Must-Reads and Some Ways to Support Native People This Weekend

In this edition of Organizing My Thoughts, I am sharing some opportunities to support Native people, in addition to my must-reads list and some final thoughts for the week.

Native Causes to Support this Weekend

Every year, around this time, I share a list of opportunities to support Native organizing, advocacy and care work. From supporting Indigenous people seeking abortion care to defending Native voting rights and keeping Native families together, here are some causes worth supporting:

• Indigenous Women Rising’s initiatives include financial and practical support for Indigenous abortion seekers in the US and Canada, midwifery support, and reproductive justice advocacy. Their efforts have never been more crucial. You can support their work reproductive justice work here.
• Four Directions is a Native-led voting rights organization that helps tribal members achieve equal ballot access. You can support their work here.
• NICWA works to support the safety, health, and spiritual strength of Native children. Their work helps Native nations keep Native families together. You can support their efforts here. 
• I am raising funds to create survival stipends for Native activists and organizers who are struggling to make ends meet. Indigenous organizers often neglect their own needs for the sake of their communities. You can support them by donating here.
• Maeqtekuahkihkiw Metaemohsak—Woodland Women is an elder-led group on my reservation that provides accompaniment and support to trauma survivors. The group also engages in mutual aid, cultural education, and a lot of crafting. You can support their work here.
• Chi-Nations Youth Council is a diverse group of Native youth activists who steward the First Nations Garden, an important radical Indigenous space in Chicago. You can support their work here.
• To support Indigenous organizing, you can also support the work of NDN Collective or donate to the Native Organizers Alliance. 

ICYMI

This week, I interviewed Rebecca Nagle about her new book, By the Fire We Carry: The Generations-Long Fight for Justice on Native Land, the challenges Native people will face under Donald Trump, and the histories Americans must reckon with to build a just future.

Must-Reads

From Robin D. G. Kelley's thoughts on fighting Trumpism to the Republican plan to "take down the entire ecosystem of the left," here are some of the most important articles I’ve read this week.

• The Right Has a 150-Page Battle Plan to Shut Down Progressive Civil Society by Negin Owliaei & Maya Schenwar. “The blueprint for repression takes aim at everyone from fiscal sponsors to, crucially, the legal support organizations that usually come in to provide support once activists are targeted. It is clear that the authors of these types of playbooks are trying to take down the entire ecosystem of the left."
• Inside Christian Nationalists’ Legal Long Game to End Church-State Separation by Schuyler Mitchell. “Armed with a new conservative supermajority on the U.S. Supreme Court and a federal judiciary stacked with Donald Trump’s picks, the Christian far right sees a revived opportunity to overturn decades of legal precedent.”
• A 13-Year-Old With Autism Got Arrested After His Backpack Sparked Fear. by Aliyya Swaby and Paige Pfleger. “Ty, a 13-year-old with autism, is arrested, charged with a felony and detained for telling a teacher not to look in his backpack because the school would blow up. Ty later explains that he was trying to protect the stuffed bunny inside.”
• How Trump Plans to Seize the Power of the Purse From Congress by Molly Redden. “Rather than relying on his party’s control of Congress to trim the budget, Trump and his advisers intend to test an obscure legal theory holding that presidents have sweeping power to withhold funding from programs they dislike.”
• Illinois Students Who Protested Gaza Genocide Are Facing Felony Mob Charges by Tara Goodarzi. “The outcome of the four students’ trials will determine whether they will risk up to three years of incarceration on felony “mob action” charges for having exercised their free speech rights on campus.”
• The Invisible Man by Patrick Fealey. “The definition of homeless is we have no home, no place to go. If ‘I think, therefore I am’ is true, we are people who are. We are, and we stand on this ground. If you deny us ground, you are denying us our ‘I am.’ Isn’t that negation of our existence? We are here and we are you and we are yours.”
• The 19th Explains: How bathroom bans on federal property would impact trans Americans by Orion Rummler and Grace Panetta. “Such a far-reaching law would mean widespread discrimination against all transgender people, experts say, although Mace’s rhetoric has singled out trans women.”
• “My Pen Is My Weapon Against the Occupation”: Palestinian Writers Resist Israel’s Genocide by Marianne Dhenin. “Read Palestine Week frames reading and learning about Palestine as acts of solidarity and resistance and encourages culture workers and readers everywhere to disrupt Israel’s culture- or art-washing — terms used to describe how the state launders its occupation and genocide of Palestinians through cultural works.”
• Notes on Fighting Trumpism by Robin D. G. Kelley. "If we are going to ever defeat Trumpism, modern fascism, and wage a viable challenge to gendered racial capitalism, we must revive the old IWW slogan, 'An injury to one is an injury to all.' Putting that into practice means thinking beyond nation, organizing to resist mass deportation rather than vote for the party promoting it."

Final Thoughts

I hope some of you will accept my invitation to support Native people in some way this weekend. As a Native person, I used to find the Thanksgiving holiday–with all its lies and pageantry–deeply upsetting, and I know many Native people still do. For some, it is a time of mourning. For many, that day has been repurposed as a time for gathering and honoring what matters to us. For others, it’s simply an opportunity to see people and enjoy good food.

I do not celebrate “Thanksgiving,” but my angst around this holiday diminished somewhat when I realized that, while colonial myths should be destroyed, people in this society are profoundly lonely and alienated, and deeply in need of togetherness. We don’t have enough time, in general, and we definitely don’t have enough time with the people we love. We shouldn’t need a holiday–especially one mired in colonial myth-making–to come together, but in a system that robs us of our time, labor, and lives, opportunities to gather with loved ones can be scarce.

My concerns about colonialism, genocide, and how non-Natives understand Native history do not hinge on whether you eat a large meal with your family today. Lately, I have been reminded that most people—even politically engaged people—do not afford Native people or our struggles much thought. Some are quick to deride us or heap blame on us when things don’t go their way, but otherwise, they give us little attention. Among leftists and some liberal institutions, land acknowledgments have become a standard, often hollow gesture. We acknowledge this land was stolen, and in doing so, we absolve ourselves. We are the good ones. 

Personally, I am not interested in land acknowledgments. I am interested in whether people invest themselves in the survival and liberation of my people and all Indigenous people. I am interested in whether they see the connections between their own liberation and ours or between the destruction of the biosphere and the violence of colonialism. I am interested in whether people who can acknowledge that the apocalyptic violence my people endured was wrong (what a concession) have raised their voices or taken action against the genocide in Palestine. Colonialism has been destroying worlds for hundreds of years, and it will not stop until we upend the forces that animate it. I am interested in whether people understand this.

I am interested in your political commitments.

If you are reading this, there’s a good chance your commitments are strong. I am grateful for that, and I wish you peace today. Wherever you are, whatever you are doing, I hope this weekend finds you in the embrace of loved ones. I hope you are warm, safe, and nourished. I hope you are cared for and caring for others.

I will be spending the day with friends who I know will be struggling alongside me in the new year. As far as I’m concerned, there’s no wrong time to deepen those connections or to break bread with the people I love. Life is precious and fleeting. I am trying to hold onto all of the good moments however I can. 

More than anything, I am thinking about the future and about how our commitments to one another will be essential to our survival. As a Native person, I know that while our communities are beautiful and full of vital knowledge, our liberation cannot be achieved in isolation. This is true for all of our communities, Native and non-Native. We need each other. We will sometimes disappoint each other, as we have in the past, but we must move forward together. There is no other path.

We must hold onto our values and hold onto each other as we walk, arm in arm and hand in hand, into an uncertain future. I don’t know what lies ahead, but I do know this: people committed to collective survival, who refuse to abandon one another, can sometimes navigate the unthinkable and survive. My people gave me that knowledge and that hope, and today, I share it with you.

Much love,

Kelly

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