire. A lawsuit followed.

During Our Children’s Trust v. Green Growth Climate Solutions, the climate advocacy group Our Children’s Trust showed that Green Growth Climate Solutions had purchased hundreds of square miles and contracted with the Federal Bureau of Land Management to be responsible for forestry management of thousands more of federally held land in order to sell worthless carbon offsets. At the same time, they’d neglected to perform any meaningful sustainable forestry services as contracted. During the trial, experts testified to the well-known fact that carbon offsets were a junk science that did not meaningfully address the climate crisis, and that the fire danger created by hundreds of thousands of acres of neglected land was well known.

The judgment put Green Growth Climate Solutions out of business and crashed the market for carbon offsets. It also created a scandal for the Bureau of Land Management, which was wholly under-resourced and unequipped to fulfill their legal responsibilities to manage the vast tracts of land that now returned to their oversight. A solution came in the form of The Yurok People v. the Bureau of Land Management in 2042.

As soon as the Green Growth case wrapped, the Yurok People brought a suit to enforce section 33 of the FOREST Act of 2028. In the trial against Green Growth it had been shown that the land belonging to the Bureau of Land Management that they’d contracted to Green Growth and the land which they’d acquired from Green Growth during the settlement had been left fallow for nearly a decade. In a crowning achievement for the First Peoples’ legal movement, a judge granted them 8,000 square miles of territory. Green Growth’s practices had been common throughout the industry, and as the market crashed and more suits were brought in other states, native groups reclaimed thousands of square miles more. Though the judgements were stinging, the federal government saw a silver lining. Responsibility for the ever-growing problem of wildfires now rested with the native groups who’d won their cases.

Over the 2040s, the various nations of the first peoples managed to surprise the doubters. They formed the Circle of Nations to assist in inter-tribal management of their expansive returned territories.

They turned land assumed to be of low value into productive food forests, nature reserves, scientific centers, parks, and traditional hunting preserves. While reducing uncontrolled fires, they turned the land into a source of wealth and influence. They granted permissions to communes which met their strict qualifying requirements to live upon the land and learn their techniques. They fed and housed themselves and then thousands upon thousands more.

By the 2060s, the Circle of Nations and the first peoples had become a highly influential force within American science and policy. As society at large underwent a radical rethinking during the years following the Treaty of Antarctica, many of the values and practices of the first people finally saw overdue adoption within the wider culture of the second people.

Klee Benally was a Navajo Diné activist and indigenous anarchist.

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Our prayers go out to the family and relatives of Nex Benedict✨

The news of Nex’ autopsy labeling their cause of death as a “suicide” changes nothing. Violence against Indigenous youth is still the result of generations of colonial violence. Nex is not an isolated incident; the truth is that Queer, Trans and Two Spirit Native/Indigenous youth face significantly higher rates of violence compared to their non-native peers.

Image Text: 90% of Queer, Trans and Two Spirit people experience two or more forms of violence in their lifetime. 54% of those who are students report being subjected to physical violence at school and more than 1 in 3 say they miss class at least once a month for being bullied or harassed.

It should first be noted that the communization milieu is indeed European in origin and largely does not address our settler-colonialist reality in the so-called Americas. Its largely European writers are conceptualizing from a different context than we live under in the so-called Americas (& other colonized lands).

Then why do we still talk about communization?

[…]

We can think about communization and decolonization as two aspects of the same weather system. Communization would attack the capitalist social relations which exist on occupied land, but clearly it would not go far enough. We’re writing from occupied Tongva territory, known by its original name Tovaangar, and to merely create communism (anarchy) and make no attempt to restore native lands to their original inhabitants would (once again) not be communism at all. Decolonization (anti-colonialism) reminds us that there is more to be done.

The coupling of communization & decolonization recognizes, especially with ever-intensifying climate change, that settlers do not deeply, or even superficially, understand the deep natural history of the land they are on. Here in so-called Los Angeles we are constantly facing the increasing danger of massive wild fires. But wild fires are an ancient part of this landscape. The ecology of the landscape made famous, via its mass particularization, around the world depends on fire for its rejuvenation. What has caused an increase of danger for humans is not just climate change bringing less rain and hotter weather, but also the fact that unmitigated capitalist development has made it profitable to build in places which would previously burn with little effect on human life: hilltops, in mountain forests, etc.

I've been frustrated by some people's framing on the war on Gaza, as if the surrender of Hamas or the removal of Netanyahu and his lackies would stop a genocide. Israel is committing genocide. A Hamas surrender will not change that. The purpose of a system is what it does. If Israel's war is killing more women and children than Hamas, then that is its purpose.

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