AWASQA

  • Women of the Rainforest: Voices Against Violence

    Women of the Rainforest: Voices Against Violence

    In the heart of the Ecuadorian Amazon, where the rainforest is our mother and refuge, indigenous women sustain life, memory, and resistance. They are the guardians of our territories, of traditional medicine, and of the word. That resistance, however, faces silent and brutal violence every day; a violence interwoven with patriarchy, structural discrimination, and neglect…

  • Mujeres amazónicas denuncian violencia

    Women of the Rainforest: Voices Against Violence

    In the heart of the Ecuadorian Amazon, where the rainforest is our mother and refuge, indigenous women sustain life, memory, and resistance. They are the guardians of our territories, of traditional medicine, and of the word. That resistance, however, faces silent and brutal violence every day; a violence interwoven with patriarchy, structural discrimination, and neglect…

  • 200 Years Later Mayan People Reclaim their History of Independence

    FROM THE EDITORS: In Guatemala, people are celebrating the memory of Atanasio Tzul, the first indigenous mayor of the country who, in 1820, led an indigenous uprising against Spanish colonialism, as well as a living example of the struggle for the people’s self-determination. The document below was originally published by Prensa Comunitaria from Guatemala, a…

  • 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…

  • The Neocolonial Mayan Train

    Marxist theory is built upon a critique of the accumulation of capital in the hands of the bourgeoisie, through the exploitation of workers, for which Karl Marx visualizes a solution of redistribution of capital, now in the hands of the socialist state, with the support of the proletariat. However, within the “worker exploitation” concept 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…

  • Language Is Not Culture

    For many indigenous peoples, land is a specific physical entity, but the notion of territory includes life associated with that land and the cultural manifestations linked to that physical entity, the sense of belonging and the way in which we relate to it. Territory, it has been said emphatically many times, is not just land.…

  • Precautionary Measures against Ethnocide: Strategic Alliances Push for the Protection of Indigenous People

    On April 7 a catastrophic oil spill in Ecuador polluted the Coca and Napo Rivers where 27 thousand indigenous and 90 thousand mestizo people depend on for drinking water and fishing. It was a predictable industry-provoked disaster that geologists and environmentalists long warned about: the Coca Codo Sinclair hydroelectric plant was generating heavy erosion near…