AWASQA

Explore Issues
Filter by Country

  • Elections Significance for Indigenous Peoples in Bolivia, Chile, Brazil, Ecuador, USA

    The significance of democratic elections in 2020 for indigenous peoples go beyond electoral results. Wavering between the need for sovereignty/self-determination and democratic participation, indigenous people are finding themselves in places of power denied to them historically. After hundreds of years of noncitizenry, indigenous plurinational states are now shaping democracy. Below we summarize some of the…

  • Apache Tribe’s Innovative Approach Lowers COVID-19 Deaths

    When the Indian Health Service medical team arrived in Whiteriver, Arizona, the population of the White Mountain Apache Tribe was facing a level of contagion ten times higher than the state’s average. The long distances between homes in this isolated territory was becoming a challenge to be able to control the pandemic effectively. The medical…

  • Kumeyaay People Halt Construction on Border Wall

    Members of the Kumeyaay Nation (Ipai-Tipai-Diegueño) launched a call to defend their ancestral territory. For at least 12,000 years, they have been living in a region that expands from San Diego County in Southern California, to the Tijuana-Mexicali region and La Huerta-Agua Sorceress on the Mexican side. They have been around for at least 600…

  • Blackfeet Nation Calls for Permanent Protection of Badger-Two Medicine

    FROM THE EDITORS: This article was originally published in Last Real Indians, an independent media movement organization that focus on “story-tellers” to create the “New Indigenous Millennium.” We want to share this article as an interesting and innovative way of protecting indigenous sovereignty, economic and cultural, over sacred territory. Following decades of threat to our…

  • US Supreme Court Upholds Tribal Sovereignty in McGirt v. Oklahoma

    SOURCE: Originally published on July 9, 2020, by Indigenous Environmental Network. To learn more about their work, please visit their website at: https://www.ienearth.org/ In a monumental, historic win for tribal sovereignty and Indian Country more broadly, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Muscogee (Creek) nation today 5–4, with Justice Gorsuch—a conservative judge and…

  • Photo: Tlacolulokos Facebook

    Tlacoculokos in Oaxacalifornia: Decolonizing Art

    Tlacoculokos is a collective of two self-taught artists from Tlacolula, Oaxaca, Mexico, Dario Canul and Cosijoesa Cernas, who define themselves as anti-capitalist, punk, and anti-fascist. They were part of the Contemporary Art Specialization Clinics (CEACO) of La Curtiduría in Oaxaca. Heirs to the teachings of the great Mexican muralists, with multimedia and multidisciplinary graphics, they…

  • Sacred Black Hills: An Origin Story that Breaks with Colonialism

    UPDATE July 6: At least 15 people were arrested Friday, July 3, as activists blocked a highway to protest Trump’s speech at Mt. Rushmore, to highlight the desecration of sacred lands and as a process of decolonization. For more information, please visit NDN’s website. The Mount Rushmore monument where the faces of George Washington, Thomas…

  • Columbus. Picture: Nedahness Rose Greene

    Columbus Statues Quickly Falling Down as the US Anti-Racist Movement Strengthens

    FROM THE EDITORS: The United States is the only country in the Americas that designated October 12 as Christopher Columbus Day. The image of Columbus as a “heroic” figure for “discovering” America continues to be taught in many schools as an incontrovertible truth. Talking about the Spanish and English conquests in genocidal terms—the root of…