Indigeneity in America
S1:E9

Indigeneity in America

Summary

Get a clear picture of what American life looks like for our indigenous neighbors and the need for supportive allyship from Jaike SpottedWolf, a water protector and member of the Mandan, Hidatsu, and Arikara tribes.

Intro:
Coming together from across the United States,
the real issues you don't hear about elsewhere,
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Welcome to ResistBot Live.

Melanie: Welcome to ResistBot Live good afternoon. It is November 21, 2021. I'm your moderator, Melanie Dione, and this is ResistBot Live. Welcome! Today this is going to be an opportunity for all of us to have a listening and learning opportunity. We talk a lot about struggling in public, how our willingness to struggle in public. There are very few stories that we don't have enough information about than the rights of our Indigenous neighbors. Indigenous Sovereignty. Line three or as we've heard or may have heard, this is a pipeline that spans from Alberta, Canada, all the way to Superior, Wisconsin, and it was in the news because of protesting. It has since the protesters, though they did not stop the pipeline from being completed, the fight is not over then that's for many people and especially our Indigenous neighbors. I want to remind you before we go on, we're here this Sunday and every Sunday at 01:00 p.m Eastern. You can like us on Facebook. You can follow us on Twitter, you can subscribe to us on YouTube and or Twitch. So we would love to have you join us and comment. We'll have time for comments and questions because this is something that none of us know nearly enough about, or most of us know nearly enough about. But before we bring on our guest, I am going to start bringing up our regular panelists, starting with my favorite boots on the ground organized for about town. Athena Fulay. Welcome, Athena.

Athena: Good morning. Good afternoon, everybody. Aloha and good to see you all.

Melanie: Great to see you. So we're going to have you once again on the ones and twos for comments and questions.

Athena: I am. I welcome everybody to join in the conversation. Pop any thoughts when we bring out our additional panelists and speakers, please throw in some questions. We really want to make sure that this is an opportunity for engagement and that everybody has a chance to share in the discussion. Thanks so much.

Melanie: Thanks, Athena. We also have our international woman of mystery, Christine Lou. Welcome, Christine.

Christina: Hi, everyone. Not so mysterious. I'm here in La, but I wish I could say it was somewhere more exotic than that.

Melanie: Whenever we need to know the big picture, we always go to use so a little bit of mystery just a teech. And finally, our blogger extraordinaire Susan. Hello, Susan.

Susan: Hi, everyone. I don't have any sunshine like what you may have. I'm in sunny South Florida that hasn't seen sun since yesterday. It's absolutely pouring here.

Melanie: A tragedy. I guess that's the trade-off for good weather in the wintertime, right?

Susan: Yes, definitely.

Melanie: So this morning we're going to be joined shortly by our guest and the topic is indigeneity in America. When we think about what colonization looks like, it's this complex thing where whether we like it or not, all of us are touched by it. I am a black woman in America, and a lot of times I'm on the business end of it, but I can't ignore the fact that I own a home on colonized land. So even when we think we're not a part of it, that's part of the insidious nature of the ugly side of colonization, how none of us are really free of it. The voices that are not heard on it, and the ones that should be most heard are those who are most marginalized by it. And that includes especially our Indigenous neighbors. So we are going to be joined by someone who is kind enough to join us from their hashtag camp life. So we may have a little bit of connectivity issues, but we are joined by activist Jaike Spotted Wolf. Hello, Jake. Good afternoon.

Jaike: I am Jaike Spotted Wolf. I live at Camp Mcgeezie. That is a water protector camp and land defender camp in Northern Minnesota outside of cloque. I've been there since May 19 and on the front lines of fighting the Enbridge Line three, or what they now refer to as Line 93 pipeline to try to protest it coming in through sovereign treaty land reservation land and through lake pristine and what was once very clean waters of the Mississippi.

Melanie: So when we talk about that, let's start first I think on the issue of why this shouldn't be when we speak of Indigenous land rights and the sovereignty of Indigenous people, can you give us a bit of information on that and why you even have to do this.

Jaike: Along the way of colonizers stepping foot onto what is so-called United States of America, what we know as Turtle Island, there were treaties made. The United States tried to say, okay, we'll make these agreements with you for your goods and your resources. We're going to take them because you've fought very hard to keep your quality of life. And we see that that's a big problem here. They tried to enforce treaties, and I think around 1871, they got to the point where they realized that they didn't like that Indigenous had any land, any resources and they stopped making those treaties. So the sovereignty issue comes back to we agreed by force, under threat of absolute genocide, that we would exchange parts of our land, parts of our resources for the access that the United States government was asking for. And that looks like land rights that looked like hunting rights that looked like the rights to passage and travel. That's what we agreed to on our end. So everybody in the United States is a treaty partner to the Indigenous here, but it's oftentimes forgotten. And that's exactly what happened with Line Three. Three runs through the entire state of Minnesota. And in that they have what they call the Minnesota Chippewa Tribes. The MCT is a culmination of all the bands of the Ojibwe and Anishinaabe that run through the state. So two out of three of the Minnesota Chippewa tribes voted down or did not vote for and Bridge to come through one band, and that's Fond du Lac voted for it essentially with a gun to their head that if they wouldn't have voted for it, they were going to come in and take the land anyway. They just wouldn't get any sense of repayment or reimbursement for that. Two out of three said no, you cannot come into our treaty land and put this pipeline down and Enbridge still forced their will. Governor Walz, who is the governor of Minnesota, didn't say anything, didn't stop it. He ran on a platform of if the Indigenous in the state said no we don't want the pipeline. It was a no go for him. There's an actual tweet from him stating that he would not allow the pipeline. And here we are, November of 2021, and this pipeline runs through the entire state. So it's another example of another white politician, Male, who of course, said what he needed to say to get the votes, to put the trust in the people to then come in and take the rug out from under us, which is a long-held tradition in the United States of predominantly white men, the patriarchy, white supremacy, call it what you will, coming in and taking what they want, regardless of the treaties that they made with us. He did nothing about the 900 arrests that happened over the course of the summer when Keith Ellison, the attorney general in the state of Minnesota, was confronted by all of us well, by a group of us in a parking lot outside of a speech he had given at a law school. He was completely unaware of the over 900 arrests that had happened over the entire summer. So that speaks to a little bit of how, no matter the treaties we've made, no matter the sovereignty that Indigenous Peoples have been given, it's not real. It's not our truth. We don't live in a world where our sovereignty is respected or listened to. We ask for free and informed prior consent as one of our demands when we go to protests and rallies. And what that looks like is, will you guys give us a heads up that we don't have to pay to come and listen to whatever the forum is about, whatever natural resource you're about to exploit and let us know exactly what's happening. Don't try to give it any fluff. Don't try to make it sound like this is going to be a good deal for you guys. We're going to come and take your Lakes so you can't rice on them anymore. But you're going to get a little bit of money for one summer. And then after that, you're back to trying to have to scrabble again for an income and a source of, like, a living. So sovereignty for us looks like a joke. It's an absolute joke and it's not even real. And that's the case for not just the Minnesota Chippewa tribes. That's the case. I come from the three affiliated tribes that's Mandan, Sanish, and Hidatsa out of North Dakota in Port Berthold. The sovereignty isn't protected there. It's not protected on the West Coast. And as we're seeing with the Fairy Creek and Wet'suwet'en site up in Canada right now, it's not protected there. And I don't see it being protected anytime soon.

Melanie: I know that you sort of led up to that, but this activism and living camp life has not always been what you have done. So what motivated you into your activism, like your background that brought you from having a life because you've relocated to Minnesota. So what moved you to make those changes and make this a focal point, really of your life, because you make a lot of great sacrifices to do this work.

Jaike: When I look back on it, because this was a very even for me, a crazy choice. And I've made some pretty bold moves in my lifetime. When I look back on it, I've been doing this since I was young. I removed a predator from my home at ten years old and have fought and fought for my own safety, my own autonomy, and for those underserved. And I didn't know that it was because I was that. I did not know that it was because of my generational trauma, that I was growing up in poverty, that I was growing up in a home that had mental health issues and that had a severe alcoholism. That wasn't my father, that was a stepfather. But that father that I did have could not be present because of his own generational trauma per the United States government, of the lack of access to education, the lack of access to health care, the lack of access to quality food commodities are what we live on. And that looks like the lowest grade acceptable by the USDA. So when I was very young, this began, and as I grew, I've been doing it on maybe a softball level. Protesting environmental rights in Idaho was where I grew up as a 16-year-old, protesting the governor when he came to graduation and not standing and clapping for him, which is again, not a huge incident. But this came after George Floyd riots. I think something finally kind of switched in me. I became very active. I was in the Pacific Northwest on occupied Dwarmish territory, which is so-called Seattle. I've been living there for about 20 years and very active in houseless issues. I meant where a woman in the Washington State Correctional system who was in there for murder, I have ran causes for trying to balance the equity within racial justice issues. BLM I would say that I kind of went full time and George Floyd riot, so it went from doing my little side projects once or twice a week, volunteering whatever to now I'm out in what we had as the car brigade protecting marchers and speaking on Friday nights, speaking on Saturday nights. And at that Saturday March, a fellow Indigenous person came up and told me that he was coming out to line three in May of this last year. And would I like to come. And I had just been in a car accident when Standing Rock had happened and I was in school. I had to quit my job, go back and retrain. I wasn't able to go to Standing Rock. I knew physically I'd been essentially laid out to the point where my body, my physical state, my mental state. I would have been a liability out on the front lines there. And so when he offered for me to come to line three fight, I absolutely jumped on it. And I was supposed to be here for five days. I had a plane ticket home, and I thought maybe I would come back out throughout the course of the summer. And I got here and something I can only identify as something, maybe mystical or even spiritual. Was you're staying here you're not going back. It gripped me, and it kept me here. And as much as I tell my therapist, did I make the wrong move all the time, like in my instincts and my spirit and my soul. I know it was the right move, and it's exactly where I belonged.

Melanie: There's something that you wrote that really stuck with me. This was in a Medium post that you wrote last year. I believe it's The Erasure of Native America. When you talked about the succumbing to the colonizers wish to self eradicate. In the communities, in the various reservations, there is because of all of this trauma, a huge, almost epidemic with substance abuse of self-medicating. And I don't think or I know not enough people realize what the conditions are that people have to exist under. Would you like to talk a bit more about that just to give people a clearer picture of the reservations are not happy go lucky. The life of Indigenous folks are not happy go lucky just kind of existing. This is marginalization on a level that most people don't conceive of or understand.

Jaike: Yes, I don't know what the so-called American perception is of the life of the Native. I'm guessing from what I've observed in social media and from comments of people, mostly white people, that we are grandly standing and having our dances and sitting in sweats all the time. The populist needs to know. For almost 150 years, it was illegal for us to practice our cultures and traditions. You could not be, quote, unquote Indian. You could not be Native American. And if you were, you were sent to prison when you're cut off from everything you've known. When the United States government has systematically removed your food sources, they ran the Buffalo completely out of, they brought people out and posted rewards for people to kill Buffalo because they knew that was the food source. They knew that we subsisted on crops and they would systematically go and destroy those crops. In the residential school scenario, it looks like kidnapping children, literally kidnapping children at force from Chiefs and taking them hundreds of miles away to boarding schools so that the Chiefs would start to calm down, fall in line, because if they had their children, then they have control over the tribe. By taking your food, by taking your cultures and putting you in a residential school, cutting your hair, telling you, if you speak your language, you're going to be beaten. You're going to be beaten anyway. At a residential school, you're going to be malnourished in that starvation you're going to also be forced to do a lot of labor. You're not going to be paid for that forced labor. These are places where they found babies hidden in the walls when they would go to tear down these institutions. So bodies aren't sent home. We're not given a chance to grieve. We're not given the chance for closure. And I know that it's a little tangential to bring residential schools into the loss of culture, the loss of language, but it all ties into what a reservation life looks like right now. And a reservation life looks like sovereignty laws that prohibit the growth of commerce and economy in the same way that it's allowed off of the reservation. So it could take up to five years for something to be built on a reservation because of laws, sovereignty laws where out in the world, it's a year, right, for permits to go up and for buildings to be erected and then that commerce to continue to grow the economy. We're also talking about these reservations, for the most part, are very remote. The United States government knew what it was doing by moving people to lands where nothing grew, very desolate lands where the weather is hitting the hardest and cutting these people off from major urban centers so that you can't get access to the elements you would in any other region. So what it looks like on a reservation is me with my nieces at an ice cream shop sitting across from a nine-year-old who very blankly is telling you that she remembers when her Auntie beat her baby and threw her in a dumpster because she thought that she was a demon because her Auntie was on meth. And this is coming from a nine-year-old kid, nine years old. The level of devastation and dysfunction and harm on reservations is unlike anything I've experienced in other communities that I've existed in, and I've existed in a rough place in my childhood and to hear a nine-year-old just nonchalantly tell you that story and then just recover it by talking to her friends, my nieces after that and say, what are you guys going to do after school tomorrow that changes your reality and your perception of this is what's going on in reservations.The amount of unnecessary and early death on reservations. If people were to really kind of investigate that infant mortality, our life expectancy rate is 55. Highest suicide rate amongst teens. You would see a trend that there's not only no thriving on reservations, there's nothing but death. All of the systems that have been put in place have accommodated that genocide. So as much as the United States government could not kill us off with smallpox blankets by destroying our food sources, by stealing our children, by sterilizing our women in the 60s, by stealing our children in the foster care system and removing them from native families and putting them into white families, they are still actively perpetuating genocide in this country by letting natives exist in the conditions that they do on these reservations. If you were to talk to the Dene in what is so-called Navajo Nation and how their code rates spiked during the pandemic because they had no access to clean water because of resource extraction and because the government did not come in and clean up the explosions that happened after those uranium mines leaked into their water table and how they had to travel an hour to get clean water to come back and sanitize their homes. Then you understand the starkness of what's happening on reservations across the country. And if it were just the Dene nation, it would be one thing. But those are conditions across Turtle Island.

Melanie: Of course, I am. I'm going to bring up all of our panelists are here because it's not just me who has questions, and I want to encourage the audience. If you have questions or comments as well, please drop them in the chat and keep Athena busy. But I do know that Athena did have a question of her own.

Athena: Yes. Thank you, Jake, for that insight and for the work that you're doing on the front lines. I agree. Some of these things that you're sharing. I think there's a very sort of sterilized version of it sometimes it might be in history books or in media or in Hollywood. Yet I think a lot of the struggles that you're talking about are very much alive and real today. Especially when you're talking about the concept of sovereignty and its existence, whether it is or isn't a reality, everything that you've discussed really is in a single thread of what it means to not have the autonomy over yourselves, your circumstances and your lives and your land. As the conversation progresses, I'm going to love to hear how in many ways, line three or line 93 now is a real manifestation of what that struggle is like right now in our time. But before we get into all of that, I did want to, A question that has been eating away at me is as the nation gathers this week to celebrate what is often referred to and in many cases, rightfully so as America's first and original sin of genocide. We are sort of whiplashed from this Rittenhouse verdict of the systems that continue to support white supremacy. How, as an Indigenous Native person, what is Thanksgiving means for you? And what does that holiday, a national holiday look like for you and your community?

Jaike: Well, if you're looking at the accurate history of it, the celebration of Thanksgiving is actually the celebration of a major slaughter of the Pequot Nation. That hits you in a different way. It's not just about cranberry sauce and tasty gravy. And to know that we, as Indigenous people, have many holidays celebrating our genocide, as the American government has put it, we have to celebrate Indigenous People's Day with Columbus Day and as many advocates, allies, and accomplices know, Columbus was an architect of our genocide. We have to celebrate Halloween, where we're going to be appropriated, per our costumes, our costumes, our regalia, our cultural importances. And then we have to celebrate the slaughter of our people with a feast in a parade on Thanksgiving. And in December we're going to have to celebrate the slaughter of the largest execution, mass execution ordered by the United States government of the Dakota, the 38 plus two that were hung for trying to steal eggs because they had been starved out by the United States government. So for me, thankstaking is I don't celebrate it. I will be participating in direct action this year again, which looks like things I can't talk about. That will maybe get me arrested and I'll probably get arrested anyway. But all that to say that we have to do what we can do as Indigenous people and just band together. So I'll be with my great friend Tasha Martino, who was the founder of Camp Mcgeesie, and we'll be celebrating. And then we're going to go to a hotel and do some self-care and sleep in actual beds, have warm showers. There's going to be a sauna. We won't be in nine-degree weather. We're going to take our dogs and we're going to eat some food that will not be in remembrance of what the United States culture has painted as this grand gesture of these savages that came to sit with the civilized and have this great big feast and celebrate the Union of two different Peoples. It's going to be maybe a small dinner of survival of the fact that I have not died yet. I am in recovery. I am 18 years sober, so I have been impacted by that generational trauma and that addiction and that alcoholism. And I also have those mental health issues with severe anxiety disorder, a severe PTSD. I get to celebrate Thanksgiving as a I made it this far. And my ancestors fought so hard for me to make it to another thankstaking day. Well it’s resist us. Expect us to resist us or do whatever you're going to do. We're still going to show up and try to take back whatever little sense of pride or existence that we have left in us and make it known to the rest of Turtle Island that we are still here. We're not dead yet this particular generation. I'm seeing a lot, a lot of other natives, a lot of matriarchs, honestly, a lot of femmes that are stepping up and saying we're done. We are done with colonizer settlers. We're done with white supremacy. We are able to stand up now because we recognize whatever resources are available to us we're going to tap into. We're going to get healthy and we're coming to take our lives back. And whatever that looks like, if it's land back, if it's mental health back, if it's our cultures back, our traditions back, we're taking it back and f- you for trying to stop us. I mean, f- the United States government and white male big patriarchy. Thank you.

Melanie: One of the things that we do here is at ResistBot Live. There were and have been petitions that address the dishonored treaties, pipelines and things such as that. So I want to make sure that for those of us who are at home, you're aware of what those petitions are and how you can support on that level. Susan, would you mind letting us know the codes for the current petitions that we have related to Indigenous rights, Indigenous sovereignty, and water rights?

Susan: Sure. Thank you. We actually have four petitions that are circulating, and the very first one that I'm going to talk about it has a title of Permanently end line three. And it begun on August 4 by a person who claimed the name Concerned Citizens. And it's been signed by more than 104,000 people so far, and it speaks to the damage to the ecosystem. It speaks to the issue of missing Indigenous women and two-spirit people. It speaks to the issue as if what Jaike has described is not bad enough. You also have the aspect of human trafficking that is a part of these work camps and the interaction between the workers and the people who are living in these camps. So the call sign for this first one is P as in Peter, U, C as in Cat, Z as in Zebra, G as in Good, E as in Edward. And you can text SIGN and then that call sign to ResistBot. And you can sign that petition and send it to your legislators. You can also invite your friends and family and other activists that are in your community to sign on to this petition as well, and it will go to their representatives as well. The second one, we have the second biggest one. We have speaks to the fact that water rights are human rights. The people who have been building line three, they've had drilling fluids that have been put into the waters. I think it's called frac out, spilling, 18,000 gallons of drilling fluid and out into the drinking water. My understanding from a little bit of research that I did is 40% of the world's freshwater is in this area, and so that's a huge portion. So the call sign for the water rights are human rights is P as in Peter, D as in David, D as in David, G as in Good, V as in victory, P as in Peter. And so if you want to send that one to your representatives, you will send that call sign to resist the third petition that we have. It has almost 5000 signatures on it. It is a call out to President Biden to do something within his power. When he came into office, he shut down the other pipeline, and people are looking to him to exercise his executive power and do something about line three, which now line 93 because the fight is not over yet, just because the line is operating and finished doesn't make this fight far from over. And so the call sign for that is P as in Peter, B as in Boy, G as in Good, U, D as in David. And the last one that we have is with regard to legislation that is pending before Congress, and it's HR 1374 is the resolution number, and it's enhancing state energy security planning and Emergency Preparedness Act of 2021. And so that act would give various companies and law enforcement the ability to use lethal force against protesters. And that just steps on the First Amendment rights across the board. The last one is calling for, at a minimum, the language in the resolution that speaks to using legal force against protesters that that be removed. And so that call sign is P as in Peter, P as in Peter, A as in Apple, C as in Cat, F as in family, M as in Mary. And so you can send those call signs to ResistBot and send any one of those petitions to your representatives and then invite your friends and family to do the same.

Melanie: Thanks so much, Susan. That last one. When you look at that on the heels of the Rittenhouse verdict, and how there is just a concentrated effort to prioritize crushing down any challenges to white supremacy, whether it's enabling vigilantes or enabling government officials. This is not a bug. It's definitely a feature of how this country is run. I want to bring up Christine because I know she had a question for Jaike as well.

Christine: Yes. Hi, Jaike. So, for those of us who identify as social impact investors, social entrepreneurs, what you had mentioned previously in regards to the question of economic empowerment, and it being so much more difficult things taking five years versus one. I would love to hear just your quick thoughts on elaborating on that a little bit. So those of us who are in positions of steering capital who are listening to this can understand where we potentially may do more research in order to be helpful. Thank you.

Jaike: Camp Mcgeesie exists solely because it went into a land-back program. And what that was, the neighbors owned the land, sold it. That person sold it to Human Equity, and that piece of land went back into a land-back program. And that's how Tasha ended up with it. So give us access to our land back, if that's possible, look into whatever land-back Orgs are around. You help us make legislation that makes it hard for people to just come into our territories and devastate them because wild rice is a crop up here. Right? And that's how a lot of Ojibwe make their living. They go out, they harvest for the fall. But as had just barely been mentioned, 40 different frac outs just destroy those rice beds. How are those families going to now make the money that they were making on that wild rice? For the most part, most Indigenous cultures. I wouldn't say that they made their living historically and traditionally, but they traded in commerce by existing off the land. Right. So when it comes to what we would see as our crops, it would be something sustainable. It would be in line with our traditions and values and in line with Creator/Mother Earth, what those spirits would provide. And that might look like hemp. Right. Help us invest in hemp and make those crops available to us and let us manage them and steward them as we've seen with the fires in the Pacific Northwest. I've lived there for 20 years, and I've never seen fires like I've seen for the last five years. Sky is clouded out. You can't see the sun. You have to go outside with the respirator, the fires down in California, destroying towns. Same in BC. We are not used to fire seasons like this. The Indigenous population used to know how to steward those forests. Right. And we took care of the land and knew how to manage it to where it wouldn't destroy swathes of land and of people and homes of lodgings. So give us access back to those jobs and help turn that responsibility back over to us. And not only will you see that everybody will have enough, they'll have enough food because that's our creed. We make sure that everybody is fed, everybody has a lodging and it's all sustainable and it's in line with our values and traditions. So if we can get access to those crops and be given responsibility back and not be treated as if we are Neanderthals, kind of stupid for living off the land and not believing in a Christian God, everybody will benefit from that. And that's I think what is missing from the narrative a lot of times is that not only did colonial settlers try to destroy us, but they destroyed their chances at a sustainable life when they destroyed the Indigenous spirit and knowledge. And if we were given back that access and were allowed through either legislation or commerce rights, the ability to make it simple to go back and steward these crops, grow them, curate them, deliver them to surrounding communities. Everybody would be thriving. And I don't think I can bang that drum enough.

Melanie: It's also the right thing to do it's right. And honoring our treaties is the bare minimum. So I appreciate you sharing that. I do want to go back a little bit, because with lost culture, there is a gap in us understanding certain terms or people having understanding certain concepts. And if you don't mind, should you share what being two-spirit means? We mentioned that earlier, and I don't know that all of our audience is familiar. So would you mind sharing that?

Jaike: I use my pronouns are nunpa-nagi i, and that's a literal translation of Two-Spirit in Lakota. For me, that looks like embracing a masculine energy as much as I have been given what white culture says, our female parts. So if it's a warrior spirit, if it's getting out there to build right alongside the quote, unquote male-bodied, whatever those tenants are, I guess that white culture has embraced. We've just known them for centuries, and we didn't assign gender. But that said for me to exist in a world where white culture is a thing, I have to play along. So therefore, I would be considered two spirits. And that means that I embrace both. I'm non-gender. And that's never been an issue in Indigenous circles. We support, amplify, and uphold our two spirits. There's never been animosity in our culture around whatever gender or sexuality. There's a lot of tribes where polyamorous, and when you got divorced, you set your partner's belongings outside of the TP and they came home and they saw that they were kicked out. They got the f- out. And it wasn't like a big legal case where you had to fight over the children. It was like, okay, this is an understanding. Now I will be moving on. I will see you in the village. I hope we all get along right. So there are many different aspects of indigeneity that I think that now the social spectrum that is becoming hopefully more acceptable, more understanding and more compassionate towards people of difference that people will see that that's been the case in Indigenous lives for centuries. And we're here as allies. We also want to be respected in that way.

Melanie: Thanks so much, Jake. We had a question from Susan.

Susan: You mentioned earlier that the fight continues and you couldn't really give details of what your specific next action is. But can you give us a general overview of what the site looks like now that line three, the construction is done and it's actively operating. Can you tell us what it looks like going forward?

Jaike: There's still the line five fight over in Wisconsin, Mountain Valley pipeline in Virginia. There's a tundra fight up in Alaska. I mean, they're cutting animals open, moose, seal that have tumors in them. And there are a lot of subsistence tribes up there that live precisely off of what they can harvest because they're so remote and so hard to get to grocery delivery to them, even when they can buy from a grocery store. It's exorbitantly expensive. There are all these in Fairy Creek, there's Stacker Pass, all of these other fights. There's about to be a lithium mine. Ours is Tamarack. That's another mine that may be coming to Minnesota. And where in the hell is President Biden, the guy that ran on environment, right? Like, we want him to listen for the love of God, this person who ran on social justice, and he was going to try to make a difference. I know that he won because he was, like, the most milk toast, like next white dude that could win the presidency. But he also made those promises, and he has not acknowledged line three at all. He's just like Governor Walz in that way. And so we want the government to listen, right? These are these lands that they said that they want to protect. Well protect them, step up and listen to us. And when we're in DC, occupying the Department of the Interior at the BIA as Native Americans, this happened four weeks ago, and there's a media blackout around it. And there's SWAT teams outside, and I'm being arrested by Homeland Security. And there are helicopters swirling around the top of the building. And there's nothing said from Biden. And there's barely any news about that tells you the extent of how much the Indigenous are being silenced. And I think it's because the government knows they have a lot of huge mess to clean up in terms of reparations of acknowledging their harms and the genocide that they have created against Indigenous Peoples and what that will look like in terms of them moving forward, giving apologies, finding those bodies in the boarding schools, bringing them home to those tribes, giving us back access to our cultures, traditions without regard. Stop fighting us. Listen to us. If you really said you wanted to do the social justice thing, take note and honor your word. I'm not expecting anything to happen. We got a Catholic President and a lot of these schools, the residential boarding schools, were Christian Catholic organizations. So we've got dead silence from a government that is very culpable in our genocide. I don't anticipate that to change anytime soon because there's just been almost a numbing of culpability and accountability and governments taking note of the damage they did, and hence why people like Hitler studied the genocide of American Indians and applied that in the Holocaust because it was so damaging and dangerous. And it worked.

Melanie: I wanted to because you talked about the Bureau of Indian Affairs and occupying that. And one of the things that it brings to mind for me is this quote that I find myself using more and more probably in the past year or two that I've used in my whole life. But there's a quote from who talks about racism being a distraction. And when you look at all of the things that the country fixates on, what we get in the news and how those things that were kind of force-fed takes us away from issues like this, where there can be media blackouts on something that is very important, something that marginalized people need to know about. But it's completely cut off. So before we go, I wanted to make sure I wanted to know if there was anything else that you wanted to add before we go for the day. And I can't thank you enough for giving us your time, especially at this time of the year. But I wanted to make sure if there's anything else that you wanted to add and also on the back of that. If you can let people know where they can find you and how they can support you.

Jaike: Protest these holidays, don't do them. It's just not. Wow, it's harmful. It hurts that we're celebrating genocide masters, and it damages us beyond a sense of reconciliation. Please follow MMIW social media accounts and listen and pay attention to what's happening with our missing- it had been touched on earlier by somebody else, not me. And I usually make that a priority in my talks of the man camps that happened along the pipelines is where our women and girls, mostly, and sometimes boys end up snatched, just stolen from their families. They are taken onto these man camps and trafficked. And then the men that work these pipelines, they are transient. They're coming up from other parts of the United States. They've got a lot of money because the pipeline pays well. They're paying cops off. Cops are involved. And therefore, because there are issues with sovereignty and law, we don't have task forces looking for our missing people. So the FBI is tasked with that. And the FBI does not care. And the proof of that is how it's treated when it comes to say a white body going missing and rest in peace. Molly Tibbets and Gabby. Yeah. Amber Johnson Barr, a ten-year-old up in Kozobu, Alaska, had been assaulted, left for dead outside of a school. And you see maybe two Internet searches for Amber. You see nothing right when it comes down to the missing and murdered. So please start to pay attention and ask your local governments for why Colorado is number one for sex trafficking, and Seattle is right up there with them in percentages. Why there's a domestic violence rate of 22% in our women. Start to protest for Indigenous people, we're still alive. We still exist. If you're worried about stepping on culture or you're afraid of what questions to ask, by not asking the questions about how to show up for Indigenous Peoples that's causing further harm. And I don't know that America at large understands that. And I get that there's an inherent sense of if we were to really talk about Indigenous issues and how the Indigenous are suffering in this country right now, that there might be a level of accountability because maybe your ancestors did have something to do with colonizing this country. Maybe your ancestors did have something to do with homesteading and taking away our land. But if you're really into social justice, start to put your money where your mouth is. And don't give me the excuse of, well, it was so long ago, it's in the past. Now I will remind people that there are still residential schools running, even though the last one was supposedly shut down in 96. There have been over 7000 bodies found in Canada. None of them have been found in America because we haven't implemented a search. That's the only reason why. But there are thousands of bodies here. Don't say that you're for human rights or equal rights or social justice, and then leave the Indigenous out of that equation because you're doing a huge injustice to us and people have to start paying attention. We are only 1% of the population because of genocide. 5 million is what we number in. And we have the highest police murder rate. And it's never talked about. And Preston Bell was shot at 72 times. That doesn't just say, by one cop, in Billings, Montana. That's not just a cop trying to maime somebody that's a cop with hate, absolute hatred in their body who wants that person so dead that they can never come back. Understanding the rates at which Indigenous suffer here is also important. And it's in that Medium paper that I put all those statistics down and wrote exactly what our suicide rates are. Domestic violence rates are the alcoholism addiction study, that stuff and give it a second look, because it's really important. I'm on Facebook as Jake J-A-I-K-E. And then spotted Wolf and then Instagram as Spot underscore Wolf underscore that's my personal. And then I run the Camp Migizi Instagram page and that's Castle Mcgeezi will fly. We have an injunction against us right now by our own reservation for being a campground where we brought in a whole bunch of anarchists. So we had to change our name from being a camp. So we're not a camp anymore, people. We're just a whole bunch of people that live on land. We are Migizi will fly, and that's M-I-G-I-Z-I and then Capital W-I-L-L. And then F-L-Y. And that's on Instagram and Facebook. So follow us there. We're not social media savvy. We're trying very hard. We are frontliners. So we're really good at addressing cops and pipeliners and speaking our truth out there. Not so great with posting stories we're learning, but give us some time and then support Migizi show up for us. If it means donating to that wish list. We are still building camp. I'm running out of camp funds as I speak. I'm also unemployed. I have now dedicated my life to full-time activism, and that does not come with a paycheck. I do have a team of grant writers and we're looking into whatever grants are out there for frontline workers that might offer stipends. If you know of those grants, please let us know if you are an org that supports frontline workers. Please let us know. Let us know how we can apply for those grants to try to give the full-time people at camp right now also are not employed because they're building camp and they've been doing frontline work all summer. We are living on mutual aid, and that feels hard for the part of me that's always worked and has always had a paying job. But this is my survival and the survival of my people has to come first now, and money matters very little in that spectrum of things. And that said, I still live in a capitalized society where I am still expected to pay bills. So anything. I am also trying to buy a tiny house for the property for that injunction to make it look more professional and like an upstanding community. We tried to work on the fundraiser yesterday. We didn't get it up, but if you were to the Venmo where the cash app. And then by next week, we should have the fundraiser up to support the buying of the tiny house and putting it on the land so that we can keep the land and we won't be kicked off.

Melanie: Thank you so much, Jaike. We will make sure that we have all of your information, not only in our show notes here, but when the podcast goes up, we'll make sure that they are in the podcast notes as well. And signal boosting. That's always the way. Signal boost. Signal boost. Signal boost. You definitely have our commitment to that. And hopefully, our audience will join us in that. So thank you again for your time. And we hope that we can have you back because the fight is not over. This conversation is not over and your voice is an important one. So we really appreciate your time.

Jaike: Thank you honestly, for giving me time to speak about this stuff, for giving it an Indigenous person time to speak and being so gracious in all of that. I really do appreciate it.

Melanie: You're more than welcome. It's the least we can do. And that wraps our show. I would like to thank my panelists first. I'd like to say, Athena, thank you.

Athena: Thank you all very much. Stay safe this week and we'll see you next time.

Melanie: Thank you, Susan.

Susan: That was quite an education. Wow. Thank you.

Melanie: A gut punch for a lot of us, but a necessary one. Christine.

Christine: Yes. I really appreciate being able to sit and listen to this. It's got my wheels spinning on the economic empowerment part, so I'll be back.

Melanie: Thank you all so much. And this has been ResistBot Live. If you want to learn more if you want to volunteer, if you want to donate, if you want to sign our petitions, you can go to Resist dot Bot. Also, again, you can like us on Facebook. You can follow us on Twitter, you can subscribe to us on YouTube and Twitch, and you can find us on whatever your favorite podcast app happens to be. So until then, we will see you next Sunday and we appreciate you. Have a good one.

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