At every full collective gathering we acknowledge that we live in a society founded on stolen land and stolen lives. Someone researches and presents a relevant topic and then we take a moment of silence to reflect. We share the research here for others as well.

As the transgender community continues to fight for civil rights in the u.s., some critics regard trans people as a symptom of the postmodern condition, of bored, rich, white-people that have been confused sexually by a socially liberal society. Many claim that the struggle for transgender rights is difficult because the concept is still new to many in the states and the world. But the reality is far more complex and diverse. Struggles for LGBTQ rights in the u.s., and the world, has had transgender and queer energy behind it since even before the 1960s when Marsha P. Johnson, a black trans woman, threw the first brick at the Stonewall Riots. That energy was also there before the white europeans came here to steal the land and the peoples’ his/herstories. Further understanding of the truths of these important members of our community will only help to inform the ongoing struggle for the liberation of gender-variant people everywhere.

Many reports and statistics note, the number of assaults on all LGBTQ, especially trans, femmes, and non-binaries are on the rise; and it is because of this, we must rally around and support trans lives and their plights. Common thought would have people believing that this is a normal xenophobic reaction to the rise of an unfamiliar and ‘degenerative’ identity, but that is not true. In fact, trans peoples and gender-variance has a long and proud history from people of all national origins, theological persuasions, and societal roles. 

Two-Spirit (North America)

For an example of colonially stifled gender variance close to home, one needs look no further than the various gender identities recognized and celebrated in indigenous tribes.

Navajo tribes recognized four genders that roughly correlate with cisgender and transgender men and women, using the terms nadleehi for those who “transform” into femininity and dilbaa for those “transform” into masculinity. The Mohave people used the terms alyha and hwame to describe similar identities. And the Lakota tribe believed the wintke people among them had supernatural powers like India’s hijras.

The two-spirit community is experiencing a renaissance of activism lately, but this isn’t a recent phenomenon, strictly speaking. We’wha was a famous lhamana (i.e., two-spirit) member of the Zuni tribe. She may have been the first out-of-the-closet gender-variant person to meet a u.s. president when she was introduced to Grover Cleveland in 1886. Two-spirit people in north america have benefited from acceptance within their communities. Already they have reclaimed a piece of their identities by popularizing the term “two-spirit” in place of the french colonial term berdache.

Mahu

In traditional Hawaiian culture, creative expression of gender and sexuality was celebrated as an authentic part of the human experience. Throughout Hawaiian history, “mahu” appear as individuals who identify their gender between male and female. A mahu is an individual that straddles somewhere in the middle of the male and female binary. It does not define their sexual preference or gender expression because gender roles, gender expressions, and sexual relationships have all been severely influenced by the colonization. The change in understanding of Hina began with the arrival of christian missionaries in the 1800s and the imposition of western values on the Hawaiian community. They banned cultural expressions that celebrated diverse sexual views and traditions they believed to be profane, such as hula, and drove them underground. The suppression of traditional Hawaiian values and practices marked a turning point in Hawai‘i’s history, one in which mahu began a struggle to find acceptance. Similar struggles can also be found in other countries as well.

Hijras

With thousands of years of documented history, hijras are one of the oldest and best-known examples of gender variance. The word is a blanket term applied to people westerners might define as transgender, intersex, or eunuchs. Throughout history, hijras in southern asia have been associated with sacred powers. They deliver blessings at weddings and births and are feared for their powerful curses. The focus on their efforts for recognition and rights typically centers on india. That’s in part because british rule dramatically changed the lives of hijras there. The colonial government made the simple act of being a hijra a criminal offense. Hijras responded by forming their own tight-knit communities, and developing their own language.

In 2014, the supreme court of india followed precedents in nepal, pakistan, and bangladesh in recognizing hijras as a legally designated third gender. That decision helped people in india seeking legal recognition for their identities. Activists claim it doesn’t go far enough, though. Many hijras still find themselves resorting to begging or survival sex work to get by. In Indian politics, “hijra” is still used as a public insult.

Ancient History & Modern Struggles

These stories, while being a small fraction of non-binary representations in the world, offer up a simple lesson that is predominate in much of the precolonial peoples: There have been people from all over the world for thousands of years who find themselves on the outside of simple binaries. While it might be tempting to apply a label like “transgender” to all of these people, it’s important to respect their sovereignty in defining their own identities, and remember that European colonialism was a major force in hurting and erasing gender-variant people throughout his/herstory, and our current understanding is a representation of that. The variety of gender expressions and identities that have outlived the attacks of colonialists is a testament to the strength of resistance present in the oppressed. They prove that people have rejected the restrictive gender systems throughout history and in our modern age, as many of the examples demonstrate, these experiences have and do often exist outside of the binaries that social norms place on existence.

At every full collective gathering we acknowledge that we live in a society founded on stolen land and stolen lives. Someone researches and presents a relevant topic and then we take a moment of silence to reflect. We share the research here for others as well.

The Black Panther Party was one of the leading movements in the U.S. for the struggle of Black liberation, with armed community self-defense and community social programs at the core of its activities, and at its peak had offices in 68 cities, both in the U.S. and internationally. One of these cities is Eugene, Oregon.

In a primarily-white city, the Eugene chapter of the Black Panther Party grew out of the Black Student Union at the U of O, where black students dealt with the institutional racism of the university’s community and academia. Elmer and Aaron Dixon were two brothers who headed the Seattle chapter of the BPP that came down to help organize the Eugene chapter and left three Seattle members to help support its development.

At its height, the Eugene chapter had 18-20 members and 10-15 underground members, with its core members all coming from Compton, Los Angeles and brought to or influenced to move to Eugene by the chapter’s leadership, Howard and Tommy Anderson.

From the Eugene chapter, a few community survival projects emerged:

a) the Free Breakfast Program that served 20-30 children everyday

b) a Liberation School that focused on African and African American history while also unraveling some untrue accounts of Eurocentric history widely taught in Eurocentric academics/curriculum

c) and a Public Speaker Program that participated in demonstrations and rallies in Eugene, such as on racism, Vietnam, and other issues at the time. The speaker program also tried to educate the wider Eugene community about the goals and philosophy of the Black Panther Party.

The Eugene chapter also developed supportive relationships with other revolutionary organizations, including:

a) Patriot Party – a Euro-American organization that focused on poor whites

b) Brown Berets – headed by a small group of Chicanos from Los Angeles who organized resistance to the exploitation of the Chicano community in Eugene and other migrant farming communities in the surrounding areas. The Eugene Chapter was led by Ray Verdugo.

c) and Asian student organizers, such as Ellen Bepp and Sandra Muraoka, that focused on racism, stereotyping and other issues related to students of Asian descent.

It comes as no surprise that the Eugene chapter ran into confrontations with the Eugene Police Department in 1969. The Eugene Police attempted to enter the house of a party member, Oliver Patterson, but were met with armed resistance. When Howard and Tommy Anderson met with the police and Howard asked them to produce a warrant, the police were unable to do so and were forced to leave without making arrests. That same day, a warrant was issued for Howard and Tommy Anderson for “assault on police with deadly weapons and interfering with the Eugene Police.” All members of the BPP Eugene chapter showed up at the BPP Headquarters and decided not to give up the Anderson brothers without a fight to the death. With the Headquarters fortified and enough weapons to engage the Eugene Police in a short firefight, the BPP Eugene chapter was ready for an armed struggle, with armed white supporters outside in strategic positions and the support of many UO students protesting police outside.

However, before such a fight could happen, a respected attorney in Eugene named Ken Morrow approached the BPP Headquarters and offered his help as an attorney. With the judge agreeing to set bail at $10,000 per Panther, the money was raised within ten minutes, and Ken Morrow and the Anderson brothers went to City Hall, were arraigned, posted bail, and were back at Headquarters within one hour. He maintained a good relationship with the Panthers despite pressure from anti-Panther people in Eugene.

The Eugene Police continued to harass the BPP Eugene chapter for various reasons, but by 1970, the Eugene chapter had relatively dissolved, with some members moving to other cities to organize with other chapters and others remaining as students at the U of O.

***The article was written with the intent of recording the legacy of the Eugene Chapter of the Black Panther Party and its impact on the UO campus and the wider Eugene community: http://www.itsabouttimebpp.com/chapter_history/eugene_oregon_chapter.html

At every full collective gathering we acknowledge that we live in a society founded on stolen land and stolen lives. Someone researches and presents a relevant topic and then we take a moment of silence to reflect. We share the research here for others as well.

With the nationwide prison strike swiftly approaching on August 21st, thoughts turn to our incarcerated comrades and the conditions of torment they endure in institutions across the world.

During a work stoppage or slowdown, prisoners face increased risk of persecution by prison officials. Participation in these important protests is considered a high-severity level prohibited act. The federal punishment for these acts is solitary confinement, also called restrictive housing. For participation in a strike, prisoners can be sentenced to up to a year of solitary for each offense. These punishments can be exacerbated by attaching gang status to prisoners participating in organized acts with multiple individuals.

Initially seen as an opportunity to reflect on one’s deeds and deepen a prisoner’s relationship with god, this inhumane and barbarous practice has been increasingly under scrutiny due to evidence of the incredibly harmful psychological impacts on inmates, and it’s seeming lack of long-term efficacy.

This torturous treatment is by no means a punishment reserved for striking prisoners. In the united states, the country that leads the world in numbers of imprisoned individuals, there are as many as 80,000 people in solitary confinement, according to the American Friends Service Committee, a Quaker humanitarian organization. This includes children. There is some irony in these statistics being tracked by the AFSC, since it’s believed that Quakers were strong supporters of solitary confinement during it’s early usage in american penitentiaries.

The american psychiatrist Stuart Grassian, in the paper entitled Psychopathological Effects of Solitary Confinement, was able to identify many psychiatric symptoms that were common among inmates subject to this form of isolation torture. The list of symptoms includes perceptual changes (including hallucinations, perceptual distortions, difficulty with thinking, memory and concentration)  disturbances of thought content (such as paranoia, or the emergence of aggressive fantasies) problems with impulse control, and self mutilation. These symptoms also were found to quickly subside on termination of the prisoner’s isolation.

This form of torturing prisoners is only one of many techniques used to abuse and degrade people deemed to be a risk to the overall function of the prison machine.

The american prison system exists to strike fear into the population, to manipulate and control individuals, but also largely to make profit through the use of slave labor.

Striking prisoners are taking a huge risk, attacking the very heart of the prison industrial complex. As the strike continues to draw nearer, there is an increased need for actions of solidarity, and to support prisoners directly. No compromise in the abolition of slavery, no compromise in the abolition of prisons.

Some useful links:

a brief list of companies that use prison labor: https://www.cagedbirdmagazine.com/single-post/2017/03/28/50-Companies-Supporting-Modern-American-Slavery

a link to the article Psychopathological Effects of Solitary Confinement:

https://www.nmlegis.gov/handouts/CCJ%20102716%20Item%203%20Dr%20Grassian%20Psychopathological%20Effects%20of%20Solitary%20Confinement.pdf

At every full collective gathering we acknowledge that we live in a society founded on stolen land and stolen lives. Someone researches and presents a relevant topic and then we take a moment of silence to reflect. We share the research here for others as well.

The american colonial machine seeks the eradication or co-option of any resistance to it’s goals of homogeneity and control. Nowhere has this practice been more apparent or abhorrent than in the late 19th century with the advent of Indian Residential Schools.

These schools, more accurately described as factories of cultural destruction, found their predecessors, in the early missionary schools of the 17th century. Later, education and reform programs for freedmen in the post civil war era, such as those of the Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute also known as Hampton University, were another source of inspiration. The residential schools went on to become a network of dozens of government funded assimilation schools, and hundreds of private schools.

Their goal was to disenfranchise, assimilate, and eradicate indigenous cultures and peoples through immersion in european-american culture and the separation of children from their families, language, beliefs and traditions. These schools did their best to erase identities, often forcing people to abandon even their own names. Natives were forced to cut their hair, speak English, dress in western clothing, and were provided with western education and theological instruction to prepare them for the eventual total domination of their land by white settlement. Any sign of their traditional culture and behaviors was forbidden, with often harsh punishments for any infraction.

The practice of re-programming these individuals, though barbaric, was believed by many, including Richard Pratt, an early proponent of Residential Schools, and founder of the flagship Carlisle Indian Industrial School, to be a humanistic and civilized alternative to the popular practices of dealing with indigenous peoples, namely genocide and confinement to reservations. The Carlisle Indian Industrial School was the first off-reservation assimilation model boarding school and therefore the first of a particularly damaging practice, that of separating of children and young people from their communities and heritage. This school was active for almost 40 years, being founded in 1879 and closing in 1918. Many schools based on this model were active until the middle of the 20th century.

During the middle and late 19th century, at odds with white colonial society and nearing the end of an era of centuries long militant conflict with white invaders, tribal peoples were experiencing rapid population decline. They were increasingly systematically disenfranchised and moved to reservations through acts like Jefferson’s Indian Removal Act of 1830, or the Dawes Act of 1887.

The move to provide basic literacy and western education was, during this period, often marketed as a means to protect this increasingly marginalized people. In reality, it was a push to assert the dominance of the white western culture over the supposedly inferior Native societies. This false pretense was used as justification for an attempt at fundamentally destroying a way of life. This can be summed up by the quote from Pratt “Kill the Indian, save the man.” Peoples with strong traditions of militant resistance to colonialism were specifically selected for recruitment to the boarding schools.

These schools were the site of horrible abuse and torment directed at students. Children were subjected to corporal punishment, physical, sexual, and psychological abuse, and were susceptible to a host of deadly infections. Thousands of Native children died far away from their homes and loved ones, and were buried in often nameless graves on the the sites of these institutions. The number of deaths were often inaccurately recorded, probably due to their high numbers.

It is difficult to overstate the effect of these schools on Native societies. Coupled with government programs offering land grants in exchange for the renunciation of tribal treaty rights, the move was to subjugate a people whose traditional way of life did not allow for the same level of control and domination that western society could wield against the individual. Women’s place in Native society, a culture that allowed for women to hold positions of high regard and substantial power, warriors, chiefs and keepers of sacred traditions was to be replaced, by these programs of brainwashing, with the slavery and subordination that colonial american culture reserved for women. The powerful understanding of the land as an un-ownable and communal resource was to be replaced by the enforced selfishness of the private land ownership structure. This served not just to fracture treaty and land rights agreements, but to separate and destroy the bonds of native communities.

Only through the separation and isolation of the individual from their community could western society hope to mold the individual into a unit of production, a cog in the industrial machine. Many of the programs taught at these Native boarding schools were vocational in nature and hoped to prepare Natives to renounce their former freedom in order that they may become productive and dominatable members of western society.

“The whole education process must be recognized as fundamentally different when one passes from white society to Indian society. Education in white society appears to be a creator of communities. It is oriented toward the production of income-producing skills, and the housing, business, entertainment, and recreation sections of white communities reflect this fact. But in the tribal setting, communities are the producers of education. At least they were in the past, and we can make them so today. When communities produce education, the groupings of the community reflect the charisma, wisdom, and activities of the various parts of the community. The respective activities can be viewed in relation to their importance to the community. In that way, the sacredness of the community can be protected and developed.”

-Vine Deloria, Jr.

Though Native peoples suffered through innumerable injustices, and continue to suffer under colonialism, it should be noted that their spirit of insurrection could not and cannot be crushed by even the most vicious of strategies.

“Perhaps the most fundamental conclusion that emerges from boarding school histories is the profound complexity of their historical legacy for Indian people’s lives. The diversity among boarding school students in terms of age, personality, family situation, and cultural background created a range of experiences, attitudes, and responses. Boarding schools embodied both victimization and agency for Native people and they served as sites of both cultural loss and cultural persistence. These institutions, intended to assimilate Native people into mainstream society and eradicate Native cultures, became integral components of American Indian identities and eventually fueled the drive for political and cultural self-determination in the late 20th century.”

-Dr. Julie Davis

Across the globe, from the contemporary revolutionary struggles of tribal people, to armed resistance against early european colonialism, aboriginal struggle stands as a testament to the power of the human spirit. The advancement and domination of the planet and its people by western civilization continues to threaten the foundation of our individual identities, and our individual liberty. This process will not end until the systems of civilization and colonialism are understood, confronted, and destroyed.

At every full collective gathering we acknowledge that we live in a society founded on stolen land and stolen lives. Someone researches and presents a relevant topic and then we take a moment of silence to reflect. We share the research here for others as well.

The Louisiana Indians are the inheritors of ancient traditions. They consist of Alabama, Koasati (Coushatta), Choctaw (four groups: Jena, Bayou LaCombe, Clifton, and an urban group in East Baton Rouge Parish), Chitimacha, Houma, and Tunica-Biloxi. A mixed Choctaw and Apache group in northwest Louisiana rounds out a complicated cultural picture.

Their native languages have largely been replaced with French, Spanish, and English. The
Creole language is partly native, but was a compromised language for trade with colonizers. However, their cultural practices have mostly survived and are practiced regularly among the native peoples.

In 1519, the first contact with Europeans occurred. It was an expedition led by Alvarez de Pindea. After that event, began the very negative aspects of colonization experienced by all native people of Turtle Island. Some tribes of Louisiana were persuaded to join forces with colonizers and actively raided neighboring tribes to capture and enslave people. The Natchez Wars, the Chickasaw Wars, and the French and Indian Wars all fragmented and destroyed many native lives. The state of Louisiana was actively bought and sold amongst European countries throughout the years without any sort of consent of the native people who had been living there for thousands of years.

The Louisiana Purchase in 1803 was a major turning point for the quality of life of native people in Louisiana. Article VI of the treaty actively dissolved any type of treaties that the French and Spanish had made with the native people. These treaties were not to the benefit of the native people, but at the very least let them have some sort of dignity. The U.S. actively removed these tribes from their homes and forced them into Oklahoma. The native people who declined to be removed, moved into the margins of the state where there was little interest for development/homesteading.

The band of Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw, a Native American tribe living in the Louisiana coastal wetlands (the main marginal community that natives moved to), has lost some 98 percent of its land since the 1950s. The loss of land is the result of soil erosion and rising sea levels. This has resulted in the loss of over 15, 000 acres. The relocation would be subsidized by around $48 million in government funds, said Forbes, and would take a few years to complete.

The current colonization and degradation of the native people’s land is the construction of the final ‘leg’ of the oil pipeline from North Dakota, which was fiercely protested in South Dakota in 2016. There is an active resistance to the pipeline construction that has been using direct action, other forms of protest, and legal means. This fight is still currently developing.

Louisiana law already prohibits trespassing at sites known as “critical infrastructure,” including power plants, oil refineries, chemical plants, water treatment facilities, and natural gas terminals. House Bill 727 adds pipelines and their construction areas to the list of critical infrastructure sites, a move in reaction to growing pipeline protests nationwide.

The company (Energy Transfer Partners) directing this construction has the worst track record for oil spills. Considering the poisonous nature of oil and the fact that over 53% of wetlands have been removed in the U.S., this pipeline is a serious threat to one of the last and largest wetland ecosystems in the so-called U.S. The crawfish is a point of emphasis in the protests and has been a important to the native tribes’ cultural identities. 43% of species on the endangered species list depend on wetland ecosystems which are also important to the cultural identities of the tribes, as these parts of ecosystems always are.

Colonization is continuing to destroy lives and leaving little left of the wild world that is the entirety of any indigenous culture.

Works Cited

https://www.warpaths2peacepipes.com/history-of-native-americans/history-of-louisiana-indians.htm

www.louisianafolklife.org/LT/Articles_Essays/creole_art_native_overview.html

Marasco, Sue A. “Indian (Native American) Removal” knowlouisiana.org Encyclopedia of Louisiana. Ed. David Johnson. Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities, 20 Dec 2012. Web. 11 May 2018.

https://nepis.epa.gov/Exe/ZyNET.exe/90000004.TXT?ZyActionD=ZyDocument&Client=EPA&Index=1991+Thru+1994&Docs=&Query=&Time=&EndTime=&SearchMethod=1&TocRestrict=n&Toc=&TocEntry=&QField=&QFieldYear=&QFieldMonth=&QFieldDay=&IntQFieldOp=0&ExtQFieldOp=0&XmlQuery=&File=D%3A%5Czyfiles%5CIndex%20Data%5C91thru94%5CTxt%5C00000019%5C90000004.txt&User=ANONYMOUS&Password=anonymous&SortMethod=h%7C-&MaximumDocuments=1&FuzzyDegree=0&ImageQuality=r75g8/r75g8/x150y150g16/i425&Display=hpfr&DefSeekPage=x&SearchBack=ZyActionL&Back=ZyActionS&BackDesc=Results%20page&MaximumPages=1&ZyEntry=1&SeekPage=x&ZyPURL

https://www.desmogblog.com/2018/04/06/bayou-bridge-protesters-arrested-louisiana-advances-bill-toughening-penalties-pipeline-protests

https://www.desmogblog.com/2018/04/17/energy-transfer-partners-pipelines-leaked-once-every-11-days-greenpeace-report

At every full collective gathering we acknowledge that we live in a society founded on stolen land and stolen lives. Someone researches and presents a relevant topic and then we take a moment of silence to reflect. We share the research here for others as well:

The majority of relations between the United States and Central America has been a history of imperialism imposed at varying levels to ensure the political and economic interests of the U.S. Although the early 20th century saw more overt imperialism through U.S. military occupations such as in Nicaragua, financially backing right-wing groups and dictators in overthrowing democratically-elected governments became a more common tactic as the century progressed to ensure that Central America remained within its sphere of influence.

One example of this sort of tactic is the funding of counter-revolutionaries against the successful revolution of the Sandinista National Liberation Front, also known as FSLN, in 1979. After the FSLN overthrew the Somoza regime, a regime which came into power after U.S. occupation in Nicaragua and largely contributed to rising inequality and political corruption, the Reagan administration began to secretly fund the Contrarrevolucion, or the “Contras”, who targeted peasant collectives, schools, and clinics in an attempt to spread fear, disrupt the already-unstable Nicaraguan economy, and undermine Sandinista social programs. Although the Sandinistas were officially elected to office in 1984, the continual war with the Contras funded and armed by the U.S, despite the International Court of Justice condemning these actions and ordering the U.S. to stop, only to be ignored, resulted in the Sandinistas losing office in 1990.

There are a number of examples of the U.S. contributing to the conflicts and destabilization of nations in Central America, such as overthrowing the democratically-elected government of Guatemala in 1954, financially backing the Salvadoran government military during the Salvadoran Civil War in the ‘80s which proceeded to commit a number of atrocities, and pushing free trade policies such as NAFTA on Latin America and furthering economic instability and unemployment.

However, these problems remain relevant as conditions continue to worsen for people in Central America. It is no wonder that after decades of meddling in Latin American affairs in pursuit of personal interests, and then making minimal to no effort in reparations for the damages, that some of these nations are incredibly unstable. For a myriad of reasons, including politically corrupt governments, ruined economies, drug cartels partially created by the U.S. itself, and more, people are fleeing their countries to seek asylum in the United States in pursuit of a better and safer life. In 2016, the U.S. Border Patrol captured a record 17, 512 unaccompanied minors coming from El Salvador alone. The narrative that the current administration spins would have you believe that many of the refugees coming in are here only to take advantage of benefits available to U.S. citizens or are gang-affiliated, such as the gang Mara Salvatrucha, or MS-13, that originally (and ironically) began in Los Angeles by refugees from the Salvadoran Civil War and only spread to Central America through deportation from the U.S. Rather, the reality is that these refugees are a direct result of U.S. intervention and imperialism.

Despite the fact that many of these issues are a result of the decisions of the very few elite in power, it is important to stand in solidarity with our neighbors to the south and do what we can to support the immigrants who come to find sanctuary and a better quality of life.

Resources:
https://www.redpepper.org.uk/us-imperialism-in-central-america/
https://everydayfeminism.com/2015/09/us-policy-latinx-immigration/
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2018/03/el-salvador-women-gangs-ms-13-trump-violence/554804/

How can you help?
https://www.globalcitizen.org/en/content/7-ways-to-help-undocumented-immigrants/
https://cldc.org/organizing-resources/know-your-rights-for-immigrant-communities/