Following on from his excellent book, 500 Years of Indigenous Resistance, Gord Hill of the Kwakwaka’wakw nation gives us an overview of over three decades of Indigenous resistance in the Americas since 1992.

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Episodes

E88: Indigenous resistance since 1992, part 1 – Working Class History

  • E88: Indigenous resistance since 1992, part 1 – Protests against the 500th anniversary of the European invasion of the Americas by Christopher Columbus, the Zapatista uprising, the Gustafsen Lake stand-off, the Ipperwash Park occupation, Enbridge and Keystone XL pipeline resistance, Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and more. Available without ads to our Patreon supporters.

E89: Indigenous resistance since 1992, part 2 – Working Class History

  • E89: Indigenous resistance since 1992, part 2 – Indigenous land defenders in Ecuador, Venezuela and elsewhere in Latin America, Mi’kmaq fishing rights, fossil fuel resistance, cultural resistance including language revitalisation, land acknowledgements and more. Available without ads to our Patreon supporters.

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Sources

Part 1

Part 2

Acknowledgements

  • Thanks to our Patreon supporters for making this podcast possible. Special thanks to Jazz Hands, Jamison D. Saltsman, Fernando López Ojeda and Jeremy Cusimano.
  • Produced and edited by Tyler Hill. Tyler also hosts Congratulations FM.
  • Episode graphic: Dakota Access protest 2016. Courtesy Rob87438/Wikimedia Commons CC SA 4.0
  • Our theme tune is Bella Ciao, thanks for permission to use it from Dischi del Sole. You can purchase it here or stream it here.

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Transcript

Part 1

In 1992, it marked 500 years since colonisers first invaded what is now known as Americas, and waged a campaign of genocide, displacement, and extraction against the peoples indigenous to those lands. Though this history is often taught to American children as some sort of mutually beneficial cultural exchange, it has in fact been among the most violent and disenfranchising processes in human history. Overlooked along with this historical revisionism is the fact that those centuries of violence have also been centuries years of Indigenous resistance. And contrary to what many of those in power would have us believe, the Indigenous peoples of this land are still here, and still fighting. This is Working Class History.

[Intro music]

Before we get started, if you’re wondering who I am and why I don’t have a British accent,, I apologize. I’m Tyler Hill, and I’ve been helping John and Matt produce this podcast since it began in. Going forward, I’ll be occasionally hosting episodes too, and if you don’t like my accent, please don’t email us. I’m from Colorado and it’s not my fault. Just a reminder that our podcast is brought to you by our patreon supporters. Our supporters fund our work, and in return get exclusive early access to podcast episodes without ads, bonus episodes, free and discounted merchandise and other content. For example, our patreon supporters can listen to both parts of this double episode, without ads, now. Join us or find out more at patreon.com/workingclasshistory; link in the show notes.

First published in 1992, Gord Hill’s 500 Years of Indigenous Resistance has long served as an accessible account of an often overlooked but vitally important resistance movement. It is one of the most popular titles in our online store, with good reason. Gord has also released an updated version as a graphic novel.

Over the next two episodes, we’ll talk to Gord about the movements which have arisen since 1992, when the book ends, looking at resistance since it came out. But it’s worth noting that this topic is simply too big to cover comprehensively in a podcast. And any one of these stories or movements could easily be a podcast or miniseries on its own. We hope to produce standalone episodes about some of these movements in the future. But for now, like Gord’s book, we hope these episodes serve as a helpful overview and introduction to Indigenous resistance in the Americas since 1992.

My name is Gord Hill and I’m from the Kwakwaka’wakw. I’m currently living in Alert Bay, British Columbia, Canada.

In 1992, of course, it was the 500-year mark of the discovery and the invasion of the Americas. There were a lot of official celebrations of this and I think they were stronger in South and Central America. There were much larger and more powerful social movements that were challenging this narrative. In North America, there were a few locations where you saw opposition to official celebrations. I was actually in San Francisco in October 1992 and there was a fairly large mobilisation against one of these celebrations where they had replicas of one or more of the ships that Columbus had sailed to the Caribbean on. I don’t know if it was the Pinta, Maria or the Santa Maria. There was a fairly large protest and a few days of gathering. This was organised by the American Indian movement and some of their allies. One day, we marched and we were confronted by riot police. There was some small street fighting that occurred. That was just one incident. I think, overall, social movements are trying to challenge this official narrative that this was a mutually beneficial meeting of the two worlds of the European and the American indigenous peoples and that both sides benefitted despite the disease epidemics. They just really minimise the violence and the genocide of colonization. I think that’s where the major opposition arose to these types of official celebrations that were occurring.

One of the things about the 500 years of resistance and 500 years of the invasion of the Americas, that time mark… for me and I think a lot of other indigenous peoples and other peoples here in North, South and Central America was like a reflection what had occurred in the previous 500 years and just kind of looking back at the history. It really motivated me to really research and try to learn that history because I wanted to have a fuller understanding of how we came to be in the situation we are in today. Of course, that’s the real value of history because it can show you how this process occurred. For me, it was a big event and a big time because I really researched the history of colonisation and resistance to colonisation. It really helped me understand the bigger historical process that had occurred.

Gord had started publishing a newspaper a year or two prior called “OH-TOH-KIN” in response to the Oka Crisis of 1990. The Oka Crisis was a standoff between a group of Mohawk people and Canadian authorities in Quebec after settlers attempted to build a golf course on one of the last remaining parcels of sacred Mohawk grounds, including a meeting place and centuries old cemetery. Over the course of a 78 day standoff from July through September, a group of about 3,000 Indigenous warriors fought off nearly twice as many Canadian police and military troops. In the end, there was one fatality on each side, about 30 injured police and military, and 75 injured activists, including the 14 year old Waneek Horn-Miller who was stabbed in the chest by a soldier with a bayonet as she carried her 4 year old half sister. She would later go on to be an Olympic Water Polo player, and the first Mohawk woman from Canada to ever compete in the Olympics.

There were also mass arrests of land protectors as the standoff ended, many of whom were beaten while in custody. Journalists covering the land protectors were also arrested. The development of the golf course did not go through, and the land was purchased by the Canadian government. However, the Canadian government did not establish the land as a reserve, nor has it ever been transferred back to the Mohawk people.

Despite this disappointment, the fact remained that a vastly outnumbered group of activists had successfully fought off the Canadian Government. The Resistance inspired Indigenous people across Canada to be more involved with direct action, and is considered a turning point in Indigenous Resistance by many, including Gord Hill, who had previously been mostly involved in anarchist, anti-fascist, and anti-racist movements. After Oka, he was inspired to learn more about Indigenous Resistance and to get more involved. He started publishing “OH-TOH-KIN” which is where “500 Years of Indigenous Resistance” was first published. The newspaper continued until around 1994.

On New Year’s Day in 1994, the Zapatista Army of National Liberation launched its offensive in the Southern Mexican state of Chiapas. They were a predominantly indigenous resistance movement and armed resistance movement. They had been organising in Chiapas in the Lacandon Jungle for well over a decade. I think the earlier organisers had moved into that region in the mid-1970s. They were the remnants of early guerilla groups that had been harshly repressed by the Mexican state. They had moved into the Chiapas region and they began making connections. This was a very long-term process of establishing themselves, building these networks and eventually, building their armed formations. I had actually been in Mexico City in 1989. I went down there after the San Francisco anarchist gathering and met some Mexican comrades. Even then, it was really common to hear rumours about the guerillas in the mountains and I didn’t really understand what they were talking about. A few years later, of course, we had the New Year’s Day rebellion which was carried out by the Zapatistas. They had captured a number of towns and then faced a reaction from the Mexican military. This was a very profound rebellion which occurred in the aftermath of the collapse of the Cold War and the Soviet Union. A lot of armed guerilla groups around the world had basically laid down their arms because of this new political situation. There was no longer a Soviet Union which had actually helped fund and support a lot of these movements so there was a kind of demoralisation I would say among the left in general. The capitalists were running around triumphant and celebrating the demise of the so-called Communist regime. The Zapatista rebellion was a very uplifting action and they revitalised the left in a lot of ways. They also had a big influence on the left and oriented everybody to the concept of globalisation and neoliberalism because they timed their uprising to coincide with the implementation of the North American Free Trade Agreement which was between Canada, the United States and Mexico. That was generally the free flow of capital without any restrictions or regulations and that was going to have a big impact on people in Mexico like farmers and indigenous peoples. It was going to revise a lot of the land codes so that was why they timed it for that day. Of course, the Zapatistas withstood the Mexican counter-offensive and they very strongly embedded in the indigenous communities in Southern Chiapas. They established autonomous forms of self-governance in these communities. They established healthcare facilities, education and communication through radio networks. They built up all this infrastructure and they actually outperformed the Mexican state in healthcare and education and the Zapatistas still exist to this day as a social movement with all this infrastructure in Chiapas. They had a very profound effect on Mexican society and internationally, they hosted a lot of large international gatherings. They were one of the first movements to really start using the internet and they had a very influential spokesperson, Subcomandante Marcos, who was very eloquent. He wasn’t an indigenous person but he was a very eloquent speaker. They had a really big impact and the fact that they were an indigenous movement as well was pretty significant. They had a big impact when they first arose.

The Zapatista Army of National Liberation , named after famous Mexican revolutionary, Emiliano Zapata, launched a truly grassroots peasant revolt against the Mexican State. On January 1st, 1994, about 3,000 armed Zapatistas occupied six towns in the Chiapas. Their demands centered on work, land, housing, food, healthcare, education, independence, liberty, democracy, justice, and peace. As Gord said, they timed their rebellion to coincide with the signing of NAFTA, a symbol of many of the neoliberal policies that disenfranchised their indigenous communities and negatively affected many throughout the country.

They are staunchly anti-racist and anti-colonial and the movement has been heavily shaped by the women involved. About ⅓ of the Zapatista National Liberation Army was made up of women, and they’ve redefined gender roles, dedicating themselves overtime to dismantling patriarchy.

They reappropriated ranches and still occupy an autonomous zone to this day, and have a highly sophisticated horizontal autonomous network of governance and communication.  They were able to forge their own path rooted in cultural tradition and the needs of their communities. Their ideology is a unique blend of Maya tradition, anarchism, Marxism, and Catholic Liberation Theology. They’re seen by many as an example of what a successful indigenous sovereigntymovement could look like. They’ve influenced grassroots movement around the world and they’ve broadened the possibilities of what a world after capitalism could look like.

And it didn’t come from nowhere, it came from years of steady organising.

In those interviews with those early organisers, who were Marxists, I think they were mostly urban… maybe they’d gone down into Chiapas and they talked about this process of how they began to work with the indigenous peoples there. There were traditional forms of these Marxist guerilla formations that were spread throughout Central and South America in the ‘60s, ‘70s and through the ‘80s. The Zapatistas broke with that and the biggest reason for that was because they were working with these indigenous communities that didn’t want to accept these kinds of orthodox Marxist forms of organising with the party and all this type of stuff. It was a significant change from what we’d seen prior to the Zapatistas with the different armed groups. The Marxist organisers who went down there were indigenised to a certain extent and had to learn a lot about the indigenous culture in order to work with these indigenous communities. I think that’s why they came out as a very different type of movement. These weren’t just these Marxist intellectuals who now recruited indigenous foot soldiers to carry out this revolutionary struggle. They were Marxist organisers who became aligned with indigenous communities and community organisers and they came up with new forms of organisation to carry out these struggles. They were very embedded in the communities. They had their political organisation and their armed organisation. It was like an evolution of these Marxist revolutionary armed groups that we’d seen in the past and it was adopted to an indigenous movement.

Further north, Gord also told us about the 1995 standoff at Gustafsen Lake. The conflict grew out of an annual Sundance ceremony that was held near the lake by the Secwepemec people. The site was part of their sacred ancestral lands and had never been ceded to the Canadian government and never handed over in a treaty. The Secwepemec had an agreement with a rancher who used the land for grazing his cattle, as long as they not build any permanent structures on it. When they built a fence to keep the cows from the site, the rancher asked them to leave, and they refused, saying that to interrupt a Sundance Ceremony before it was complete was not something they could do.

In the summer of 1995, we had a couple of pretty significant confrontations in Canada between indigenous peoples and the Canadian state security forces. The first one that occurred was in the South Central Interior region of British Columbia which involved the Secwepemc people who were previously known as the Shuswap. The Secwepemc people had a Sundance camp near 100 Mile House which is a small rural town. This is a very rural area and they’d had a Sundance camp there for many years. There was an American rancher, Lyle James, who brought his cattle out to graze on what are called Crown lands which are lands that are claimed by the government. He would have his cattle out there grazing and he ended up getting into a conflict with this Secwepemc group who had their Sundance camp. The cattle were trespassing in there. This conflict started to grow and Lyle James had his cowboys go into the camp and they were threatening these Native people. By this point, it was an elder and his family who were there so the elder made a call for warriors to come and defend this camp. Warriors from the Secwepemc and some of their allies went there and it eventually became this very large armed stand-off. The British Columbia provincial government was the New Democratic Party which is like a social democratic party and supposedly left-leaning. They deployed over 450 heavily armed police, mostly emergency response teams, from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP). They acquired military assistance in the form of eight or nine Bison armoured personnel carriers, tens of thousands of rounds of ammunition and C7 assault rifles. The RCMP closed off the area and basically laid siege to the camp

As the standoff escalated, the Sundancers refused to leave until their rights to the unceded land were recognized, and said they were willing to die for their land. The RCMP sent in 400 officers and an emergency response team who used camouflage to try and conduct reconnaissance on the camp, and they used. Though the campers reiterated their desire for a peaceful resolution to the conflict, security forces used violence.

There were a number of shooting incidents, the most significant of which occurred on September 11th 1995. During these situations, the negotiations are going on. The RCMP cut off all communications from the camp so they couldn’t actually communicate with the media or anybody outside of that area. The public was fed strictly the RCMP and the government’s version of events.

With communication with the outside world cut off, the RCMP’s skewed version of events became the only narrative and was unsurprisingly mischaracterized the campers as “terrorists,” “militants,” “criminals,” and “thugs.”

Ujjal Dosanj, the attorney general of British Columbia at the time said “Where’s the other side of the story? There is only one side of the story. There is no other side.” Highlighting the way the media’s portrayal of the standoff obscured the real grievances at the heart of the issue, namely their claim to the unceded land.

On September 11th, the police laid an explosive charge across a road that was used by the defenders to access a lake so that they could get fresh water and bathe. This was part of a no-shooting zone that had been agreed upon between the defenders and the police. One morning on September 11th, as this vehicle was driving down the road, the RCMP carried out this ambush and detonated an explosive charge that they had laid across the road. It blew up the truck. It was so powerful that it blew the engine block out of the truck and the batteries and they were found hundreds of yards away. Amazingly, the two occupants in the vehicle escaped unharmed and began fleeing from the vehicle. Shortly after the explosive charge, one of those Bison armoured personnel carriers moved out of the treeline onto the road and smashed into the vehicle which was obviously badly damaged from the explosion. The police left the armoured personnel vehicle and began firing at the occupants who were fleeing for their lives. They shot and killed a dog that was in the vehicle. That afternoon, there was an hour-long firefight with the police firing tens of thousands of rounds. They chased this Secwepemc elder, known as Wolverine, with this Bison armoured vehicle and he returned fire with an AK47. He disabled the Bison armoured personnel carrier so the police had to call in additional armoured vehicles to rescue those police who were trapped in this armoured vehicle. The next day, again, in a no-firing zone, there was a lone defender walking down to a lake and he was unarmed carrying a towel because he was going to bathe. An RCMP sniper team opened fire on him and later claimed that he was seen to be wearing a camouflage uniform and carrying a weapon. After this stand-off ended which was about a month long, the defenders eventually laid down their arms, came out of the camp and they were all arrested. There was a year-long criminal trial that occurred in Surrey, British Columbia which is a suburb of Vancouver. During the trial, all this information came out about how the RCMP had conducted what they themselves called a Smear and Disinformation Campaign. In fact, the main media liaison person for the RCMP, Sgt. Peter Montague, described it as a Smear and Disinformation Campaign and that they’d learned everything from the FBI and how to carry out these types of counter-insurgency propaganda campaigns. The RCMP had actually videotaped this entire siege because they wanted to use it as a training aid for future confrontations. They had 24-hour surveillance of the area of this conflict and this was obtained by the Defence Counsel. This clearly showed the September 11th ambush and the September 12th sniper attack which contradicted everything that the RCMP had said about these incidents. It just really revealed the disinformation that the RCMP had engaged in. This was a really significant armed conflict that had a big impact on indigenous peoples in the province of British Columbia.

In Canada, the standoff is still seen to this day as an example of excessive force by militarized police. And though people both inside and outside of the Indigenous community have called for a public inquiry into the legality of the RCMP’s actions, the government has refused.

For Gord, this struggle marked a sea change in the attitudes of many First Nations peoples.

In 1995, there was the Gustafsen Lake stand-off that I talked about with the RCMP but I wasn’t there at the stand-off. I was actually born in 100 Mile House and nobody had ever heard of it until after this stand-off so then I could say, ‘Yeah, I was born in 100 Mile House.’ They’d say, ‘Oh, really. That’s where that stand-off occurred.’ I was involved in solidarity work in Vancouver during that time. One of the things that I really saw then was how profound the government and police propaganda was. A lot of Native people at that time were actually opposed to the stand-off and didn’t support the defenders at all and this was because of the propaganda that was being put out by the government which totally demonised the Secwepemc armed defenders. They completely undermined the sovereign position that they adopted which most indigenous peoples in the province would generally support with the lack of treaties here. After the year-long trial and the exposing of the RCMP’s Smear and Disinformation Campaign, there was a turn in a lot of indigenous communities to now supporting the armed resistance that occurred at Gustafsen Lake. That was really profound for me to see. They can be demonised with all this propaganda against them and there’s not much public support for them but over time, it can be turned and then you’ll see a reversal of these positions. That was an important lesson for me.

Another land dispute in Canada that took place around the same time was the occupation of Ipperwash Park by members of the Stony Point Ojibway band.

In early September, there was another confrontation that occurred in Southern Ontario at Ipperwash Provincial Park. This was a community known as Stony Point and during World War 2, they had been forcibly evicted from their reserve land and relocated to a nearby reserve, Kettle Point. The Stony Point Reserve was taken and transformed into a military base to train soldiers for World War 2. The army had said, ‘We’ll return this land to you after the war ends,’ and, of course, that never occurred. For decades, the Stony Pointers, as they were known, were campaigning and petitioning the government to get the reserve land back. In the early 1990s, they moved into the military base and set up a small camp with their tipis and tents. They began occupying this area and in 1995, they expanded their occupation into the Ipperwash Provincial Park which was also a part of their reserve land that had been taken by the government. At this time, the Conservative Party was the provincial government under Bob Harris (I think his name was). He had directed the Ontario Provincial Police to go in and clear out these Natives and that’s what they did. The Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) sent in a couple hundred police and sent in a riot squad.

The camp was made up of about 35 people. When the Ontario Police sent in a riot squad and a SWAT team, they beat and arrested Cecil Bernard George as he tried to peacefully approach them. And a battle broke out.

On September 5th, they went in and tried to clear the encampment that was in the park. They were accompanied by a TRU unit that stands for Tactics & Rescue Unit I think which was their version of a SWAT team or an emergency response unit so they were heavily armed. There was a confrontation that occurred with the riot police. The police opened fire and fired over a thousand rounds. This was a completely unarmed action being carried out by the Stoney Pointers. They were militant and they confronted the riot police but they were unarmed. During this shooting, the police shot and killed Dudley George who was one of the organisers of the occupation. This was a big confrontation which had a big impact on indigenous peoples across Canada. These were two pretty significant events. This type of militancy was kind of the result of the 1990 Oka Crisis which basically set the tone for indigenous resistance throughout the ‘90s and even up until this day. That was how big an impact the Oka Crisis had but those were the two main conflicts that occurred in 1995.

The protestors had banned weapons from the camp, but that didn’t stop the police from making false claims that they had seen weapons. The notoriously trigger happy Sergeant who murdered Dudley was named Kenneth Deane, and he claimed to have mistaken a tree branch for a gun despite only standing a few feet away. Dudley’s injuries could have been treated and he would have survived if his brother and sister had been able to take him to the hospital. But as they tried to do so, they were arrested. Sergeant Deane was convicted of criminal negligence causing death, but suffered no real consequences besides some community service.

In 2009, the Ontario government finally signed over control of the park, along with $95 million Canadian dollars to the Chippewas of Kettle and Stony Point First Nation.

In British Columbia in 2000, members of the St’at’imc nation, together with supporters, set up a permanent camp near the Cayoosh Mountain Range, in an attempt to prevent construction of a $500 million skiing resort. The camp was named Sutikalh, after the St’at’imc winter spirit of the region.

After two decades of continuous occupation, plans for the resort were scrapped, and the area remains today reclaimed native land.

Another movement which emerged in the early 2000s was the 2004 Save the Peaks Coalition. The group was formed to address environmental and human rights issues in response to the Arizona Snowbowl’s attempt to develop a ski resort on the San Francisco Peaks, which is sacred land both spiritually and culturally for at least 13 nearby tribes.

The project proposed clearing 30,000 trees, some of which were on land that was home to threatened species. Developers also wanted to run an almost 15 mile underground pipeline through the area that would transport 180 million gallons per ski season for artificial snow.

Indigenous activists have been protesting the development for decades, conducting actions like chaining themselves to construction equipment in 2011, leading to 28 arrests.

Court cases have consistently been decided in favor of the developers and the US Forest Service, though resistance continues, and activists continue to appeal and try to move their case up through the court system.

Meanwhile, in 2008, opposition began to an pipeline planned by the Enbridge corporation.

The Enbridge Northern Gateway Pipeline was a proposed pipeline that would go from the tar sands in Alberta and carry crude oil to a terminal that was going to be built on the West Coast I think near Kitimat, British Columbia or Prince Rupert. This proposal began in the early 2000s and it generated a lot of opposition from people along that route which was in Northern British Columbia, especially from indigenous peoples who were really opposed to this pipeline. In fact, it was unprecedented the amount of mobilisation that occurred amongst indigenous peoples. They had grassroots indigenous peoples as well as band councils opposed to this pipeline because of the dangers that a crude oil pipeline presented to the environment. As this campaign continued and as Northern Engridge was going through the regulatory processes of trying to get the necessary permits to start construction on this pipeline, there was a big campaign against the tar sands in Alberta because of the massive environmental impact that it was having, the destruction of the environment that was occurring and the dangers of this heavy crude oil being transported by pipelines and then container ships. On the coast of British Columbia, we’d already had a fairly significant oil spill which I think was in the 1990s. It was along Northern British Columbia and the Southern Alaskan coast. It was a tanker that had run aground or it had a big spill which had contaminated large sections of the beach and it really impacted the environment there. So people were keenly aware of the dangers of not just the pipelines but also these massive container ships that they wanted to transport the crude oil out of this terminal in Kitimat. A massive opposition began to build. I can’t remember the exact year but, in the Gulf of Mexico, there was the BP Oil spill which was a drilling platform that just ruptured. I don’t know if there was an explosion but it just started spewing massive amounts of oil into the Gulf of Mexico I believe. This went on for months so this also contributed to the opposition here in British Columbia to this proposed pipeline and terminal. It was unprecedented and thousands of indigenous peoples were marching. This was in an area of British Columbia where we had never really seen any significant movement by Native peoples so it was very, very significant. Eventually, the Enbridge Northern Gateway Pipeline was scrapped. This was a big victory for indigenous peoples, the environmental movements and different social movements that really opposed this pipeline.

The Keystone XL pipeline was also first proposed in 2008. And a few years later, around 2011, public opposition to the pipeline started to coalesce. After repeated delays in their environmental impact report, Barack Obama Administration’s State Department, led by Hillary Clinton, announced the pipeline would have limited environmental impact, despite the fact that it was planned to go through major sources of fresh water.

In August and September of 2011, a protestors stood outside the White House for two weeks and about a thousand people were arrested.

Under pressure, Obama administration would eventually veto the pipeline in 2015, citing climate, drinking water, public health, and the ecosystems of the local communities as their reasons. But in 2017, Donald Trump reversed the veto and signed an executive order to advance the project as well another controversial pipeline: The Dakota access pipeline, which we’ll get to later. Trump also granted the Canada-based developers the cross-border permits that had been stalling the pipeline.

But on Joe Biden’s first day in office, he signed an executive order finally ending the project for good.

Across the border in Canada, Wet’suwet’en land protectors started organising as well around the same time, in efforts which culminated years later.

The Wet’suwet’en campaign against pipelines actually began around 2010 or at least 2011. The Wet’suwet’en were initially mobilising themselves as part of that big mobilisation against the Northern Gateway Pipeline but when the Northern Gateway Pipeline was cancelled, another pipeline was proposed which was now going to be a natural gas pipeline as opposed to crude oil coming from the tar sands. It was a natural gas pipeline coming from shale rock formations in Northeastern British Columbia which were accessed by fracking. They began to organise. At first, the Unist’ot’en clan of the Wet’suwet’en built a cabin in the direct path of the pipeline and then they began building a network, organising and expanding this camp. They built a number of other structures and actually built a very large provincial and then national solidarity network based around opposing this pipeline. They would have annual gatherings on their territory at this camp and they called them Action Camps. That’s when they would do a lot of construction of new structures. They had a blockade of the access road into the area. This pipeline went on for many years and they were going through the regulatory process. Finally, in 2018/19, they actually began construction of the pipeline into the Wet’suwet’en territory but before they got to the Unist’ot’en territory, they ran into the Gidimt’en territory which is another clan of the Wet’suwet’en. The Gidimt’en were always in solidarity with the Unist’ot’en but as this construction entered the Gidimt’en territory, they began blockades and direct action to stop the construction. That’s when we had the big Shut Down Canada mobilisation occur because the police were going in and raiding this camp of the Gidimt’en and dismantling their blockades and arresting people. That’s when we had the big Shut Down Canada campaign which was pretty significant. It was unprecedented in terms of solidarity with indigenous movements in Canada because there were a lot of direct actions occurring targetting economic infrastructure like ports, railways and highways across the country. This was the result of years of organising by the Unist’ot’en clan so this was a very significant mobilisation. We had other actions in the Gidimt’en territory. I’m not sure of the exact year. It was maybe 2022. There was a major sabotage action at a work camp of the pipeline where 20 or so masked individuals entered the work site. There was a handful of security there but I don’t think there were that many workers at the site. The security was told to vacate the site and heavy machinery was commandeered and used to dismantle and destroy other machinery and infrastructure in this camp causing millions of dollars in damage. A very significant act of sabotage was carried out against the pipeline construction. Now, today, a number of the cases are going through the courts and I believe the pipeline is mostly completed now. I think that’s what is occurring now.

Also in 2011, a mass student protest movement took root in Chile, during which indigenous Mapuche peoples played a key role. Students, teachers, and other education workers took to the streets to call for comprehensive reform of the entire Chilean education system. Their demands included enshrining education as a fundamental right in the Chilean Constitution and increasing access to education for marginalized Chileans. They called for new financing systems and income equality for teachers, better transportation infrastructure, and overall a more democratized educational system.

Their demands also included an educational system that acknowledged the educational and linguistic rights of indigenous peoples, and they called for more education in indigenous languages, more scholarships for indigenous students, more curricula covering indigenous issues, and legal recognition of indigenous homelands.

In June 2012, they organized a student strike, and 150,000 people marched through the streets of Santiago.

The protestors’ demands have not been entirely met. But they contributed to a major shift in public perception and have successfully secured proposals for things like education funds. The Chilean Senate’s Education Committee also passed a bill prohibiting state support of for-profit educational institutions, which was one of the protestors’ main demands.

2011 also saw indigenous rights protests in Bolivia in opposition to the construction of a major highway through a national park and indigenous territory that was the ancestral homeland of 12,000 indigenous people from multiple tribes.

During the demonstrations, over 1,700 people, among them pregnant women and children, set off on a march of 375 miles, or 526 kilometers from Trinidad to the nation’s capital of La Paz. At one point, protestors got a hold of Foreign Minister David Choquehuanca and forced him into the march with them in order to get through a police checkpoint. The protests were subject to police violence, tear gas, and mass arrests. But also sparked solidarity protests across the country. The demonstrations also included a relatively successful attempt at a general strike. Protestors did things like set barricades on fire to de-arrest their comrades, and miners even took to setting off dynamite.

Though the march was broken up a couple times, they continued to reconvene and in October of 2011, they made it to La Paz. By the end, there were tens of thousands of protestors.

One of the key issues at the center of the protests was Evo Morales’ continued support of the highway project. Despite being the first indigenous president of Bolivia, he lost major support amongst the indigenous activists who had propelled him to office. He discredited the protestors, calling them “enemies of the nation” and accusing them of being agents of US Imperialism.

He was eventually forced to cancel the highway construction, but not before his local reputation had taken a major blow.

One broader issue which spans the history of all of these movements, is that of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women:

In Canada, there was a pretty movement which began to emerge around the issue of missing and murdered indigenous women. I think one of the spearheads for it came out of the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver because there were dozens of indigenous women that were going missing; not just indigenous women but primarily indigenous women. There was a movement started by indigenous women in the Downtown Eastside and one of the things that they began to do was, every February 14th, Valentine’s Day, hold a memorial march for all these missing women and also missing murdered women who had been murdered in the Downtown Eastside whose bodies were found. This movement began to emerge in the mid-2000s or maybe even earlier with these annual rallies. These rallies began to get bigger and bigger. At first, there were just dozens of people participating, then hundreds and then thousands of people were participating in these marches. There was the arrest of Robert Picton who was a pig farmer located just outside of Vancouver in the Coquitlam area I believe it was. He was eventually charged and convicted of murdering six women. They found the DNA of another 26 women on his property. He was a serial killer who came into the Downtown Eastside and targeted poor, impoverished and predominantly indigenous women, brought them back to his place and then murdered them. This was a pretty profound case. He claimed to have killed close to 50 women but, as I mentioned, he was only charged and convicted for six murders so he was sentenced to a life in prison. Actually, just a few days ago, he was attacked in the prison he is being held in in Quebec. He was stabbed in the head with a broom handle or something. This was a big case but it really propelled the issue of missing and murdered indigenous women into the national spotlight. A lot of attention was focused on this issue and people in other cities across Canada were looking and they all have cases of missing and murdered indigenous women. Look at Edmonton, Winnipeg and Toronto. They all have cases of missing and murdered indigenous women so this became a national movement which still exists to this day.

Police said they believed that the bodies of two Indigenous victims of Picton were in a landfill, but they said that they would not look for them, as it would be too expensive. Given the amounts of money Canadian authorities spend on repressing Indigenous protests, not to mention the huge costs of murder investigations into victims seen as “worthy”, who are usually white, the hypocrisy of this was clear. After extensive protests led by Indigenous people, this changed.

In 2023, in Winnipeg, there was an indigenous man elected as premier of the province. He has stated that they are going to search the landfill. This was over a year later and then months and months after this new premier had been elected and said that they were going to search the landfill, there’s still been no search conducted.

In the US, a 2016 study from the National Crime Information Center documented reports of 5,712 missing American Indian and Alaska Native women and girls. The murder rate of women living on reservations is ten times higher than the national average, despite indigenous people making up only 2% of the overall population. And murder is the third leading cause of death for indigenous women in the US. Racist tropes and stereotypes contribute to this issue continuing to be overlooked by the media and government.

I would just add also that every city has missing and murdered women. In the United States, you’ll find predominantly Black women missing and murdered and in Central and South America, you have tens of thousands of women, predominantly indigenous and poor women, that are missing and murdered. I think it’s really endemic in this society. Here in Canada, we have social movements that have emerged around this issue but it is really a very large issue around the world with patriarchal and misogynistic violence being inflicted on women. I think it really speaks to just how deranged and sick this Western society is. It claims to be all about humanity and being civilised people but when you scratch the surface… it’s just everywhere like Mexico, along the border region and Guatemala, etc. It’s a much broader issue than just missing and murdered indigenous women in Canada. I think it’s a very big problem and in every Western society, I think you have this issue but it definitely had a big impact in Canada as this movement arose. It brought a lot of attention to the issues indigenous peoples face as a result of the legacies of the residential schools and why a lot of indigenous people end up in these impoverished urban ghettos where they’re vulnerable to these types of predators. It also really put a lot of attention on the incompetence of the police in their investigations and how they didn’t really care about these women because they were just seen as almost disposable as they were poor and impoverished. One of the police investigators, sometime in the 1990s, brought up that his theory was that there was a serial killer operating in the Downtown Eastside and he was dismissed by senior police and government officials who said this was not the case at all. His theory eventually turned out to be true. Right now, there’s an ongoing criminal trial in Winnipeg of a far-right, white supremacist who has been charged with the murder of four indigenous women since last year, 2023. He is going through the trial right now. He preyed on these women. He went to a homeless shelter in Winnipeg and that’s where he targeted these women and eventually brought them back to his place, killed them there, dismembered them and disposed of their body parts in the garbage. His case is going on right now and there was actually a movement that arose in Winnipeg demanding that the provincial government and the police search the landfill or garbage dump to find the rest of the remnants of these women. This is an ongoing thing. It wasn’t just one serial killer. We have multiple serial killers operating in Canada. This one, in particular, is a white supremacist who intentionally targeted indigenous women. The prosecution has actually laid out their case that he targeted these women because they were indigenous.

In 2017, activists designated May 5 as a National Day of Awareness for Missing and Murdered Native Women and Girls, to serve as a regular focus for action. Protests highlighting the issue and demanding action have taken place across North America. For example, in October 2023, over 100 students walked out of class from Washington High School in South Dakota and held a rally in a nearby park.

In general, although much of the media representation of Indigenous protest is misleading and negative, Gord is encouraged by the shift in public opinion of Native struggle. He also reflects on his own involvement in the movements over the years.

In 1990, in Oka, I wasn’t involved in the armed resistance there but I was engaged in solidarity work again. I saw the high level of solidarity across Canada with this armed resistance in which a police officer was shot and killed. Despite this, there was a fairly high level of support and solidarity across the country not just from indigenous peoples, which was massive, but among non-indigenous peoples. It shows to me that there’s a significant level of sympathy among the non-indigenous population for indigenous peoples and indigenous struggles and that’s a very important lesson as well. I was involved with the Native Youth from about 1997 until the early 2000s. The Native Youth Movement Vancouver was a direct result of the Gustafsen Lake stand-off and it really radicalised a lot of the indigenous youth in Vancouver. It radicalised the Native Youth Movement to really focus on land struggles and sovereignty and they went on to be involved in occupations against the BC Treaty Commission that I participated in, blockades, defending fishers and asserting their sovereignty in the Cheam First Nation. Members of the Native Youth Movement participated in the Burnt Church resistance, again, asserting the Mi’kmaq fisheries.

[Outro music]

That’s all we’ve got time for in this episode. Join us in Part 2 where we talk about Indigenous land defenders in Latin America, more resistance to pipelines and climate change, and elements of cultural and linguistic resistance. Part 2 is available now for early listening for our supporters on patreon.

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If you’d like to learn more about the last 32 years of Indigenous Resistance, check out the webpage for this episode where you’ll find images, a full list of sources, further reading and more. You can also get Gord’s book, 500 years of Indigenous Resistance, and you can get 10% off it and anything else using the discount code WCHPODCAST. Links in the show notes.

Thanks also to our patreon supporters for making this podcast possible. Special thanks to Jamison D. Saltsman, Jazz Hands, Fernando Lopez Ojeda and Jeremy Cusimano.

Our theme tune is Bella Ciao, thanks for permission to use it from Dischi del Sole. You can buy it or stream it on the links in the show notes.

This episode was edited by me, Tyler Hill.

Anyway, that’s it for today. Hope you enjoyed the episode, and thanks for listening.

Episode 2

Welcome back to Part 2 of our double-episode on Indigenous resistance in the Americas since 1992. If you haven’t listened to Part 1 yet then I recommend you go back and listen to that first.

[intro music]

Before we get started, just a reminder that our podcast is brought to you by our patreon supporters. Our supporters fund our work, and in return get exclusive early access to podcast episodes without ads, bonus episodes, free and discounted merch and other content. Join us or find out more at patreon.com/workingclasshistory; link in the show notes.

At the end of Part 1, we left off in the early 2010s. As in the previous decade, a key site of Indigenous struggles has been over environmentally destructive energy projects on Native lands.

Especially in Latin America, these have often turned deadly, as settlers corporations, and governments, both left and right wing, have used extrajudicial violence and terror against land defenders.

Berta Cáceres of Honduras was one of the most prominent organizers for environmental rights in Central America and a co-founder of the National Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras. She was involved in countless land and water protests across the country, including a movement to stop construction of a hydroelectric dam on the Gualcarque river. During that conflict, she was subject to harassment and death threats that she found more credible than past threats of violence. She believed they were coming from the dam construction company, which had also tried and failed to get them arrested on made up criminal charges. She was assassinated shortly thereafter, on March 3, 2016, less than a year after winning the Goldman environmental prize, one of the most prestigious awards for environmentalism.

In her acceptance speech, she had said:

“We must answer their call. Our Mother Earth, militarized, fenced-in, poisoned, a place where basic rights are systematically violated, demands that we take action. Let us build societies that are able to coexist in a dignified way, in a way that protects life. Let us come together and remain hopeful as we defend and care for the blood of this Earth and of its spirits.”

In Venezuela, the government of Hugo Chavez announced that the government along with foreign corporations would escalate coal mining in Indigenous lands. Sabino Romero Izarra was an activist working to protect the rights of the Yukpa community and other indigenous communities in Venezuela. He peacefully campaigned and mobilized against the mining, and was subjected to harassment, slander, and arrest for his work. On March 3, 2013, he was shot and killed while driving with his wife, who was also injured in the attack. A few years prior, in 2009, his 109-year-old father, Jose Manuel Romero was murdered as well. Izarra was one of 13 people to have been murdered in that area in the span of a few years, and none of the murders were solved.

In Ecuador, Eduardo Mendúa, a Cofán Indigenous land defender who was shot 12 times in the garden of his home. His murder is believed to be connected to his work in organizing a struggle against oil drilling.

These are just if you examples of the many indigenous activists and land defenders who have given their lives in the struggle against colonialism, which is deeply intertwined with the extraction of fossil fuels which are the primary cause of dangerous planetary heating. In the decade from 2012, nearly 2000 land defenders were killed around the world, 90% of them in Latin America

In the US, resistance to fossil fuel projects on native land were going as well. One prominent example was the 2016 Standing Rock protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline.

Gord Hill: In 2016, there was a major mobilisation in North Dakota against the Dakota Access Pipeline which was going to be taking crude oil from the Bakken oilfields and transporting it down to refineries in Southern United States.

This is Gord Hill, author of 500 Years of Indigenous Resistance, who we spoke to in part 1.

The indigenous peoples in North Dakota on the Standing Rock Reservation organised an opposition to this and it became a massive movement. You had thousands and thousands of people who made their way to Standing Rock to oppose this pipeline construction and then you had North Dakota deploying hundreds of police, sheriffs and private security forces to counter these protests which got somewhat militant at times. There were blockades established. They were met with pretty heavy repression by the police who shot a lot of less lethal munitions and a lot of people were injured during these protests. It became a cause célèbre amongst people in the United States. You had celebrities endorsing these protests and I think millions of dollars were raised to support them. A massive encampment was established. Eventually, however, the movement was defeated and the pipeline was constructed. The pipeline was being constructed to go underneath a river which is a vital source of drinking water for not only the Standing Rock Reservation but a lot of communities in North Dakota so there was also a significant opposition amongst non-indigenous peoples who didn’t want to see this happen. The movement was eventually defeated.

While this movement was unsuccessful, others have worked, and there are important lessons to be learned from both experiences.

I like to compare this to the struggle in Elsipogtog in New Brunswick which was carried out by the Mi’kmaq against exploratory drilling for fracking. This company came in, in 2013, and they wanted to search for gas deposits located in shale rock. The way that they would be extracted was through fracking which involves the use of hundreds of toxic chemicals to flush this gas out of the shale rock formations. The Mi’kmaq began their campaign in the summer of 2013. As this exploratory drilling company came in, they used small seismic charges to map the ground. The Mi’kmaq initially began carrying out civil disobedience, blockaded roads and then got arrested. Meanwhile, the exploratory work was being carried out with a minor disruption. The Mi’kmaq Warrior Society came in and they established more militant blockades which led to a very large police mobilisation to dismantle these blockades. This resulted in confrontations with the Mi’kmaq with the use of less lethal munitions and the deployment of a very large police force, riot police, emergency response teams and armoured vehicles. In one confrontation, the police were forced to retreat and they actually abandoned six of their vehicles which were then set on fire. This was a very big operation by the police with over £5 million spent. The company that was carrying out this exploratory work eventually withdrew. This was a big victory for Elsipogtog with them protecting their water and their land. It had a significant impact on provincial elections the next year which were seen as kind of a moratorium on fracking. The party that was opposed to fracking won the election and there was a moratorium established that there would be no fracking carried out in the province so it was a major victory. I compare this to Standing Rock. The Standing Rock campaign was super focused on non-violent civil disobedience. There were militant indigenous peoples who were there but, overall, the campaign was based on non-violent civil disobedience. It had massive public support but was defeated. Compared to Elsipogtog, Elsipogtog remained a very grassroots community effort that used a diversity of tactics, including militant blockades and militant direct actions. There was a lot of sabotage carried out on these seismic devices as well. I compare the two of them because Elsipogtog was actually victorious and they defeated this exploratory work that was being carried out. They stopped the fracking from occurring in their territory. I use those two because I think they’re really good examples of what’s successful and how communities can organise themselves and defeat these types of projects.

Across a lot of these movements is a broader cultural trend that’s become known as the “Land Back” movement.

I think the term Land Back originated on the Six Nations territory. The Six Nations is the largest reserve in Canada which is located in Southern Ontario. I think there are 13-15,000 people who are all from the Haudenosaunee which is known as the Iroquois Confederacy. This was a reserve that was established in the aftermath of the American Revolution and I think the War of 1812 where the British indigenous allies were brought into Canada and were given different reserve lands. That’s where the Six Nations Reserve comes from. In 2006, they had a major resistance action occurring which was aimed at stopping a suburban housing sprawl development that was being constructed on their territory. This reserve land has been chipped away for over 100 years and the government kept expropriating land and making the reserve smaller and smaller. In 2005/6, they set up a blockade to stop the construction that was going on of this new housing development. The Ontario Provincial Police went in heavy and pepper sprayed people and shot less lethal munitions. They thought they’d scare the blockade away and that would be the end of it. Instead, they drew in hundreds and hundreds of people from the Six Nations and this created a years-long conflict. It became a major policing operation. I think they actually built a police station near the Six Nations because of this and it also created a massive conflict with the local settlers who mobilised. Hundreds of them would come out demanding that the Six Nations be dismantled and the police go in. They’ve had this movement existing since then and I think that’s where the term Land Back originated. The term Land Back then just became much more widespread. I’ve seen some groups down in the Southern United States that adopted this slogan as well. Land Back is a slogan now to challenge the colonial occupation of indigenous lands and a reclamation-type movement.

But as great as it’s been to have the movement achieving more attention in the mainstream, Gord says that when these things become catchy slogans, it can be easy to lose track of the historical context of the history behind the slogan. He notes that one popular movement centered around the idea of “Land Back” was the American Indian Movement in the 1970s, which notably occupied Alcatraz for more than a year, among others. These actions continue to be a source of inspiration for indigenous activists and resistance movements today.

It’s like a fashion thing now with t-shirts and clothing printed with Land Back in them. As I mentioned, there is something odd going down in the Southern United States with the whole Land Back thing. I’m just not on top of it but people have told me about it.

The campaign of land reclamation really began in the early 1970s, especially after the Alcatraz Island occupation which lasted a year and a half. This saw thousands of indigenous youth go through and participate in this occupation in Alcatraz in San Francisco Bay and then return to their communities and carry out land reclamations in their communities. There was a massive movement through the early to late ‘70s of land reclamations occurring, some of which still exist today and some of which became somewhat institutionalised. They became schools or other types of permanent activities or buildings. The initial wave occurred in the 1970s. There have always been ongoing land reclamations over the last few decades. Sutikalh is an example just north of Whistler, the ski resort and in the St’at’imc territory. They established a village there in around 2000 to stop a ski resort which they successfully defeated but have maintained a camp there ever since. From the 1970s, there was another really successful one called Ganienkeh which is a Mohawk territory in New York State. It was started by the Mohawks from Kahnawake located in Quebec. They went down to the United States to carry out a land reclamation and they did so using armed resistance. Eventually, after a few years of negotiation, they established the territory that they’re in now, the Ganienkeh territory and they still exist to this day as a sovereign territory. They don’t allow police into their territory. They’ve had small, armed confrontations with state police over the years about them trying to enter the territory. We’ve had this history of land reclamation that began in the early 1970s. The Unisto’ot’en is like a land reclamation as well because they’ve gone out onto their territory and established permanent structures and also the Gidimt’en did as well who are part of the Wet’suwet’en. You kind of have a continuation of this movement that began in the early 1970s of peoples, at different times and from different communities, going out and reclaiming parts of their territory. Often, it’s done to protect the territory against some kind of resource exploitation that’s being proposed. The source of some of these land reclamations today is to protect their territory. The Kahnawake one, which ended up in the Ganienkeh territory, was in response to a housing crisis in Kahnawake and the urge to create a more sovereign community so that one was a little different. You do still have these movements occurring today of land reclamations and those are the reasons I think they’re occurring.

In addition to struggles over land, Indigenous peoples have also played central roles in numerous working-class struggles and popular uprisings. One example of which was in Ecuador in 2019. The protests started after President Lenin Moreno passed austerity measures that, among other things, eliminated a $1.3 billion gasoline subsidy. The Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities led a protest of thousands, including public transit workers and student groups. The protestors completely shut down the country’s transport network and successfully blocked every major road and bridge in the capital city of Quito. The protestors planned a general strike as well, and the government responded with force. The protestors forced the government to relocate their offices outside of the capitol. And police within the capitol used tear gas and other means of violence to try and disperse protestors. Protestors responded with molotov cocktails, fireworks, and by seizing the country’s main oil pipeline and shutting it down.They also burned down the national auditor’s office. Mass arrests and more violence continued. 8 people were killed during the demonstrations and over a thousand were injured. There were also more than a thousand arrested. But when President Moreno finally agreed to talk to the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities, they reached an agreement during a televised negotiation and the government agreed to bring the subsidies back.

As the 2020s began, in Brazil, far-right President Jair Bolsonaro attempted to bring more so-called “development” into the Amazon Rainforest, including logging and a major railway system. In response, there has also been a major resistance movement in the Amazon. response to. Thousands have also taken to the streets in multiple protests over the last several years, including the largest ever Indigenous protest in the nation’s history. While there is a new government in power, these struggles are still ongoing.

Also in 2020, the long shadow of colonialism and the toll it took on Indigenous communities and people became especially clear with the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic. Native Americans in the US suffered a massively disproportionate death rate. Especially in the early days of the pandemic, the virus inflicted a devastating toll on Indigenous peoples, taking the lives of many elders, and robbing many communities of vital cultural knowledge and experiences. Facing the highest death rate of any ethnic group, there was a wave of mass Indigenous self-organization against the virus, leaning heavily on grassroots collectivism and community traditions. Tribal leaders in Alaska restricted flights into their communities much earlier than the rest of the country, and many Indigenous communities worked together to create and harvest medicinal plant treatments for Covid symptoms, as well as organizing networks of mutual aid and food distribution. After vaccines were developed, Native communities led the way in rolling out vaccines to the population, and this eventually resulted in Native Americans having the highest levels of vaccination of any group. This helped turn the tide of disproportionate death rates.

As the threat of the virus receded, resistance to other areas of colonialism began to emerge again. In 2023, one area of contention in Canada, was around fishing.

The Mi’kmaq are in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia and they’ve had a long struggle around fisheries and engaged in campaigns. They actually have treaty rights to engage in various fisheries on the East Coast. They’ve had to fight with the government to have these rights recognised. There was a big case of Donald Marshall who was charged with illegal fishing. His case went through the Supreme Court and eventually, he emerged victorious. In 1999 and 2000, there was a campaign in the Mi’kmaq community of Burnt Church where they were going out and trying to engage in their traditional food fisheries. They were met with a pretty heavy response from the RCMP and the Department of Fisheries and Oceans which have enforcement officers. These are armed officers who go out and try to enforce the government regulations. That was a pretty big little conflict that occurred. There were blockades set up by the Mi’kmaq warriors to stop these enforcement actions by the police and the DFO, there were incidents on the water with DFO boats ramming the Mi’kmaq fishing boats. There was also a conflict with the settlers who opposed any kind of Mi’kmaq fisheries and this has been ongoing for decades. During that time, shots were being fired at the Mi’kmaq fishers and boats were being set on fire. These conflicts continue to this day. One or two years ago, there was major… almost rioting by settlers opposed to Mi’kmaq fisheries. This is an ongoing issue as well where the Mi’kmaq are trying to assert their rights to engage in these fisheries and they’re being opposed by the settler fishers and the state security forces.

In 2020, mobs of settlers attacked Mi’kmaq lobster fisheries in Nova Scotia, throwing rocks, setting vehicles on fire, and destroying thousands of pounds of the catch.

The 2020s have also seen multiple discoveries of unmarked indigenous graves in both the US and Canada. Many of these graves have been found at boarding schools, where Indigenous children were taken from their families and forced to assimilate to European culture, often in violent and humiliating ways. At least 53 of these burial sites were found at boarding schools in the US alone.

The former residential school where these unmarked graves were found was the Kamloops Residential School. They found 215 unmarked graves at this residential school which operated from 1890 to 1969. Kamloops is a small city in the interior of British Columbia located in Secwepemc territory. After this, other indigenous communities began looking at their former residential schools which are all closed down now and brought in ground-penetrating radar. Eventually, over time, thousands of these unmarked graves have been found at former residential school sites across the country. This created a big movement around looking at their legacy, the history of residential schools and the impact they’ve had on indigenous peoples. This tied into this whole reconciliation movement that was launched by the government to pacify indigenous peoples and their movements around things like the missing and murdered indigenous women and residential schools. We had this big reconciliation movement coming from the top down and the government. It’s a hollow public relations effort on the part of the government to deal with these aspects of colonialism and the legacy of Canada. This began before the discovery of these unmarked graves. There was this big reconciliation thing around residential schools and they offered fairly significant payouts to the survivors of residential schools who had to submit their documentation and their history of abuse and of being in these residential schools. They were run by the government of Canada but they partnered with the churches to administer these residential schools for 100 years and tens of thousands of indigenous children went to these schools where the purpose was to assimilate them into Canada/European society. Of course, they suffered extensive abuse at the hands of the priests, the nuns and the other school staff because there was no accountability. There was nobody monitoring the situation in the schools. A lot of children experienced physical, mental and sexual abuse which impacted indigenous communities in a huge way and made our communities fairly dysfunctional. A lot of the alcoholism, drug addiction, suicides and sexual abuse can all be traced back to the legacy of residential schools. Another aspect of the residential schools was the very poor living conditions, poor sanitary conditions and poor hygiene. Tens of thousands of indigenous children died in these schools as a result of catching diseases such as tuberculosis. In fact, in the early 1920s, there was a doctor who was attending these residential schools and he wrote a report saying, ‘All these children are dying because of the unsanitary conditions in the schools.’ His reports were dismissed and now we know that it was true. That’s where these unmarked graves come from; all these children who were dying predominantly of disease. Some of them died as a result of abuse and straight murder. Some of these babies’ unmarked graves are the result of the priests and the school staff sexually abusing young girls in the schools who became pregnant and had babies. These babies were disposed of in these unmarked graves. There are different sources of the victims who are in these unmarked graves but the majority of them I would say are coming from the disease and the unsanitary conditions of the schools. That’s why there are all these unmarked graves at the schools.

After the discovery of these unmarked graves of children at the residential schools, there was an epidemic of churches being set on fire across the country. I forget how many but maybe 18 or 20 of them were set on fire and burned to the ground. Of course, there is widespread speculation that this is in response to the discovery of these unmarked graves.

The boarding schools and their program of forced assimilation also played a huge role in the near-death of countless Indigenous languages, though many Tribes have been trying to bring them back and have started teaching them in schools.

I would say since the beginning of the 1970s which corresponded with the emergence of indigenous social movements, resistance movements and liberation movements. There was a revitalisation of culture overall, generally speaking, such as traditional painting, carving and crafts. That’s when the language revitalisation programmes really began and they’ve progressed over the years. Now, a lot of schools that are managed by the band councils actually teach the languages in the schools. Here in my community of Alert Bay, I’m living on the ‘Namgis Reservation and the band school – T̓łisa̱lagi’lakw School – teaches the language. There are now a couple of generations of people who were taught the language as children and are now teaching it. Some communities are more successful at this. Nations like the Cree and the Anishinaabe, which are very large, have had more success in retaining a lot of the language. I think the Mohawk have done a lot as well because they had survival schools that they established in the 1970s in which language immersion courses were developed as well. These immersion courses were another aspect of it where the children are taken to a camp for a week or so and it’s only the traditional language that is being spoken as part of trying to teach the language. It’s been a big movement which began in the ‘70s. It’s fairly widespread now and fairly standard now I would say.

In Central and South America, it was predominantly the Spanish colonising those regions and they set up missions to take some children and educate them in the Spanish colonial ways but there was no widespread residential school infrastructure established. A big part of that is the state, in these regions, was just not as established. The state infrastructure was just not as established so a lot of these indigenous communities, in the highlands of Guatemala and Chiapas, had very little actual government infrastructure. There were no residential schools. Other than maybe for the exploitation of resources like logging or coffee plantations, these people were mostly just left on their own. This lack of government infrastructure meant that these peoples actually retained far, far more of their traditional culture than we experienced here in North America where the state infrastructure was much more established, expansive and dominant over the lives of indigenous peoples. That’s why the residential school system here was much more successful in eradicating indigenous culture and assimilating indigenous peoples into European society.

The near loss of many Indigenous languages and the efforts to revitalize them are also part of an ongoing effort amongst Native peoples to remind the culture at large that they are still here. So much of the mythmaking of colonialism has included perpetuating the idea that Indigenous Peoples are some sort of extinct species or relic of the past. It’s easier to whitewash our genocidal history this way. And Indigenous Resistance movements are one way to reassert their personhood. One place this myth of extinction is perpetuated is in the racist naming of sports teams.

The United States had a revolution against the British and they forced the British out. Being freed from British colonialism, the newly established United States, of course, began its rapid and genocidal expansion westward. This really became a big part of American culture, of course, with the Indian Wars. This phenomenon of naming sports teams and military vehicles after indigenous peoples is kind of like a form of triumphalism or the triumph of America over the Indians almost like we conquered the Indians and as a consequence of that, we’re going to take parts of their culture and display it. So you have the Cleveland Indians and the Washington Redskins. Eventually, at the beginning of the ‘70s or by the ‘80s for sure, there were campaigns against the sports teams with these kinds of racist logos and caricatures. It became almost like the main cause of movements like the American Indian movement after it was defeated and it declined as a result of the severe repression of the 1970s. By the 1980s, you had a fragment of a movement and that was one of the big campaigns that they focused on which was the sports teams’ mascots. This also applied to the military and the Apache gunship or the Chinook helicopter. Canada remained firmly a part of the British Empire and a colony up until 1867 when we had the Confederation Act which was established as somewhat of an independent country but we followed the British strategy of colonisation. In Canada, we don’t have this kind of adoption of indigenous tribal names for sports teams. We don’t have that kind of culture here but what you do see, especially here in British Columbia, is a lot of the expropriation of indigenous culture, especially artwork, for government logos and tourism. Some of the big ferries here that service between Vancouver and Vancouver Island have these big indigenous artworks wrapped on the vessels. We have totem poles being commissioned by the government at different sites. There was definitely a different kind of cultural appropriation that occurred between the United States and Canada.

Though much work has been done in changing racist Indigenous sports mascots, at least one racist team name still exists in all four of the major professional sports leagues in the US.

In addition to mythologizing around the idea that Indigenous Peoples were entirely conquered by colonizers, another myth that Indigenous Resistance movements aim to confront is that their land was ever ceded to the colonizers at all. Resistance and organizing around these things has led to a popularization of “land acknowledgement” statements, which, although often well-meaning, have also become a symbol of the hollow ways that a slogan can ease the colonial conscience without any need for real material change or direct action.

Louis Hall was a Mohawk writer and artist who designed the warrior flag that we’re all familiar with now. In his book, The Warriors’ Handbook, he said, ‘Stop calling your reserve a reserve. Start calling it a territory.’ Because of the apartheid nature of colonialism, a lot of people have no clue that the city or town that live in was actually an indigenous territory and, of course, they have no idea whose territory that was. Beginning in the mid-1990s, there was a movement among the indigenous peoples to start acknowledging whose traditional territory different events were occurring in. We vaguely knew that Vancouver was Coast Salish territory but we had no idea about which communities had actually lived there. Now we know that the Musqueam, the Tsleil-Waututh and the Squamish. These land acknowledgements began from the grassroots and it was a way of acknowledging the reality and the history of colonialism and also acknowledging the peoples whose traditional territory you were on. It then began to become more normalised and you had more progressive groups that started adopting this land acknowledgement. Any time they opened an event, they would acknowledge whose land they were on. They would bring in members of their community, whose traditional land that was, to do a traditional opening. This reached its peak with the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver where they constructed an entity known as the Four Host First Nations which was comprised of the Tsleil-Waututh, Squamish, Musqueam and Lil’wat nations. This was the peak aspect of that. In some ways, it’s become routine and you could say it’s become co-opted by the government. Government officials will routinely invoke this and it looks like they’re really acknowledging indigenous sovereignty but, of course, it’s not. It’s just a public relations thing. I still think it’s a good thing because, otherwise, people have no idea whose territory they’re on. One thing about the land acknowledgement is it brings up the question of whose territory it is. It opens up the discussion of colonisation and that there were people who lived on the land that this city has now been constructed. I think it’s a good segue into talking about the history of colonialism. It’s not something I oppose but I clearly see it’s been somewhat co-opted by the government and by other institutions.

Indigenous activists have also launched numerous projects researching and propagating information about their ancestral land. One project we are particularly fond of is Native-Land.ca, a crowd-sourced interactive map of Indigenous lands. It’s also based on open source software, so we have been able to incorporate it into our people’s history map, as an additional layer, at map.workingclasshistory.com.

Another way that Indigenous Peoples have been resisting colonialism on a cultural level is through alternative ways of thinking about gender and sexuality. First officially adopted by the 2rd Annual Gathering of Native American Gays and Lesbians in Manitoba, Canada in August of 1990, the term “Two Spirit” describes Indigenous people who “embody diverse (or non-normative) sexualities, genders, gender roles, and/or gender expressions.”

The term reflects a pre-colonial view of gender that Indigenous Peoples are reclaiming and revitalizing after centuries of violent repression. Before the arrival of colonizers, many First peoples had as many as seven or more different genders with distinct roles in their communities.

European, and especially British colonisers, had a rigid, unscientific, and binary approach to gender and sexuality, which they enforced wherever they went. The legacy of this remains today, where most countries where homosexuality is illegal, were previously part of the British Empire, and in most cases homosexuality was originally prohibited by British colonial authorities.

Regarding land, it’s hard to find clear data, but it appears that in many places, Native Americans are succeeding in turning back the tide of land theft, with land back projects. In addition to direct action, other campaigning and legal avenues, including land purchases, have been utilised.

In the US, over the past decade, through a plan implemented by the Department of the Interior, under pressure from Indigenous activists, nearly 3 million acres of land has been consolidated and returned to Tribal trust ownership.

Elsewhere, Native nations have won back control of lands which had been stolen. For example the nearly-20,000 acre National Bison Range, established illegally in the Flathead Reservation by President Theodore Roosevelt, has been returned to the native peoples who had been dispossessed.

The Rappahannock in Virginia, after 20 years of fighting, achieved federal recognition in 2018, and acquired nearly 500 acres of woodland. The Snoqualmie in Washington state, who had been derecognised by the government, successfully regained federal recognition in 1999, and since then have added thousands of acres of land, including the beautiful Snoqualmie Falls, made famous in the theme music to the TV show Twin Peaks, but of special significance to the Snoqualmie, both as a venue for fishing and hunting, and as the site of their creation story.

Gord Hill says that his decades of involvement in and documentation of Indigenous Resistance movements, through both victories and losses have brought him to the conclusion that, especially when it comes to the impending climate crisis, resistance is a matter of survival.

I think resistance movements really help communities organise and come together over a common cause and it helps establish the networks that we’re going to need to survive in the future as this system begins to decline and as you begin to see the further decline of government infrastructure which we’re seeing right now. In Canada, a lot of hospitals are closing their emergency rooms overnight. Right now, in Northern Vancouver Island, we have very limited access to emergency services and we have to leave our town and go to another town for emergency medical services. These kinds of things are happening and communities are going to have to become more and more self-reliant and more self-sufficient. I think it’s really important that people start to look at this and start to consider how they can prepare for this.

I’ve been involved in indigenous movements and anti-capitalist and anarchist movements and one thing I promote is this idea of resistance and survival because of the conditions that we’re in around the world today with these crises that we’re facing like climate change which is having profound impacts on the global society and the global economic system which is creating more crises in its wake. I really promote resistance and survival because resistance movements that protect environmental areas, clean drinking water and lands against environmental destruction are really important.

In 2021, the Indigenous Environmental Network and Oil Change International produced a study showing that already, Indigenous resistance in the US and Canada has blocked fossil fuel projects which would have contributed emissions equivalent to 25% of all current CO2-equivalent emissions from those countries. It’s an amount equivalent to over 400 coal-fired power stations.

Supporting Indigenous sovereignty and resistance is something which is vitally important for all of us, and will only become more so as the devastation of the environment continues.

They’re going to maintain these lands and these waters that we’re going to require and future generations are going to require for their very survival. I think a lot of people can see that this is kind of like a one-way system and it’s in a serious process of decline right now. This climate crisis is really going to push it over the edge and we’re going to see significant social changes in the coming years.

I think it’s something that people should prepare for in terms of community organising.

This system is not going to last forever and we can see it’s declining right now. We can see these crises are becoming more severe. I would just end with those words.

[Outro music]

That brings us to the end of this double episode, thanks to Gord Hill for taking the time to talk to us and fill us in on some of the noteworthy events that have happened since the publication of his book, 500 years of Indigenous Resistance.

It is only support from you, our listeners, which allows us to make these podcasts. So if you appreciate our work please do think about joining us at patreon.com/workingclasshistory, link in the show notes. In return for your support, you get early access to content, as well as ad-free episodes, exclusive bonus content, discounted merch, and more. And if you can’t spare the cash, absolutely no problem, please just tell your friends about this podcast and give us a five-star review on your favourite podcast app.

If you’d like to learn more about the last 32 years of Indigenous Resistance, check out the webpage for this episode where you’ll find images, a full list of sources, further reading and more. You can also get Gord’s book, 500 years of Indigenous Resistance, and you can get 10% off it it and anything else using the discount code WCHPODCAST. Links in the show notes.

Thanks also to our patreon supporters for making this podcast possible. Special thanks to Jamison D. Saltsman, Jazz Hands, Fernando Lopez Ojeda and Jeremy Cusimano.

Our theme tune is Bella Ciao, thanks for permission to use it from Dischi del Sole. You can buy it or stream it on the links in the show notes.

This episode was edited by me, Tyler Hill.

Anyway, that’s it for today. Hope you enjoyed the episode, and thanks for listening.

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History isn't made by kings or politicians, it is made by us: billions of ordinary people.