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Book Recommendation : Assata :An Autobiography by Assata Shakur

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Book Recommendation : Assata :An Autobiography by Assata Shakur

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Book Recommendation:  Rehearsals for Living by Robyn Maynard, Leanne Betasamosake Simpson

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Book Recommendation:  Rehearsals for Living by Robyn Maynard, Leanne Betasamosake Simpson

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ARTICLE - Pagans in the Promised Land: a Primer on Religious Freedom by Steven T. Newcomb

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ARTICLE - Pagans in the Promised Land: a Primer on Religious Freedom by Steven T. Newcomb

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Pagans in the Promised Land: a Primer on Religious Freedom - American Indian Law Alliance

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Significant aspects of this research were published in the New York University Review of Law & Social Change (Vol. 20, Number 2, 1993), “The Evidence of Christian Nationalism in Federal Indian Law.” The American Indian Law Alliance expresses its gratitude to…

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Indigenous Values Initiative, "What is the Doctrine of Discovery?"

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Indigenous Values Initiative, "What is the Doctrine of Discovery?"

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The Doctrines of Christian Discovery (DoCD) originate with 15th century Papal Bulls that were issued by the Vatican and implemented by Monarchies, sanctioning the brutal Conquest and Colonization of non-Christians who were deemed “enemies of Christ” in Africa and the Americas.

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The Religious Origins of White Supremacy: Johnson v. M'Intosh and the Doctrine of Christian Discovery. Read the Call for Papers.

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Late modern war and the geos: The ecological ‘beforemaths’ of advanced military technologies

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Late modern war and the geos: The ecological ‘beforemaths’ of advanced military technologies

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This article develops the idea that late modern war’s relationship with the geos (the ground and the life it sustains) is doubly destructive. While part of this is recognized in a recent focus on slow violence and ecological aftermaths, there is little consideration of the ‘beforemath’, or the sites of extraction that make advanced military technologies possible. Drawing attention to mining in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), the article connects military technologies to arms manufacturers and their use of extracted minerals (e.g. cobalt, tantalum, copper, uranium). Shared patterns of environmental and public health effects across parts of Iraq, Gaza and the DRC indicate the doubly destructive nature of late modern war’s relationship with the geos: toxic materials threaten life after war as the deposits of bombardment and before war as mineral commodities at the beginning of arms supply chains. The article explicates how a perspective from the beforemath radically refigures the ways we think about war and spatiality, temporality, and the range of bodies affected in ways that promise a fuller understanding of the violence distributed by practices of late modern war.

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The Reasonable People || Spoken Word Poetry | by Harry Josephine Giles

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The Reasonable People || Spoken Word Poetry | by Harry Josephine Giles

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Harry Josephine Giles - The Reasonable People || Spoken Word Poetry ||

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Harry Josephine Giles is a writer and performer from Orkney, living in Leith. Her latest book is the poetry collection Them! (Picador 2024). Her verse novel Deep Wheel Orcadia (Picador 2021) won the 2022 Arthur C. Clarke Award for science fiction book of the year. Her poetry collections The Games (Out-Spoken Press, 2018) and Tonguit (Freight Books 2015) were between them shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection, the Saltire Prize and the Edwin Morgan Poetry Award. Her stage show of her poetry sequence Drone toured internationally in 2019, and the performance of Deep Wheel Orcadia will tour in 2025. She has a PhD in Creative Writing from the University of Stirling.

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Interview with Harry Josephine Giles by Bella Milroy

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Interview with Harry Josephine Giles by Bella Milroy

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So, so from its beginning, the the book was actually born of that process of being at home, being in the islands and talking with people who are working with the language and thinking about how the language can be written. And so the themes of the book, the the story of the book all come from, you know, that initial place and it took me about six years to write the book and it involves that involves regular periods of return, I sort of couldn't write it anywhere, except I had to keep going home to do the big chunks of work on it because it wasn't coming out in the same way when I was in Edinburgh.

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Further Afield Harry Josephine Giles Gabrielle de la Puente - Level

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FWD: MUSEUMS: “Power/Potential” (2024), Edited by Therese Quinn & Miguel Limon (NB costs 25 US dollars)

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FWD: MUSEUMS: “Power/Potential” (2024), Edited by Therese Quinn & Miguel Limon (NB costs 25 US dollars)

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Power: Having control or authority to dictate or influence people and organizations’ behavior and actions.  ​

Potential: Having the capacity to build or develop a positive outcome in the future.

Power and the potential for power shape the relationships we have between ourselves, our institutions, and our governments. We relate these two words in this issue of Fwd: Museums to highlight how those being unjustly or unfairly treated have the potential to create their own power and invite submissions related to this theme.

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FWD: MUSEUMS: "Power/Potential" Power: Having control or authority to dictate or influence people and organizations' behavior and actions. ​ Potential: Having the capacity to build or develop a positive outcome in the future. Power and the potential for power shape the r

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SPEAKING - Robyn Maynard & Leanne Betasamosake Simpson 

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SPEAKING - Robyn Maynard & Leanne Betasamosake Simpson 

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By articulating to each other Black and Indigenous perspectives on our unprecedented here and now, and the long-disavowed histories of slavery and colonization that have brought us to this moment in the first place, Maynard and Simpson create something new: a vital demand for a different way forward, and a poetic call to dream up new ways of ordering earthly life.

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Leanne Simpson: As We Have Always Done: Indigenous Freedom Through Radical Resistance

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SPEAKING - Leanne Betasamosake Simpson | A Short History of the Blockade : Giant Beavers, Diplomacy & Regeneration in Nishnaabewin

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SPEAKING - Leanne Betasamosake Simpson | A Short History of the Blockade : Giant Beavers, Diplomacy & Regeneration in Nishnaabewin

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...indigenous practices of deep relationality...

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2020 CLC Kreisel Lecture with Leanne Betasamosake Simpson | A Short History of the Blockade

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KUMU HINA is a powerful film about the struggle to maintain Pacific Islander culture and values within the Westernized society of modern day Hawaiʻi. It is told through the lens of an extraordinary Native Hawaiian who is both a proud and confident māhū, or transgender woman, and an honored and respected kumu, or teacher, cultural practitioner, and community leader.

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Fill in the form above to take the Pledge to live with Aloha - love, honor and respect for all - and be included on our Aloha Wall and email list. Click the image to download an 8.5 x 11 Pledge of Aloha poster that can be hung on the wall in your home, workplace, or local school.

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KUMU HINA is the story of Hina Wong- Kalu, a transgender native Hawaiian teacher and cultural icon who brings to life Hawaii's long-held embrace of mahu - those who embody both male and female spirit, and were traditionally respected as caretakers, healers, and keepers of ancient traditions.

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Célia Angohó, chief of the Katuramã village, speaks out

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Célia Angohó, chief of the Katuramã village, speaks out

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We are talking about crimes against life

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Célia Angohó, cacica da aldeia Katuramã, manifesta-se contra o marco temporal

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List of Indigenous Peoples Organisations in Brazil

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List of Indigenous Peoples Organisations in Brazil

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The Ashaninka do Rio Amônia Association – Apiwtxa (a term that means union) was created in 1991 as a strategy to strengthen our community. It works as an operational arm of the community so that we can manage our projects and…

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The APIB was created by the Acampamento Terra Livre (ATL) of 2005, the national mobilisation which has taken place every year since 2004, to make visible the situation of indigenous rights and to demand that the Brazilian State attend to the demands and claims of indigenous peoples.

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PODCASTS - from an Indigenous left perspective

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PODCASTS - from an Indigenous left perspective

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We feature interviews, talks, and short audio documentaries about politics, culture, and history from an Indigenous left perspective. The Red Nation podcast is co-hosted by Nick Estes and Jen Marley with help from our friend and comrade Sina.

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We feature interviews, talks, and short audio documentaries about politics, culture, and history from an Indigenous left perspective. The Red Nation podcast is co-hosted by Nick Estes and Jen Marley with help from our friend and comrade Sina. Email: rednationpodcast@gmail.com For more information about the Red Nation visit: therednation.org. https://www.patreon.com/redmediapr

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Although often written in pain and darkness and isolation, those words--like the incandescent spirit of this extraordinary human being--shine through every one these pages.

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Prison Writings : My Life is My Sun Dance by Peltier, Leonard: Good (1999) 1st ed. | Better World Books: West

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Free Shipping - ISBN: 9780312203542 - 1st ed. - Hardcover - St. Martin’s Press - 1999 - Condition: Good - Former library book; may include library markings. Used book that is in clean, average condition without any missing pages. - Prison Writings : My Life is My Sun Dance

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Indigenous activist Leonard Peltier’s family reflects on his life in prison

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Indigenous activist Leonard Peltier’s family reflects on his life in prison

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Before his incarceration, Peltier — a member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians — served as a leader in the American Indian Movement (AIM), a civil rights organisation that emerged in the 1960s.

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‘Last chance’: Activist Leonard Peltier’s family reflects on life in prison

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Denied parole, the Indigenous activist continues to serve a decades-long sentence. His family shares the repercussions.

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Ten years in the making, In the Light of Reverence explores American culture’s relationship to nature in three places considered sacred by native peoples: Devils Tower in Wyoming, the Colorado Plateau in the Southwest and Mount Shasta in California. Rich in minerals and beloved by recreational users, these “holy lands” exert a spiritual gravity that pulls Native Americans into conflict with mining companies, New Age practitioners and rock climbers. Ironically, all sides see themselves as besieged. This award-winning film documents the Lakota, Hopi and Winnemem Wintu efforts to protect their most sacred places. Their battles tell a new story of culture clashes in an ancient landscape.

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Ten years in the making, In the Light of Reverence explores American culture's relationship to nature in three places considered sacred by native peoples: Devils Tower in Wyoming, the Colorado Plateau in the Southwest and Mount Shasta in California. Rich in minerals and beloved by recreational users, these "holy lands" exert a spiritual gravity that pulls Native Americans into conflict with mining companies, New Age practitioners and rock climbers. Ironically, all sides see themselves as besieged. This award-winning film documents the Lakota, Hopi and Winnemem Wintu efforts to protect their most sacred places. Their battles tell a new story of culture clashes in an ancient landscape.

You can screen our trailer for free. To watch the award-winning 72-minute film, In the Light of Reverence - and keep us in good graces with our educational distributor, Bullfrog Films - we ask that you make a $4 donation through Vimeo to rent the film for 2 days. You will be asked to enter an email address, create a password, and pay with a credit card or Paypal, and then you will be able to enjoy the film any time during the next 48 hours! It only takes 2 minutes to get through the payment. Thanks very much!

Produced and Directed by Christopher McLeod. Co-Produced by Malinda Maynor. Written by Jessica Abbe. Edited by Will Parrinello. Narrated by Peter Coyote and Tantoo Cardinal. Educational Distributor: Bullfrog Films.

"This film is a wake-up call for everyone who cares
about the environment and human rights."
- Robert Redford

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Ten years in the making, In the Light of Reverence explores American culture's relationship to nature in three places considered sacred by native peoples, Devils Tower in Wyoming, Hopiland in Arizona and Mt. Shasta in California. Broadcast on the PBS documentary series POV.

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BOOK - The World We Used to Live In: Remembering the Powers of the Medicine Men by Vine Deloria Jr.

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BOOK - The World We Used to Live In: Remembering the Powers of the Medicine Men by Vine Deloria Jr.

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Skip to main content

Synopsis

In his final work, the great and beloved Native American scholar Vine Deloria Jr. takes us into the relam of the spritual and reveals through eyewitness accounts the immense power of medicine men. The World We Used to Live In, a fascinating collection of anecdotes from tribes across the country, explores everything from healing miracles and sacred rituals to Navajos who could move the sun. In this compelling work, which draws upon a lifetime of scholarship, Deloria shows us how ancient powers fit into our modern understanding of science and the cosmos, and how future generations may draw strength from the old ways.

"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.

Review

"Deloria, Jr. lets us witness the feats of "Medicine Men" of the past, showing that their calling included powers in all areas of life" - MultiCultural Review

"Deloria, Jr. lets us witness the feats of 'Medicine Men' of the past, showing that their calling included powers in all areas of life" -- MultiCultural Review

" The World We Used to Live In is a collection of stories that Deloria kept in his pocket over the years, stories that concerned him throughout his life--stories of American Indian spirituality. This book is a treasury of observations on the wisdom and experience of medicine men from several native cultures." -- Wicazo SA Review

" The World We Used to Live In", is a collection of stories that Deloria kept in his pocket over the years, stories that concerned him throughout his life - stories of American Indian spirituality. This book is a treasury of observations on the wisdom and experience of medicine men from several native cultures." - Wicazo SA Review

"Deloria, Jr. was angry at what he saw as a growing godlessness in contemporary American society. His posthumous The World We Used To Live In is a call for today's American Indians to accept as true many of the stories told by Indian medicine men in earlier centuries." -- The Salt Lake Tribune

"Some of these stories demonstrate that Native science had capabilities unheard of today. They illustrate the fact that contemporary life, for all its material progress, has not yet touched what human potential might accomplish without external technology." -- Winds of Change

"Deloria pairs each story he records with his own commentary on the text, a commentary always executed with insight and the cutting edge we long ago came to expect from him. The collection of these texts alone makes this volume and important addition to any library on American Indian concerns; Deloria's commentaries throughout make it indispensable." -- Great Plains Quarterly

About the Author

Vine Deloria Jr. was named by TIME magazine as one of the greatest religious thinkers of the twentieth century. He was a leading Native American scholar whose research, writings, and teachings on history, law, religion, and political science have not only changed the face of Indian country, but stand to influence future generations of Native and non-Native Americans alike. He has authored many acclaimed books, including Evolution, Creationism, and Other Modern Myths; Red Earth, White Lies; God is Red; Spirit and Reason and Custer Died for Your Sins. Vine Deloria Jr. passed away on November 13, 2005.

"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.

Publisher Fulcrum Publishing

Publication date

ISBN 10 1555915647

ISBN 13 9781555915643

BindingPaperback

LanguageEnglish

Number of pages272

Other Popular Editions of the Same Title

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The World We Used to Live In: Remembering the Powers of the Medicine Men - Vine Deloria Jr.: 9781555915643 - AbeBooks

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The World We Used to Live In: Remembering the Powers of the Medicine Men by Vine Deloria Jr. - ISBN 10: 1555915647 - ISBN 13: 9781555915643 - Fulcrum Publishing - 2006 - Softcover

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Noam Chomsky: History of Israel's invasion of Lebanon in 1982

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Noam Chomsky: History of Israel's invasion of Lebanon in 1982

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The war would aim to "root out" the PLO and to make Israel the "policeman of Lebanon," able "to decide even how the members of the Lebanese parliament vote when it comes to the election of the next Lebanese president."

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Noam Chomsky, Fateful Triangle, pgs. 195-198 Mon, Jun 23, 2003 11:59PM

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Noam Chomsky: History of Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in 1982 : Indybay

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The standard version of events of why Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982 has been distorted by the mainstream media. In this excerpt from The Fateful Triangle, Noam Chomsky tells it like it happened including the Israeli bombing of civilians which the media conveniently left out in covering the incidents.

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Israeli Jewish anti-zionist perspectives & history

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Israeli Jewish anti-zionist perspectives & history

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The Other Israel Archives - Matzpen.org/English

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Matzpen: The Socialist Organization in Israel

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A people’s history of Zionism and opposition to it within Israel, in conversation with former members of Israeli socialist group Matzpen, Moshe Machover, Haim and Udi.

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Double podcast episode on a people’s history of Zionism and opposition to it within Israel, in conversation with former members of Israeli socialist group Matzpen, Moshe Machover, Haim and Ud…

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Introduction
PART I: The Integral Racial State, or Pessimism of the Intellect
1. The Racial State
2. Race and Political Society
3. Race and Civil Society
4. Birthing the White Political Field
PART II: Revolutionary Love, or Optimism of the Will
5. Do Whites Love Children?
6. Dirty Hands
7. Choosing Our Ancestors

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In Europe and North America, we see a trend of the white working-class tempted by right-wing political parties. Fascistic candidates and ideas seem to reap t…

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For Avery F. Gordon, haunting registers the harm or loss sustained by a social violence done in the past or being done in the present. Unlike trauma, this living meeting opens up possibilities rather than fatalistic views of the future. In her writings, Gordon is interested in how haunting can be cultivated towards more just and peaceful ends and how to eliminate the structural conditions that produce ghosts in the first place.

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Avery F. Gordon "Haunted Futures: the Utopian Margins"

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Why am I writing this book? Because I share Gramsci's anxiety: “The old are dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.” The fascist monster, born in the entrails of Western modernity. Of course, the West is not what it used to be. Hence my question: what can we offer white people in exchange for their decline and for the wars that will ensue? There is only one answer: peace. There is only one way: revolutionary love.

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A scathing critique of the Left from an indigenous anti-colonial perspective.Why am I writing this book? Because I share Gramsci’s anxiety: “The old are dy…

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Drawing on a range of sources, including the fiction of Toni Morrison and Luisa Valenzuela (He Who Searches), Avery Gordon demonstrates that past or haunting social forces control present life in different and more complicated ways than most social analysts presume.

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Avery F. Gordon: Ghostly Matters, Haunting and the Sociological Imagination

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University of Minnesota Press, 2008, Softcover, 280 pages, 23 × 15 cm Written with a power to match its subject, Ghostly Matters demonstrates that past or haunting social forces control present life in different and more complicated ways than most social analysts presume. Avery Gordon’s influential work has advanced th

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اميرة سلمي أستاذة مساعدة في معهد دراسات المرأة في جامعة بيرزيت. حصلتْ على شهادة الدكتوارة في الخطابة من جامعة كاليفورنيا ــــ بيركلي، وعلى شهادة الماجستير في النوع الاجتماعيّ والتنمية من جامعة بيرزيت. لها أبحاثٌ في مجال الدراسات الاستعماريّة: الخطاب الاستعماريّ، دراسات ما بعد الاستعمار، الكتابة المناهضة للاستعمار، الكتابة الأدبيّة الثورية في فلسطين وأفريقيا. كما كتبتْ عن الكتابة النسائيّة، والخطابات التنمويّة.

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INTERVIEW: Françoise Vergès :“I would come back as a tiger”

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INTERVIEW: Françoise Vergès :“I would come back as a tiger”

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My writing and actions rarely come from abstract questions or theories.

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In A Programme of Absolute Disorder, Françoise Vergès puts the museum in its place. Exploring the Louvre's history, she uncovers the context in which the universal museum emerged: as a product of colonialism, and of Europe's self-appointed claim to be the guardian of global heritage.

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‘A complete overhaul of the Western museum tradition’ - Publishers Weekly The Western museum is a battleground - a terrain of ideological, political and e…

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Tangible and intangible Palestinian cultural heritage is documented, protected, promoted, and made accessible to local communities and wider audiences to enhance sumood (steadfastness) under occupation; connecting fragmented communities and promoting global recognition of Palestinian heritage, identities, and futurity.

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The Palestinian Museum is a non-governmental association dedicated to supporting an open and vibrant Palestinian culture locally and internationally. The museum presents and contributes to narratives on Palestinian history, culture and society from new and critical perspectives. It also offers spaces for creative ventures, educational programmes, and innovative research. The Museum is a Swiss-registered non-governmental association with a branch in Palestine.

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Extensive interview with Arissana Pataxó , showing a range of her art 

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Extensive interview with Arissana Pataxó , showing a range of her art 

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Arte Indígena Contemporânea - Ep. 5: Arissana Pataxó

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Wombs of the Atlantic Rainforest - Anita Ekman and Amilcar Packer - Carnival in the Making

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Wombs of the Atlantic Rainforest - Anita Ekman and Amilcar Packer - Carnival in the Making

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This trailer explores the possibility of establishing alternatives to dominant transatlantic relations that are only feasible if we can exist before and beyond colonial coordinates

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Wombs of the Atlantic Rainforest - Anita Ekman and Amilcar Packer - Carnival in the Making

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Images from an exhibition of artworks by Arissana Pataxó 

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Images from an exhibition of artworks by Arissana Pataxó 

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In Brazilian Portuguese, the word “indigente” not only means pauper or destitute, as it does in Latin, but is also a legal and journalistic term used to describe unidentified dead bodies, particularly in the expression “enterrado como indigente” (buried as someone with no identity and no relatives). Pataxó’s intervention equates the lost identity of the photographed subjects to the lack of identity of destitute dead bodies that are buried without a name, without relatives or friends.

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O encontro conduzido pelo pesquisador Rafael Xucuru Kariri, atualmente em trabalho na Faculdade de Ciências Humanas da UFBA, reuniu o advogado Dinamam Tuxá - coordenador executivo da Articulação dos Povos Indígenas do Brasil (Apib), a artista plástica Arissana Pataxó, o advogado Luiz Eloy Terena, assessor jurídico da Apib, e a educadora e lider indígena Nádia Tupinambá, para debater com o público sobre os desafios enfrentados.

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"The White immune system, as I like to call it, has mobilised all its defences to save the structures of its domination."

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‘The witch, that suits everyone’: Interview with Houria Bouteldja

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The Parti des Indigènes de la République [Party of Indigenes of the Republic – PIR] has just turned fifteen years old. Houria Bouteldja announced on 6th October her resignation from the movement that she co-founded and that has shaken up the political field. Even in her absence she is omnipresent in France. In particul

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...the brightening of a mind...

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Admid the overlapping crises of a pandemic, ecological disaster, and global capitalism, two leading Black and Indigenous feminist theorists ask one another: what do liberated lands, minds, and bodies look like? These letters are part debate, part dialogue, and part lively and detailed familial correspondence between two razor-sharp thinkers, sending notes to each other during a stormy present. Featuring a foreword by Ruth Wilson Gilmore and an afterword by Robin D.G. Kelley.

"This book must be read for its future vocabularies, its political intimacies, its careful assemblage of the materials of our activisms, and its generous and fulsome thinking."
-Dionne Brand, poet, novelist, and essayist

"Using the age-old practice of letter writing and the land itself as a palimpsest, Robyn Maynard and Leanne Betasamosake Simpson find common ground to challenge the moral legitimacy of the settler nation state, and reinscribe new ways of what it means to be beings who are human in the forensic landscapes of Canada. In Rehearsals for Living, two women, one Indigenous, the other Black and African-descended confront their shared yet different experiences of colonialism, provide new and subversive meanings to the colonial trope of being landed, the mechanism by which the land was (un)settled. Unflinchingly, and in long-overdue and profoundly-needed "reasonings" that reverberate with shared breath, Simpson and Maynard weave their ideas, thoughts and reflections and their deep caring for community and society through the network of issues that impact us today-the pandemic and the differentials in treatment for Black and Indigenous people, the role of BLM, abolition, the necessity of Nibi and homespace for the Nishnaabeg, the joys of living on the land, and parenting in the face of ecological and racial disasters are but a few of the challenges they grapple with. Rehearsals for Living is fundamental to understanding the interlocking, founding crimes of the Americas; necessary for remembering the many erased histories of the on-going struggle for justice, and altogether indispensable to those wanting to create possible solutions."
-M. NourbeSe Philip, author of Zong!

"Robyn Maynard and Leanne Betasamosake Simpson embody and express how practice makes different. This necessary book is a model-through the shared process of two brilliant thinkers it gifts us clarity to see rehearsals otherwise and elsewhere."
-Ruth Wilson Gilmore, from the foreword

"We have been, and will continue to be, flooded with big books and little books and reports and documentary films all showing us how capitalism, racism, prisons, patriarchy, walls, and war are killing the planet. But this book is different. How Maynard and Simpson came to understand the world we must abolish and the world we need to build is through communing-with each other, comrades, friends and family, and the movements to which they make themselves accountable. They dance together, sing together, meditate, worship, and study together through letters, by sharing, by making themselves vulnerable to one another and to all of us reading these pages. Rehearsals for Living is a work of profound humility that honors the ancestors, the land, the children, and the struggles that enabled every generation to survive. They braid the histories and collective memories of Black and Indigenous struggles to establish a basis for solidarity, to find answers, and to reveal and share valuable lessons for our movements."
-Robin D. G. Kelley, from the afterword

"Across the pandemic-imposed distance, Leanne and Robyn begin a new iteration of the practices they've enacted in their labors and loves for years-this origin rises in letters, in which they take account of (and consequently bear the physical, emotional, and intellectual burdens of that accounting) the intimate and public violences committed by our governments upon our peoples, lands, waters and non-human relatives. In these letters, Leanne and Robyn constellate our brightest wounds and scars, but refuse to waste their energies of love and imagination on fixing or salvaging the Nation/State. Instead, they reorganize the trajectories and shapes of those constellations-retelling stories again and anew, of who we have been and might yet be again."
-Natalie Diaz, author of Postcolonial Love Poem

"As we collectively and unevenly live through sedimented colonialities, Leanne Betasamosake Simpson and Robyn Maynard draw out a political vision that emerges from epistolary connections-letters, animated by stories, that seek out, engage, imagine, and narrate different kinds and types of liberation. Accentuated by entangled black-indigenous histories and geographies, Rehearsals for Living actualizes friendship as correspondence, modeling a mode of togetherness that we can practice, learn from, and revise."
-Katherine McKittrick, author of Demonic Grounds and Dear Science and Other Stories

"The beautifully named Rehearsals for Living is a gift conjured by a pair of brilliant scholars during the dark days and months of the pandemic, lit by a powerful resistance movement, fueled and rendered magical by a profound and challenging dialogue that offers ways to collectively think and be and act in a chaotic world."
-Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, author of An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States

"In their inspired act of 'writing together, walking together, witnessing these times together,' Robyn Maynard and Leanne Simpson illuminate in essential ways the entwined lives of Black and Indigenous peoples. Rehearsals for Living honours legacies of courageous revolt against the ongoing histories of dispossession, incarceration, and violence. It is a book of relation, radical generosity, and care - a book, too, of running children, and the colour of the sky, and of 'holding within [ourselves] that nascent shimmering of possibility.' Above all, it is a book that poses and answers these most urgent questions: 'how are we going to live and how are we going to live together?'"
-David Chariandy, author of Brother

"Lyrical, visionary, and transcendent, Rehearsals for Living creates a literary maroon space deeply rooted in unique and overlapping histories and presents in which to dream abolition, home, love, land, liberatory forms of governance, life itself. While chronicling the continuing unfolding calamities of settler colonialism and racial capitalism with care and razor sharp clarity, Simpson and Maynard point readers to portals to different futures through the infinite possibilities of Black-Indigenous resistance. Give yourself the gift of allowing your heart and mind to overflow with the beauty and promise of Rehearsals' visions."
-Andrea J. Ritchie, author of Invisible No More: Police Violence Against Black Women and Women of Color and co-author of No More Police: A Case for Abolition

"Rehearsals for Living is a profound and sublime work of memory, witnessing, refusal, dreaming. In the trenchant tradition of Black and Indigenous feminisms, this brilliant book moves us away from the language of crisis or victimhood to the precise and intimate encounters of kinship and liberation. The letters between Maynard and Simpson magnificently shapeshift and engage on multiple levels, and in doing so, rigorously demand an accounting for horrific violences while illuminating lives and worlds anew. A masterclass in literary form, ethical orientations, and collective futures."
-Harsha Walia, author of Border and Rule, Global Migration, Capitalism, and the Rise of Racist Nationalism

"What a pleasure and honor it is to read two such probing and principled minds in conversation and collaboration. Maynard and Simpson dare to confront the most wrenching challenges of our omnicidal times, while finding joy and love along the way. A beacon of a book."
-Naomi Klein, author of No Is Not Enough

"Not all apocalypses are unwelcome. The profound anticipation for a world otherwise bubbled to the surface the summer of 2020. Collective rage and love shattered the sense of inviolability surrounding white supremacy putting forward an alternative vision, one already existing and always in the making. Rehearsals for Living is an epistolary that captures that urgent project of what it means to be human and imagine freedom in times of terrible danger. Robyn Maynard and Leanne Betasamosake Simpson tap into Black and Indigenous ways of knowing and world-making that require a fundamental disordering of the forces of destruction and the re-ordering of life and the beautiful struggle to get free."
-Nick Estes, author of Our History is the Future: Standing Rock Versus the Dakota Access Pipeline, and the Long Tradition of Indigenous Resistance

"Rehearsals for Living is an intellectually fierce dialogue about our colonial present by two of the most renowned scholar-activists working today. In a time of incredible uncertainty, Leanne Betasamosake Simpson and Robyn Maynard show that the shared and divergent histories of Black and Indigenous communities are foundational to the building of a better world for all."
-Glen Coulthard, author of Red Skin, White Masks: Rejecting the Colonial Politics of Recognition

"The end of the world, or the end of capitalism, colonialism, heteropatriarchy, white supremacy? This astonishing work of literature and theory enables us to imagine the end of them all, and to call into being, to rehearse, a world anew. If pandemics opened portals, Rehearsals for Living reveals the places of Indigenous and Black freedom to which they might lead. At a time when we need it most, Robyn Maynard and Leanne Betasamosake Simpson's letters generously invite us all to a future in which relations of liberation, not exploitation and oppression, constitute living on this planet together."
-John Munro, author of The Anticolonial Front: The African American Freedom Movement and Global Decolonization, 1945-1960

Solidification is a video collaboration blending an immersive reading by Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg artist Leanne Betasamosake Simpson from her recently released novel, "Noopiming:The Cure for White Ladies" (House of Anansi Press) over a wintery soundscape of drone and vocal composed by her sister Ansley Simpson, brought to life with visuals from Sammy Chien of Chimerik似不像, an interdisciplinary collective of performance, art & technology. Check out the EP Noopiming Sessions, on Bandcamp.

Available in February 2021 in the United States from the University of Minnesota Press. Short Listed for the Governor' General's literary award for fiction.

"Noopiming is a novel that is as philosophically generative as it is stylistically original. It begins with someone who is frozen in a lake, waiting, and from whom we learn that: 'being frozen in the lake is another kind of life.' Leanne Betasamosake Simpson's expansive work explores the indivisibility of beings - old woman, old man, tree, caribou, stone, ice, spirit, geese, the brain and more, all watching, grieving, thinking, acting, and listening amidst the ongoing and quotidian urgencies of capital. They are sleepless, ceaseless, trying to alter and to recode the world of consumerism, and their survival means that they must daily and collectively reconstruct existence in the city and its coterminous forests. Noopiming is far ahead of us in so many registers of story, language, and worldview; its cumulative effect is a new cosmography."

- Dionne Brand, award-winning author of Theory

"Noopiming is a rare parcel of beauty and power, at once a creator and destroyer of forms. All of Leanne Betasamosake Simpson's myriad literary gifts shine here - her scalpel-sharp humor, her eye for the smallest human details, the prodigious scope of her imaginative and poetic generosity. The result is a book at once fierce, uproarious, heartbreaking, and, throughout and above all else, rooted in love."

- Omar El Akkad, bestselling author of American War

"Leanne Betasamosake Simpson's Noopiming once again confirms her position as a brilliant, daring experimentalist and a beautiful, radical portraitist of contemporary NDN life. The prose hums with a lovingness that moved me to tears, and with a humour that felt plucked right out of my rez adolescence. The chorus of thinkers, dreamers, revolutionaries, poets, and misfits that Simpson conjures here feels like a miracle. My heart ached and swelled for all of them. What I adored most about this book is that it has so little to do with the white gaze. Simpson writes for us, for NDNs, those made to make other kinds of beauty, to build other kinds of beautiful lives, where no one is looking. Noopiming is a book from the future! Simpson is our much-needed historian of the future!"

- Billy-Ray Belcourt, award-winning author of NDN Coping Mechanisms

In A Short History of the Blockade, award-winning writer Leanne Betasamosake Simpson uses Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg stories, storytelling aesthetics, and practices to explore the generative nature of Indigenous blockades through our relative, the beaver-or in Nishnaabemowin, Amik. Moving through genres, shifting through time, amikwag stories become a lens for the life-giving possibilities of dams and the world-building possibilities of blockades, deepening our understanding of Indigenous resistance, as both a negation and an affirmation. A Short History of the Blockade reveals how the practice of telling stories is also a culture of listening, "a thinking through together," and ultimately, like the dam or the blockade, an affirmation of life.

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Admid the overlapping crises of a pandemic, ecological disaster, and global capitalism, two leading Black and Indigenous feminist theorists ask one another: what do liberated lands, minds, and bodies look like? These letters are part debate, part dialogue, and part lively and detailed familial correspondence between two razor-sharp thinkers, sending notes to each other during a stormy present.

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"Today, there are examples of oral history that continue to be used, including poetry and hip hop. Even videos with interviews and testimonials are examples of oral history."

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Gord Hill, Indigenous Artist and Anarchist

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Gord Hill is an anarchist artist & member of the Kwakwaka’wakw nation who has been active in anticolonial & anticapitalist struggles for decades. He speaks on art, history, Standing Rock, & more.

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FREE PDFS on Indigenous Resistance in North America

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FREE PDFS on Indigenous Resistance in North America

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The 500 Years of Resistance (Comic) - Gord Hill

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The 500 Years of Resistance (Comic) - Gord Hill

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

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E88-89: Indigenous resistance since 1992

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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 Amer…

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This documentary interweaves original photos, film clips and interviews with women involved in the FLN-ALN (National Liberation Front) during the struggle for national independence in Algeria. Army veterans, nurses, logistical organisers, bomb deployers, spies, fundraisers and more recount and reflect on their experiences in cities, villages and the bush.

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Moudjahidate, the involvement of women in the Algerian struggle for independence.

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Moudjahidate, the involvement of women in the Algerian struggle for independence. (2008-75')
Directed by Alexandra Dols.     http://www.moudjahidate.com/

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Towards Braiding  is an on-going collaborative process between Elwood Jimmy and Vanessa Andreotti - DOWNLOAD the books here

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Towards Braiding  is an on-going collaborative process between Elwood Jimmy and Vanessa Andreotti - DOWNLOAD the books here

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This collaboration involves several modes of relational engagement with Indigenous and non-Indigenous artists, scholars, and communities, including visits, gatherings and consultations, addressing the “compass questions”

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Towards Braiding is an on-going collaborative process between Elwood Jimmy and Vanessa Andreotti hosted and funded by the Musagetes Arts Foundation. This collaboration involves several modes of relational engagement with Indigenous and non-Indigenous artists, scholars, and communities, including visits, gatherings and consultations, addressing the "compass questions" below.

Compass questions:

What are the conditions that make possible ethical and rigorous engagement across communities in historical dissonance that can help us move together towards improved relationships and yet-unimaginable wiser futures, as we face unprecedented global challenges?

What are the guidelines and practices for ethical and respectful engagement with Indigenous senses and sensibilities (being, knowing, relationships, trauma, place, space and time) that can help us to work together in holding space for the possibility of "braiding" work?

How do we learn together to enliven these guidelines with (self-)compassion, generosity, humility, flexibility and rigour, and without turning our back to (or burning out with) the complexities, paradoxes, difficulties and pain of this process of healing?

What kind of socially engaged and community anchored Indigenous-led arts-based program can support this process in the long term?

What are the expectations in terms of responsibilities of the organization to the place/land and her traditional ancestral custodians from the perspective of the local Indigenous communities?

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Towards Braiding is an on-going collaborative process between Elwood Jimmy and Vanessa Andreotti hosted and funded by the Musagetes Arts Foundation. This collaboration involves several modes of relational engagement with Indigenous and non-Indigenous artists, scholars, and communities, including visits, gatherings and consultations, addressing the "compass questions" below.

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An Aboriginal passport is a travel document issued by various Indigenous Australian groups (such as the Aboriginal Provisional Government (APG) and the Indigenous Social Justice Association) as an assertion of Indigenous sovereignty and a rejection of the authority of the Australian state.

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The Karrabing Film Collective is a grassroots Indigenous based media group. Filmmaking provides a means of self-organization and social analysis for the Karrabing. Screenings and publications allow the Karrabing to develop a local artistic languages and forms and allow audiences to understand new forms of collective Indigenous agency.

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Their medium is a form of survivance - a refusal to relinquish their country and a means of investigating contemporary social conditions of inequality. The films represent their lives, create bonds with their land, and intervene in global images of Indigeneity. Scroll down for more details about Karrabing Film Collective's film and art projects.

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Aboriginal political activist Robbie Thorpe stands as part of a long line of Indigenous resistance to invasion.

This 54 minute documentary shows the making of this modern leader and tracks the resurgence of a powerful Black, Indigenous, anti-colonial movement that is currently reshaping the country.

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Ferguson is Familiar to Indigenous Australians: Larissa Behrendt

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Ferguson is Familiar to Indigenous Australians: Larissa Behrendt

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Larissa Yasmin Behrendt AO FASSA FAHA FAAL (born 1969) is an Australian legal academic, writer, filmmaker and Indigenous rights advocate.

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Ferguson is Familiar to Indigenous Australians: Larissa Behrendt

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Indigenous Australia knows the cynicism exposed by Michael Brown’s killing in Ferguson

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Identity (1971-82) was an initiative of the Aboriginal Publications Foundation, whose founding committee included Aboriginal leaders such as Oodgeroo Noonuccal (President), Douglas Nicholls (Vice President), Charles Perkins (Secretary), Gordon Briscoe (Treasurer) and Bob Randall, George Abdullah, Ken Hampton, Harry Nelson and John Moriarty.

The foundation's mission was to create 'a forum for Aboriginal opinion and an expression of Aboriginal literary and artistic talent'. (Identity Vol. 1 No. 1, July 1971, page 2)

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’Remember, the Aboriginal Publications Foundation was formed so that indigenous people could air their grievances. This is your chance to say what you think in your own magazine.

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Indigenous Australia - Reading resources

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Indigenous Australia - Reading resources

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The Reason in Revolt project aims to bring together primary source documents of Australian radicalism as a readily accessible digitised resource. By 'radical' we refer to those who aimed to make society more equal and to emancipate the exploited or oppressed. The project website aims to become an ever-expanding record of the movements, institutions, venues and publications through which radicals sought to influence Australian society.

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Indigenous Australia - Subject - Reason in Revolt

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Indigenous Australia - Subject - Reason in Revolt - The Reason in Revolt project brings together primary source documents of Australian radicalism as a readily accessible digitised resource

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From Stand Strong

A poem by Zelda Quakawoot, Mackay, QLD

Stand tall Young brothers

And those who rise

Against demise,

Two centuries

We have held this fire

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Poems

Browse contemporary Aboriginal poems, an art not often found in mainstream media.

Wishing you knew more about Aboriginal culture? Search no more.

Get key foundational knowledge about Aboriginal culture in a fun and engaging way.

This is no ordinary resource: It includes a fictional story, quizzes, crosswords and even a treasure hunt.
Stop feeling bad about not knowing. Make it fun to know better.
Sold! Show me how No, thank you

Contemporary Aboriginal poems

Contemporary Aboriginal poetry is an important part of Aboriginal art. Many poems express how Aboriginal people feel today and their poems are about the challenges that they share with non-Indigenous people but also about problems specific to their lives.

The Aboriginal-owned Koori Mail newspaper regularly publishes poems written by Aboriginal people.

Call for poetry!

Do you write poetry? Are you of Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander descent? I'd love to publish your writing. Contact me and send me your poem!

Maybe someone discovers your talent just like Dan's (see box below) or Coralie's poem 'No Disgrace' which was published in an Australian school textbook.

Read Aboriginal poems

A Right To Be Heard, Zelda Quakawoot, QLD

A Song of Hope, Oodgeroo (Kath Walker)

All Walks Of Life, Sharon Roebourne, WA

Always Told I Was A White Girl, Tara Shannon, NSW

Always Was, Always Will Be, Michele "Mickey" Hetherington, NSW

Australia's Silenced History, Nola Gregory, WA

Black Woman, Frank Doolan

Blood Soil, Michele "Mickey" Hetherington, NSW

Broken, Sandra Gaal Hayman, NSW

Burning Tree, Samuel Mclean

Calling Me Home, Lyndon Lane, NSW

Corroboree, Nola Gregory, WA

Dark Secrets, Jeanine Leane, NSW

Destiny, Richard G Kennedy, VIC

Displaced, Rachel Davidge, NSW

Doing Time, Travis Eulo, NSW

Faith, Michael Thompson, QLD

First, "Look Back In Time", Nola Gregory, WA

From Past To Present, Landon Punch, WA

From The Oceans To The Dusts, Zelda Quakawoot, QLD

From Where I Stand, Sandra Gaal Hayman, NSW

Galiny Bulmba (Come to my place), K L Burns, NSW

Good Bye My Love, Landon Punch, WA

Gumbaynggirr, Travis Blair

Heart And Soul, Michael Thompson, QLD

Here I Stand, Sandra Gaal Hayman, NSW

I Am Different, Michele "Mickey" Hetherington, NSW

I Got 'Lations', John M Wenitong, QLD

Ice, Nola Gregory, WA

Ice, ice, baby, Nikki McCartney, South Coast, NSW

If it Wasn't for the Footprints, Zelda Quakawoot, QLD

In a House Down The Street, Nola Gregory, WA

Indigenous All Stars, Zelda Quakawoot, QLD

I've been told to get a life, Nikki McCartney, South Coast, NSW

Just Another Drunk Black?, Colleen Kitchener, NSW

Kinchela (The Stolen Kids), Paul Buttigieg

Language is a seed to respect. Respect is a seed to a nation., Samara Ingram

Letter to the Future, Dan Davis, Central QLD

Life of Sharon Roebourne, Sharon Roebourne, WA

Long Ago Days, Dan Davis, Central QLD

Magic, Helen Moran

Mangroves, Zelda Quakawoot, QLD

Meaning of First Nations' Peoples - Australia Day Thought, Zelda Quakawoot, QLD

Mookari, Dan Davis, Central QLD - With audio

Moonthanguddi, Dan Davis, Central QLD - With audio

Mother Earth, Nola Gregory, WA

My Mother The Land, Phill Moncrieff, WA

My Right To Live, Landon Punch, Roebourne, WA

My Sitting Down Place, Gail Kay, QLD

My Want Then and Today, B Robertson, NSW

NAIDOC Assembly, Jonathan Hill, NSW

New Horizons, Sandra Gaal Hayman, NSW

Nice, Nice, Maybe?, Michele "Mickey" Hetherington, NSW

No Disgrace, Coralie Cassady, QLD

Not Forgotten, Michele "Mickey" Hetherington, NSW

Ode to John Pat, Dan Davis, Central QLD

Our Day, Michele "Mickey" Hetherington, NSW

Our Light, Michele "Mickey" Hetherington, NSW

Pass It On, Michele "Mickey" Hetherington, NSW

Patchwork Dreaming, Amy Oliveiro, NSW

Please Stop The Violence, Sharon Roebourne, WA

Proud Murri, Daniel Davis, QLD

Rise of the Crow, Michele "Mickey" Hetherington, NSW

Roots of a Woman, Julie Saunders, St George, QLD.

Saltwater Mourning, Samuel McKechnie, NSW

Self Education Political Conscience, Justin Walker, ACT

Society, Dan Davis, Central QLD

Songlines, Nola Gregory, WA

Sorry, Christopher Moore, VIC

Sorry Day, Vicki Roach

Spirit and Belief, Bradley Flanders, NSW

Stand Strong, Zelda Quakawoot, QLD

Stop, Helen Moran

The Aboriginal Soldier, Sandra Gaal Hayman, NSW

The Australian, Aaron Richardson, NSW

The Bad Man, Michele "Mickey" Hetherington, NSW

The Children, Sandra Gaal Hayman, NSW

The Constitutional Rose, Zelda Quakawoot, QLD

The Conversation, Dan Davis, Central QLD

The Dream, Zelda Quakawoot, QLD

The Elder, Patsy Jackson, QLD

The First Australians, Troy Hopkins, QLD

The Heart Of Auss, John M Wenitong, QLD

The Keeper, Michele "Mickey" Hetherington, NSW

The Light That Remains, Michele "Mickey" Hetherington, NSW

The listed servitude of roots, Curly, QLD

The Mascots of Hope, Zelda Quakawoot, QLD

The Real Me, Racheal Wilson, Perth, WA

This Old Bloodwood, Samuel McKechnie, NSW

Thug Life, Ray Sailor

To Fight Another Day, Michael Thompson, NT

Together We Go Hand In Hand, Sharon Roebourne, WA

Too Much Luuving, Zona Moore, NSW

Tribal Birth, Margaret Armstrong, QLD

Tribal Land, Dale Backo

Tribal Lines, Daniel Davis, QLD

Unspoken, Michele "Mickey" Hetherington, NSW

Unsung, Zelda Quakawoot, QLD

Untitled poem, Sharon Livermore, NSW

Voice. Treaty. Truth., by Dan Davis, Central QLD

Walk to the Future, Nola Gregory, Geraldton, WA

What Becomes Of Us Now, Dan Davis, Central QLD

Whence You Come From, Julie Saunders, St George, QLD

Who Are We?, Richard G Kennedy, VIC

Why We Don't Celebrate Australia Day, Dan Davis, Central QLD

Wild Flowers, Ali Coby Eckermann

Wisdom, J E Doyle

Word of a Ghetto Child, Ray Sailor

You Still Wonder, John M Wenitong, QLD

Your Way - Our Way - The Truth, Zelda Quakawoot, QLD

Congratulations, Dan!

The UK-based Commonwealth Education Trust (CET) chose Dan Davis' poem Mookari to represent Australia in its 125th anniversary anthology. One poem or story is chosen from each country of the Commonwealth.

The CET found his poem after it was published here on this website. Congratulations, Dan!

Congratulations, Nola!

Nola Gregory send me this note:

"I am getting some amazing opportunities from people reading my poetry on your site... Thank you so much for your site and the amazing things that have happened since putting my poetry up on it."

Students have chosen Nola's poems for reading in class, and further opportunities opened up with plans to integrate her poetry in other areas of the arts.

Nola's poetry has been published by the NSW Department of Education in their School Magazine for NAIDOC week, in an academic book titled Performing Cultural Tourism and an English language school book titled Hit the Road. She also won the 2021 Queensland Poetry Awards in the Emerging Older Poets Mentorship category.

Nola's poem, Australia's Silenced History, was spotted on this website by a Perth saxophonist who went on to write music for it. Silenced is now part of the Artemis Orchestra's debut album The Elephant In The Room.

Non-Aboriginal poems

I am receiving a growing number of poems by non-Aboriginal writers who respond to the Aboriginal poems published on CreativeSpirits.info:

A Response To Dan And Others, Sebie Brooks

An Elder's Passing, Jonathan Hill, NSW

Break Your Walls, Abi DRabi, NSW

Bush Poets, Stuart Chugg

Goodes and Baddies, Chris Miller, SA

Hello Miners My Old Foe, Jens Korff, NSW

Let's Face The Truth, Abi DRabi, NSW

Light Years Away, Jonathan Hill, NSW

Motor Prowling, Chris Miller, SA

My Face Is Black, Frank Corso, Melbourne, VIC

Respect The Indigenous, Abi DRabi, NSW

Shared Sunset, Jonathan Hill, NSW

Sorry, Christopher Moore, VIC

Spirit Dreaming, Phillip McDonald, Newstead, VIC

The Black Duck Hunt, Chris Miller, SA

The Darkness in Behind the Sun, Leah McGarrity, NSW

The Graffiti Poet, Chris Miller, SA

Special offer: 20% off!

'Indigenous Etchings' is a collection of Aboriginal poems, short stories, interviews and photos.

Save 20% on your copy!

100% Aboriginal content, produced by Aboriginal people.
Check it out!

Djapu woman Melanie Mununggurr-Williams from Yirrkala in East Arnhemland is the first Aboriginal winner of the Australian Poetry Slam which she won in 2018.

Contemporary Aboriginal poems

Contemporary Aboriginal poetry is an important part of Aboriginal art. Many poems express how Aboriginal people feel today and their poems are about the challenges that they share with non-Indigenous people but also about problems specific to their lives.

The Aboriginal-owned Koori Mail newspaper regularly publishes poems written by Aboriginal people.

Call for poetry!

Do you write poetry? Are you of Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander descent? I'd love to publish your writing. Contact me and send me your poem!

Maybe someone discovers your talent just like Dan's (see box below) or Coralie's poem 'No Disgrace' which was published in an Australian school textbook.

Read Aboriginal poems

A Right To Be Heard, Zelda Quakawoot, QLD

A Song of Hope, Oodgeroo (Kath Walker)

All Walks Of Life, Sharon Roebourne, WA

Always Told I Was A White Girl, Tara Shannon, NSW

Always Was, Always Will Be, Michele "Mickey" Hetherington, NSW

Australia's Silenced History, Nola Gregory, WA

Black Woman, Frank Doolan

Blood Soil, Michele "Mickey" Hetherington, NSW

Broken, Sandra Gaal Hayman, NSW

Burning Tree, Samuel Mclean

Calling Me Home, Lyndon Lane, NSW

Corroboree, Nola Gregory, WA

Dark Secrets, Jeanine Leane, NSW

Destiny, Richard G Kennedy, VIC

Displaced, Rachel Davidge, NSW

Doing Time, Travis Eulo, NSW

Faith, Michael Thompson, QLD

First, "Look Back In Time", Nola Gregory, WA

From Past To Present, Landon Punch, WA

From The Oceans To The Dusts, Zelda Quakawoot, QLD

From Where I Stand, Sandra Gaal Hayman, NSW

Galiny Bulmba (Come to my place), K L Burns, NSW

Good Bye My Love, Landon Punch, WA

Gumbaynggirr, Travis Blair

Heart And Soul, Michael Thompson, QLD

Here I Stand, Sandra Gaal Hayman, NSW

I Am Different, Michele "Mickey" Hetherington, NSW

I Got 'Lations', John M Wenitong, QLD

Ice, Nola Gregory, WA

Ice, ice, baby, Nikki McCartney, South Coast, NSW

If it Wasn't for the Footprints, Zelda Quakawoot, QLD

In a House Down The Street, Nola Gregory, WA

Indigenous All Stars, Zelda Quakawoot, QLD

I've been told to get a life, Nikki McCartney, South Coast, NSW

Just Another Drunk Black?, Colleen Kitchener, NSW

Kinchela (The Stolen Kids), Paul Buttigieg

Language is a seed to respect. Respect is a seed to a nation., Samara Ingram

Letter to the Future, Dan Davis, Central QLD

Life of Sharon Roebourne, Sharon Roebourne, WA

Long Ago Days, Dan Davis, Central QLD

Magic, Helen Moran

Mangroves, Zelda Quakawoot, QLD

Meaning of First Nations' Peoples - Australia Day Thought, Zelda Quakawoot, QLD

Mookari, Dan Davis, Central QLD - With audio

Moonthanguddi, Dan Davis, Central QLD - With audio

Mother Earth, Nola Gregory, WA

My Mother The Land, Phill Moncrieff, WA

My Right To Live, Landon Punch, Roebourne, WA

My Sitting Down Place, Gail Kay, QLD

My Want Then and Today, B Robertson, NSW

NAIDOC Assembly, Jonathan Hill, NSW

New Horizons, Sandra Gaal Hayman, NSW

Nice, Nice, Maybe?, Michele "Mickey" Hetherington, NSW

No Disgrace, Coralie Cassady, QLD

Not Forgotten, Michele "Mickey" Hetherington, NSW

Ode to John Pat, Dan Davis, Central QLD

Our Day, Michele "Mickey" Hetherington, NSW

Our Light, Michele "Mickey" Hetherington, NSW

Pass It On, Michele "Mickey" Hetherington, NSW

Patchwork Dreaming, Amy Oliveiro, NSW

Please Stop The Violence, Sharon Roebourne, WA

Proud Murri, Daniel Davis, QLD

Rise of the Crow, Michele "Mickey" Hetherington, NSW

Roots of a Woman, Julie Saunders, St George, QLD.

Saltwater Mourning, Samuel McKechnie, NSW

Self Education Political Conscience, Justin Walker, ACT

Society, Dan Davis, Central QLD

Songlines, Nola Gregory, WA

Sorry, Christopher Moore, VIC

Sorry Day, Vicki Roach

Spirit and Belief, Bradley Flanders, NSW

Stand Strong, Zelda Quakawoot, QLD

Stop, Helen Moran

The Aboriginal Soldier, Sandra Gaal Hayman, NSW

The Australian, Aaron Richardson, NSW

The Bad Man, Michele "Mickey" Hetherington, NSW

The Children, Sandra Gaal Hayman, NSW

The Constitutional Rose, Zelda Quakawoot, QLD

The Conversation, Dan Davis, Central QLD

The Dream, Zelda Quakawoot, QLD

The Elder, Patsy Jackson, QLD

The First Australians, Troy Hopkins, QLD

The Heart Of Auss, John M Wenitong, QLD

The Keeper, Michele "Mickey" Hetherington, NSW

The Light That Remains, Michele "Mickey" Hetherington, NSW

The listed servitude of roots, Curly, QLD

The Mascots of Hope, Zelda Quakawoot, QLD

The Real Me, Racheal Wilson, Perth, WA

This Old Bloodwood, Samuel McKechnie, NSW

Thug Life, Ray Sailor

To Fight Another Day, Michael Thompson, NT

Together We Go Hand In Hand, Sharon Roebourne, WA

Too Much Luuving, Zona Moore, NSW

Tribal Birth, Margaret Armstrong, QLD

Tribal Land, Dale Backo

Tribal Lines, Daniel Davis, QLD

Unspoken, Michele "Mickey" Hetherington, NSW

Unsung, Zelda Quakawoot, QLD

Untitled poem, Sharon Livermore, NSW

Voice. Treaty. Truth., by Dan Davis, Central QLD

Walk to the Future, Nola Gregory, Geraldton, WA

What Becomes Of Us Now, Dan Davis, Central QLD

Whence You Come From, Julie Saunders, St George, QLD

Who Are We?, Richard G Kennedy, VIC

Why We Don't Celebrate Australia Day, Dan Davis, Central QLD

Wild Flowers, Ali Coby Eckermann

Wisdom, J E Doyle

Word of a Ghetto Child, Ray Sailor

You Still Wonder, John M Wenitong, QLD

Your Way - Our Way - The Truth, Zelda Quakawoot, QLD

Congratulations, Dan!

The UK-based Commonwealth Education Trust (CET) chose Dan Davis' poem Mookari to represent Australia in its 125th anniversary anthology. One poem or story is chosen from each country of the Commonwealth.

The CET found his poem after it was published here on this website. Congratulations, Dan!

Congratulations, Nola!

Nola Gregory send me this note:

"I am getting some amazing opportunities from people reading my poetry on your site... Thank you so much for your site and the amazing things that have happened since putting my poetry up on it."

Students have chosen Nola's poems for reading in class, and further opportunities opened up with plans to integrate her poetry in other areas of the arts.

Nola's poetry has been published by the NSW Department of Education in their School Magazine for NAIDOC week, in an academic book titled Performing Cultural Tourism and an English language school book titled Hit the Road. She also won the 2021 Queensland Poetry Awards in the Emerging Older Poets Mentorship category.

Nola's poem, Australia's Silenced History, was spotted on this website by a Perth saxophonist who went on to write music for it. Silenced is now part of the Artemis Orchestra's debut album The Elephant In The Room.

Non-Aboriginal poems

I am receiving a growing number of poems by non-Aboriginal writers who respond to the Aboriginal poems published on CreativeSpirits.info:

A Response To Dan And Others, Sebie Brooks

An Elder's Passing, Jonathan Hill, NSW

Break Your Walls, Abi DRabi, NSW

Bush Poets, Stuart Chugg

Goodes and Baddies, Chris Miller, SA

Hello Miners My Old Foe, Jens Korff, NSW

Let's Face The Truth, Abi DRabi, NSW

Light Years Away, Jonathan Hill, NSW

Motor Prowling, Chris Miller, SA

My Face Is Black, Frank Corso, Melbourne, VIC

Respect The Indigenous, Abi DRabi, NSW

Shared Sunset, Jonathan Hill, NSW

Sorry, Christopher Moore, VIC

Spirit Dreaming, Phillip McDonald, Newstead, VIC

The Black Duck Hunt, Chris Miller, SA

The Darkness in Behind the Sun, Leah McGarrity, NSW

The Graffiti Poet, Chris Miller, SA

Special offer: 20% off!

'Indigenous Etchings' is a collection of Aboriginal poems, short stories, interviews and photos.

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Djapu woman Melanie Mununggurr-Williams from Yirrkala in East Arnhemland is the first Aboriginal winner of the Australian Poetry Slam which she won in 2018.

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Browse contemporary Aboriginal poems, an art not often found in mainstream media.

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Exploring the correspondence of June Jordan and Audre Lorde, Marina Magloire assembles an archive of a Black feminist falling-out over Zionism.

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Exploring the correspondence of June Jordan and Audre Lorde, Marina Magloire assembles an archive of a Black feminist falling-out over Zionism.

IN FEBRUARY 2024, the Palestinian writer Mosab Abu Toha posted a picture on Instagram of a stack of books that his brother, Hamza, had rescued from the rubble of a recently bombed home in Gaza. At the top of the stack, amid broken slabs of concrete and severed iron bars, was a copy of The Collected Poems of Audre Lorde (1997).It is fitting that Palestinians would be drawn to Lorde's searing critiques of racism and imperialism. Lines like "So it is better to speak / remembering / we were never meant to survive," from her poem "A Litany for Survival," hold powerful resonance for Palestinian resistance to Israeli misinformation and censorship, for example. In her oft-quoted Oberlin commencement address in 1989, delivered three years before she died, Lorde addressed the plight of the Palestinian people directly: "Encouraging your congresspeople to press for a peaceful solution in the Middle East, and for recognition of the rights of the Palestinian people, is not altruism, it is survival." However, many people do not know that Lorde's critique of the Israeli occupation and her brief assertion of Palestinian rights in this speech were not a constant feature of her life and activism.

Lorde's journey to a pro-Palestine stance was slow and halting. In Zami: A New Spelling of My Name (1982),Lorde describes her youthful optimism about the creation of Israel: "[T]he state of Israel represented a newly born hope for human dignity." That youthful optimism shouldn't be surprising: in 1948, Lorde was only 14 and a student at Hunter College High School, where she was surrounded by young, eager, newly formed Zionists. It was, in fact, her friendships that shaped the way she thought about the issue for the rest of her life. By 1982, she was being pushed by a conflicting set of forces. Strongly on the Palestinian side was Lorde's fellow poet June Jordan. Lorde and Jordan had a lot in common: both women were Black queer feminists born to West Indian immigrants in New York, and both were former professors in the City University of New York system. Both would eventually die of breast cancer. Until 1982, Jordan and Lorde were warm acquaintances, as well as colleagues and interlocutors; they shared political alignment on many issues relating to race and gender. But Jordan's last written words to Lorde, after an extensive epistolary disagreement over Zionism, were "You have behaved in a wrong and cowardly fashion. That is your responsibility. May you [...] live well with that."

Jordan has recently been much-touted as an example of Black women's solidarity with Palestine, as evidenced by lines from her 1982 poem "Moving Towards Home" : "I was born a Black woman / and now / I am become a Palestinian." But the context of the fateful year that inspired Jordan's writing of this poem-the Israeli invasion of Lebanon and the Israeli-backed massacres at the Palestinian refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila-is seldom discussed, nor is the full scope of Jordan's lifelong commitment to Palestinian liberation. Considering Jordan's dedication, why was it Lorde's book amid the rubble, and not hers?

Jordan is lesser known nationally and internationally than Lorde, and it seems to me that her decades of unwavering support for the Palestinian people is partly responsible. Jordan's vocal anti-Zionism hamstrung her career for nearly a decade, resulting in death threats, a loss of writing opportunities, and social ostracization within multiracial feminist circles. Even in the time since her death, Jordan's pro-Palestine stance has made her less co-optable into a neoliberal diversity narrative in which Palestinian liberation has been taboo for decades. Lorde is famous for the maxim "Your silence will not protect you," but in this case, Lorde's initial silence on Palestine did protect her career and her flourishing afterlife as a patron saint of the oppressed. Meanwhile, Jordan's decades of writing and advocacy on behalf of the Palestinian people have been woefully underappreciated. Jordan once wrote, "I say we need a rising up, an Intifada, USA," and for her, intifada was not a metaphor. Unlike Lorde, Jordan intended her writing to be a weapon, a public act in the service of Palestinian liberation. Despite their biographical similarities, Jordan and Lorde had differing practices of solidarity. How can we add nuance to the historical narrative of Black feminist solidarity with Palestine? After all, even 40 years later, US-based solidarity movements are still threatened by the same fault lines that felled Lorde and Jordan's friendship.

¤

In June 1982, Israel invaded Lebanon and began a nine-week siege on the capital city of Beirut, targeting the regional Palestinian resistance movement. During this war and the ensuing carnage against Palestinian refugees led by Israeli-backed paramilitary groups, over 20,000 Palestinian refugees and Lebanese civilians were killed. In his 2020 book The Hundred Years' War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917-2017, Rashid Khalidi argues that "because of American backing for Israel and tolerance of its actions [...] the 1982 invasion must be seen as a joint Israeli-US military endeavor-their first war aimed specifically against the Palestinians." Back in the United States, mainstream media publications like ABC, NBC News, Time magazine, and The New York Times reported for the first time with sympathy on the Palestinian struggle and displayed outrage at Israel's atrocities.Amy Kaplan argues in Our American Israel: The Story of an Entangled Alliance (2018) that Israel, during this war, "had lost the claim to innocence that it had maintained during prior wars. Its messaging was no longer unassailable, and its worldview no longer smoothly nor automatically reflected that of the American news audience." In August 1982, even Ronald Reagan called to admonish Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin and wrote in his diary that "the symbol of [Begin's] war was becoming a picture of a 7 month old baby with its arms blown off."

This was perhaps a particularly callous moment for American women to express a commitment to Zionist feminism, but Jewish feminists in the US had been divided over support of Israel since its creation in 1948, and in the 1970s, the wider feminist community of the United States frequently engaged in heated debates about Zionism in feminist periodicals and at women's studies conferences. Enter Adrienne Rich, preeminent Jewish lesbian poet and longtime advocate for the oppressed. Both Jordan and Lorde were dear friends of Rich, and both carried on a decades-long personal and professional correspondence with her (now housed in their respective archives). Today, Rich is known as an anti-Zionist poet-she was active in anti-Zionist Jewish organizations beginning in the mid-1980s, and in 2009 endorsed an academic and cultural boycott of Israel. But in the summer of 1982, she flirted briefly with the idea that perhaps it was possible to be both a feminist and a Zionist.

In an open letter published in the feminist journal Off Our Backs in July 1982, Rich joined six women who went by the collective moniker Di Vilde Chayes, Yiddish for "the wild beasts," on an open letter titled "... What Does Zionism Mean?" All the signatories self-identified as "Jewish lesbian/feminists of Eastern European (Ashkenazi) background." Despite their awareness of the "complexities" of Israel's displacement of Palestinians, Rich and her cosignatories were unequivocal about Israel's right to exist: "Zionism is one strategy against anti-Semitism and for Jewish survival. Anti-Zionism is Anti-Semitism" (underlined in the original). Perhaps most galling of all was their claim that anti-Zionism was also racist, "since it refuses to acknowledge that two-thirds of the Jews of Israel are people of color." Aside from the fact that this statement was authored entirely by white American Jews, this concern for the plight of Jews of color still seems dubious-it reads more like a rhetorical tool designed to shut down debate from other people of color than a genuine bid for coalition-building.

Even after Israel's war of aggression against Lebanon dominated the American news cycle that summer, Di Vilde Chayes doubled down on their commitment to Zionism, publishing a second letter in October 1982 in Off Our Backs and WomanNews. They continued to position themselves as "Zionists-committed to the existence of Israel-who are outraged at Israel's attack on Beirut and are equally outraged at the worldwide anti-Semitism that has been unleashed since the invasion of Lebanon." Irena Klepfisz, a signatory on both letters, later regretted the timing of the letters, which "made us seem indifferent to the brutal events" of the war. Much like their initial response, even Klepfisz's remorse is colored by the desire to "seem" evenhanded while making false equivalencies between an unspecified antisemitism and the concrete reality of 20,000 Arabs massacred (a form of rhetorical bad faith that persists to this day. )

Jordan felt betrayed by these letters. She had been friends with Rich since 1976, and their personal correspondence depicts a deep intellectual comradeship in which the two poets exchanged work, ideas, and emotional support. Later, Jordan recalls being shocked by Rich's letter, given that in all of their previous conversations Rich had never identified as a Zionist nor as Jewish. It would seem that Rich had fallen into a common trap of 1980s feminism, as identified by Jewish Marxist Jenny Bourne: "To be accounted for politically has, for Jewish feminists, meant if not a clear competition with black feminists, an attempt at least to jump on their bandwagon and mechanically equate their struggle against oppression." It's certainly easy to imagine Jordan questioning her intellectual bond with Rich at this point, particularly after Rich labeled the political stance of anti-Zionism as racist, all while staking a claim to racialization and Third World struggle that did not reflect her lived experience as a white American woman. The power differentials between Jordan and Rich-who was older, more famous, and white-might have further exacerbated the former's sense that the latter's support was predicated on Jordan's Blackness being merely identitarian and not political.

"It should surprise no one that we, Black and Third World people everywhere, attach fundamental importance to the question of Palestine," says Jordan in her response to Rich's statement. Driven by her grief and outrage at the massacres at Sabra and Shatila in September 1982, in which thousands of Palestinians were murdered by militia groups over the course of two days, Jordan wrote an open letter called "On Israel and Lebanon: A Response to Adrienne Rich from One Black Woman," dated October 10, 1982. Her address to Rich was both personal (she names Rich alone among the signatories of the two letters) but also pedagogical (it is an open letter to be published in WomanNews and thus intended for public consumption). Using the words "genocide" and "holocaust," Jordan lays out the shocking array of war crimes committed by Israel over five months-phosphorous bombs, the destruction of civilian infrastructure, the massacre at Sabra and Shatila-and criticizes Rich's failure to take responsibility for these things as the tangible outcomes of the Zionism she claims to espouse. This idea of responsibility runs through Jordan's response like a live wire, culminating in this astonishing statement:

I claim responsibility for the Israeli crimes against humanity because I am an American and American monies made these atrocities possible. I claim responsibility for Sabra and Shatilah [sic] because, clearly, I have not done enough to halt heinous episodes of holocaust and genocide around the globe. I accept this responsibility and I work for the day when I may help to save any one other life, in fact.

Because Rich does not take responsibility, Jordan models it for her. This is perhaps the most important rhetorical turn in Jordan's letter, though it goes unacknowledged in subsequent responses from other readers. Jordan recognizes that being part of an ethnonationalist state, whether born or chosen, carries the obligation to critique its violence. The fact that a Black woman born in this nation can make this statement, with far more humility than Rich's selective, cherry-picked identification with Israeli statehood, is a testament to the transformative possibilities of Jordan's identity politics.

Jordan's open letter was never published, due to the intervention of a group of Black and Jewish feminists, including Lorde; it exists only (as far as I have seen) in the unpublished archive of Lorde's correspondence. Based on her cover letter to the editors of WomanNews, Jordan had sent copies to other Black women writers whom she viewed as friends or interlocutors, including Alice Walker, Toni Cade Bambara, and Barbara Smith. Some of these women might have provided support for Jordan through phone calls or other ephemeral forms of communication, but there are no letters from any of them in Jordan's correspondence archives from the fall of 1982. Far from supportive, Smith forwarded a copy to Lorde, who agreed to join Smith and eight other women in writing a letter to the editors of WomanNews to block the publication of Jordan's response on the grounds that it "contributes to an atmosphere of increased polarization between Jewish and Black women." (The copy in Lorde's archive appears to be a Xerox of Smith's direct copy from Jordan, which was headed by a handwritten message: "Dear Barbara wanted you and Cherríe [Moraga] to know this is happening. Best, j.j.") Although they agreed with Jordan that "the Vilde Chayes' two open letters reflect insufficient political concern for the fate of the Palestinian people," the letter's signatories thought that Jordan's singling-out of Rich was tantamount to "character assassination." They argue that Jordan demonstrates "insensitivity to Jews as a group" by questioning Rich's self-identification as a Zionist and point out the fact that Di Vilde Chayes wrote their second letter before Sabra and Shatila (though it was published after) and thus cannot be accused of being indifferent to it. They lament the fact that Jordan "did not express her anger toward the group's politics in a responsible way." Overall, their reply seems more interested in chastising Jordan for her tone and timing than in engaging with the content of her four-page critique. (Jordan notes this in her response: "That you assume that I knew when Rich's statements were written as against when they were published and that you thought that should matter as much or more than what her published statements said, in fact, are further facts about both of you that I find bizaare [ sic] and disgusting.")

In a blistering response to both Lorde and Smith, Jordan writes:

Do not call me an anti-Semite. Bridle your fucking arrogance and let a little reality into your mouths [...] I will match both of you anytime anywhere on the subject of who is veriably [sic] unswerving in her activism against such evils as anti-Semitism (anti-Jews and anti-Palestinian and anti-Arab, per se) and in her activism to produce effective coalitional politics.

Indeed, in 1982 alone, Jordan's multiple expressions of outrage against the war in Lebanon through poetry, prose, and public speaking engagements echo loudly against the silence and equivocations of the feminists who sought to suppress her open letter.

The record of this correspondence is collected in Lorde's archive at Spelman College, in the folder containing her correspondence with June Jordan. There is no written correspondence, in Lorde's archive or in Jordan's, between the two women after 1982. Jordan and Rich, on the other hand, rekindled their friendship after a four-year gap and continued to be close until Jordan's death in 2002. In an interview with Peter Erickson in 1994, Jordan detailed her falling-out and reconciliation with Rich. When both were participating in an anti-apartheid poetry reading in New York in 1986, Jordan approached Rich and said, "I completely and absolutely detest your views on Israel and I love you."

Meanwhile, letters to Jordan from other writers, such as Rich, Smith, and Alexis De Veaux, would sometimes ask things like, tentatively, "Have you heard Audre is sick again?" but Jordan wrote no further letters to Lorde. Unlike with Rich, the Jordan-Lorde rift was not only a matter of Lorde's views on Israel-it was also a deeply personal betrayal of one Black woman by another. "So much for dialog/support/any kind of community," Jordan wrote in her letter to Lorde and Smith. And of course, the personal was political-Lorde's failure to identify with the Palestinian struggle over her personal connections with white women had heartbreaking implications for a solidarity movement in which Jordan often found herself alone, willing to be the only voice of critique in American cultural spaces overrun by Zionists. In her essay "Life After Lebanon," Jordan describes being surrounded and harassed by "large whitemen, two of them Israeli poets" at a poetry reading, and the intercession of three of her friends who got her out of the venue. She was acutely aware of the necessity of community support against the very real threats that Zionists could pose to the health, safety, and careers of vocal anti-Zionists. Lorde's support could not only have made a difference for Jordan personally, but it could also have marked a small but important shift in the political landscape of Palestine solidarity in the United States, which has only recently begun to achieve more mainstream traction.

Perhaps Jordan was moved to give Lorde a phone call before her death, and because of the nature of the archive, their reunion was left unrecorded. Perhaps she said, "I completely and absolutely detest what white supremacy has done to us and I love you." Or perhaps, as Alexis Pauline Gumbs notes, their reconciliation was in some ways too late-Jordan's next written words to Lorde were posthumous, in an unpublished written a year after Lorde's death. Jordan acknowledges that, in spite of the divisions wedged between them by racist ideologies, she and Lorde were striving for a common goal: "At different points our lives diverged as did our chosen paths for struggle[.] But we did not ever fully disentangle from joined combat against hatred and the annihilation of all bigotry[.]" On her part, despite this divergence, Lorde kept the somewhat unflattering record of her falling-out with Jordan as part of her meticulously self-curated archive. Why do that if she had entirely let go of their friendship? I think Lorde continued to walk with Jordan long after their paths diverged.

¤

In her poem "Intifada Incantation: Poem #8 for b.b.L.," Jordan writes, "I COMMIT / TO FRICTION AND THE UNDERTAKING / OF THE PEARL." These lines can be taken as a mantra for Jordan's role in pressuring members of her community to identify with and assume responsibility for the plight of the Palestinian people. Perhaps we can even infer that Rich's eventual anti-Zionism, and probably Lorde's, was generated by the friction of Jordan's uncompromising commitment, and by the example of her willingness to lose friendships and opportunities by standing up to the Israel lobby. Jordan's Black feminism was predicated on refusing the empty privileges afforded by life within what she called "the Big House" of the United States, where Black people have the unique opportunity to "throw salt or arsenic in [the] soup." Jordan's conflicts were meant to be (and were) galvanizing, an attempt to encourage her sistren to use their positionality to sabotage the US war machine.

Jordan was a deeply sophisticated internationalist thinker with a materialist understanding of solidarity. Like a searchlight, her poetry and essays swing from South Africa to Nicaragua to Cuba to Hawaii to Iraq, often in support of their movements for liberation and self-determination. Palestine fits naturally into the broad range of her anti-imperialist sympathies. Poems like "Moving Towards Home," "Apologies to All the People in Lebanon," and "Intifada Incantation," and the essays "Life After Lebanon" and "Eyewitness in Lebanon," demonstrate the long arc of a 20-year commitment to anti-imperialist struggles in Southwest Asia and the Middle East. These works are masterpieces of her ability to convert shame into political action-to move through the shame of complicity as an American taxpayer toward the responsibility of being among "Some of Us [Who] Have Not Died." In later poems and essays, she never stopped fighting against the occupation of Palestine and against anti-Muslim and anti-Arab sentiment in the United States and Israel. After September 11, Jordan was in the final throes of her battle with cancer, but she still took the time to denounce the racism and Islamophobia animating the war on terror. Her friend, the Lebanese poet Etel Adnan, once wrote to her with wry approval: "They never forgive you for thinking that Arabs are human beings."

What makes Jordan's solidarity so enduring is that Jordan was not just concerned with the violence leveled against the Palestinian people but was also deeply inspired by the Palestinian resistance. This was quite radical in 1982, as Amy Kaplan argues-despite increased sympathy for Palestinian war victims, "the focus of the American media quickly shifted from the suffering of Palestinians to the anguish of the Israelis," as American Zionists began to reframe the war as an aberration and a stain on the ultimately noble project of Israeli statehood." Even today, a politics centered in Palestinian life, rather than in a redemption of Jewish morals, has proved sticky and divisive. Debates around the use of phrases like "intifada" and "from the river to the sea" have shown the limits of public sympathy for Palestinians as a people with demands for statehood rather than as passive victims.

Jordan was notable in her rejection of this framework, particularly in the way she used the word "intifada" in many of her poems and essays. "Intifada Incantation" is framed as an emphatic love poem written in all capital letters-the famous first line is "I SAID I LOVED YOU AND I WANTED / GENOCIDE TO STOP." But the work isn't just about two people. It takes the Palestinian people and their resistance as the starting point for love, home, and any semblance of life for a global community of the oppressed. It bears noting that the forces committing genocide in Palestine and Lebanon are the same forces that interrupted the communitarian love between Jordan and her Black feminist peers in the United States. Jordan's poetic reclamations try to remind the reader of the true meaning of intifada, whose root word in Arabic means "to shake off." What must we shake off in order to make way for the flourishing of love?

In Jordan's handwritten notes for her 1990 essay, "Intifada, U.S.A.," the word "INTIFADA" is repeated, like a spell, like a chorus to a song yet to be written. When Jordan visited Lebanon in 1996, we clearly see her commitment to intifada as a practice. During this trip, she took many photographs at the refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila, the sites of the atrocities she had raged against 14 years prior. Her photos and notes linger on the signs of life stubbornly creeping back into the landscape of the camps: clotheslines strung between blasted buildings, a young man ducking behind bullet-pocked stairs, women planting flowers. Like Lorde, we find Jordan amid the rubble, but in the latter's case, it is her material presence: her sneakered feet, her hands clasping a camera, her yellow legal pad dutifully documenting the martyrs and those who survived. She was not content to merely lament Palestinian death from afar; she wanted to sit in the living room they created atop the ruins: "I watched a woman setting out a jasmine plant that would probably manage the atmosphere and, possibly, flourish." Jordan's model of solidarity is as arduous as the slow growth of this embattled jasmine, and it goes far beyond the cessation of genocide. If, as Jordan has it, "the issue of the Palestinian people is the issue of the value of human life," Jordan teaches us to move towards life.

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Featured image: A Man Crying amid the Rubble of His House, Southern Lebanon, 1982- 1988. The Palestinian Museum Digital Archive, The Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) Collection (0002.02.0058), . Accessed August 6, 2024.

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Moving Towards Life | Los Angeles Review of Books

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Exploring the correspondence of June Jordan and Audre Lorde, Marina Magloire assembles an archive of a Black feminist falling-out over Zionism.