Portside

As Congress prepares to debate separating families at the border, a look back at the U.S.’s past with the cruel practice.

The Supreme Court will now decide whether, despite having aged nearly two centuries, the fateful words of the Stevens treaties from the 1850s still guarantee greater protection for tribal interests.

What is euphemistically referred to as “modernity” is marked with the indelible stain of what might be termed the Three Horsemen of the Apocalypse: Slavery, White Supremacy, and Capitalism, with the bloody process of human bondage as the driving and animating force of this abject horror.

The Tohono O’odham tribe has repeatedly cited a border wall’s potential impact upon sacred sites, burial grounds, and the natural environment. A wall would split the tribal homeland down the middle and isolate thousands of members south of the border.

At a January conference, Minnesota tribal police made it clear they are not waiting for permission from the federal government to move forward in protecting their members. They are not alone.

Although proponents of the act are disappointed in the DOJ’s limited support of it, they remain hopeful about the future and the potential for such legislation to help Native women.

To return to the firehawks example, one way to look at this is that the scientists confirmed what the Indigenous peoples have long known about the birds’ use of fire. Or we can say that the Western scientists finally caught up with TK after several thousand years.

Records obtained through a recent Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request reveal that the United States Army Corps of Engineers inappropriately attempted to guide the companies funding DAPL toward providing an environmental justice analysis of the pipeline that would conclude that there was no disproportionate impact on a racial minority. Internal Corps email excerpts -- received through discovery by Earthjustice -- show the decision makers behind the pipeline wearing lenses fogged with racism.

Taking land by force was not an accidental or spontaneous project or the work of a few rogue characters. The violent appropriation of Native land by white settlers was seen as an individual right in the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, second only to freedom of speech.