Indigenous Solidarity An (Un)Settler's Place

The Politics of Solidarity: Six Nations, Leadership, and the Settler Left
By Tom Keefer
http://uppingtheanti.org/node/2728

This article will address some issues which have arisen in the context of non-native activists doing solidarity work with the Haudenosaunee (Six Nations) people of the Grand River Territory who recently reclaimed land near Caledonia, Ontario.1 I will begin by discussing the problems with how many non-native activists have used the concept of “taking leadership” to guide their activism around this struggle, and I then will look at the spaces and places where I think non-native activists should focus their efforts in support of indigenous sovereignty. In order to do so, I will draw on the work of black power activists Stokely Carmichael and Charles Hamilton as their work provides a relevant model for non-native activists looking to build solidarity with Six Nations. I will conclude by addressing the importance of the work being done by trade union activists supporting the people of Six Nations.2

An Anarchist Study of the Rotinonshón:ni Polity

The traditional society of the Rotinonshón:ni (Iroquois), "The People of the Longhouse," was a densely settled, matrilineal, communal, and extensively horticultural society. The Rotinonshón:ni formed a confederacy of five nations. Generations before historical contact with Europeans, these nations united through the Kaianere'kó:wa into the same polity and ended blood feuding without economic exploitation, stratification, or the formation of a centralized state.

Contents:
* Introduction
* How Peace Came to the Rotinonshón:ni
* "One Bowl": The Communal Economy of the Rotinonshón:ni
* "We are left to answer for our women"
* The Beaver Wars, which were Not Only about the Fur Trade
* Kaianere'kó:wa as Constitution of a Stateless Polity?
* Anarcho-Indigenism

Read full detailed and illustrated version:
http://www.nefac.net/anarchiststudyofiroquois

As a non-native Caledonia resident, how did you get involved in supporting Six Nations? Have you ever been involved before as a political activist?

The Role of Settlers in Indigenous Struggles
Zainab Amadahy

Questions arising from the Six Nations land reclamation
Canadian Dimension Magazine, May/June 2007 issue

By mid-March, 2006, when activist communities discovered the land reclamation at Six Nations of the Grand River, carloads of non-Aboriginal supporters from Toronto, Montreal and beyond made almost daily trips to the site loaded with supplies and youthful activists eager to staff the cookhouse, help out in the first-aid tent, or do a security shift. At night gaggles of underdressed youth would huddle at the fire, soaking up community gossip directly from “the real grassroots” (as one white activist described members of the Grand River community).

In the three months following the April 28, 2006 OPP raid on the Six Nations land reclamation, it wasn’t unusual to find times when there were more white settlers camped out on the reclaimed territory than members of the Grand River community. Some activists were there for the early morning raid and have described the experience of nearly being arrested in everything from public events to on-line downloadable videos. It’s worth noting that all the people charged by the OPP that day or since were Native; no non-Natives are facing charges, even though many were on the site before, during and after the raid.

Hoping for Trouble?

by Tom Keefer

from http://www.briarpatchmagazine.com/ August 2006

On February 28, 2006, members of the Six Nations of the Iroquois
Confederacy reclaimed a suburban construction site on lands belonging to
them and initiated one of the most significant anti-colonial struggles
in North America in recent years. With the people of Six Nations
fighting to regain ownership of the 950,000 acres of the Haldimand tract
originally granted to them by the British crown in 1784, the outcome of
the struggle at Douglas Creek Estates has major implications for white
settlers, the Canadian state, the Iroquois Confederacy, and indigenous
peoples throughout North America.

White residents from the nearby town of Caledonia have regularly
protested the indigenous blockades, and on numerous occasions have
attempted to break past police lines in order to take back the disputed
land. But many other whites, supportive of the reclamation, have also
been active in and around Six Nations and Caledonia. This article will
discuss the various kinds of solidarity actions that have been organized
by these supporters of the reclamation. By thinking strategically about
our work, white anti-racist activists can more effectively contribute to
a victory for the people of Six Nations, and, more ambitiously, can work
towards a transformation of the colonial dynamics of Canadian settler

http://auto_sol.tao.ca/node/2633

This roundtable was conducted in September 2006 with AJ Withers, Josh Zucker and Stefanie Gude of the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty

What led you to get involved in supporting indigenous struggles in general, and the Six Nations struggle in particular?

AJ: The Ontario Coalition Against Poverty (OCAP) is a social justice organization and, as such, we support indigenous struggles. I hadn’t heard of what was going on outside of Caledonia until some friends of mine in Tyendinaga told us about it and suggested we go. We went to check it out and see if there was anything we could do to support it. We didn’t know anyone and were quite shy so we sat silently by the fire a lot and hoped people would speak to us. Finally, we learned about things we could supply, and asked if there were things in Toronto we could do to show our support.

Josh: I got involved with indigenous struggles through working with OCAP. When I joined OCAP in 2001 there were 5 paid organizers, one of whom was Shawn Brant, a Mohawk from Tyendinaga Mohawk Territory which is near Belleville on the Bay of Quinte in southern Ontario. Most members of OCAP, I would say, started learning more about native issues and sovereignty through the links Shawn brought to OCAP, which went back to before 2001.