Photos compliments of Alex Garland. Thanks to Old Growth Alliance for all the hard work they’ve put into this event every year, for the past 5 years.
Sacred Water Drummers kept our spirits up with their songs.
Sacred Water Drummers
Nahaan, one of the organizers of the event and a Chilkat Tlingit. You can hear an interview with myself and Nahaan here.
Nahaan of the Dakl’aweidí, Chilkat Tlingit
We marched down the middle of the street in downtown like we owned the place.
Yours truly pretending to having something significant to say.
Vince Rinehart of the Teeyhíttaan, Shtax’héen Tlingit
Patricia Anne Davis spoke some beautiful words at the event. It turns out she knew my great grandfather, Teles Romero, from Taos Pueblo and attended Native American Church meetings led by him. It was good to catch up with a “fresh water Indian” as I jokingly refer to those of us who have Native blood from the southwest and arid regions of the continent.
Patricia Anne Davis, Navajo and Choctaw
I was happy to see the Doug Fir Cascadian flag out to support us. The Cascadians are a bioregionalist movement advocating for independence and autonomy for parts of Oregon, Washington, British Columbia and Southeast Alaska (and possibly portions of Idaho and the Yukon.) Their concept of bioregionalism is very much in line with our traditional social organization of autonomous clans, villages and tribes.
For more pictures check out Alex Garland’s album on Facebook as well as Lonny Peddycord’s album. There was a lot of great speakers, awesome moments, solidarity and support from the Occupy Seattle Street Medics, a squad of bicyclists directing traffic, songs, prayers, blessings.
Reblogged this on Lingit Latseen and commented:
A number of Tlingit men and women participated and helped organize this event.
Wish I could have been there. I have worked hard (and continue to work) for respect for Native Americans – and for all races – in my community. I live in the Molalla River school district in Oregon that still has a nasty cartoon clip art stereotype “indian” mascot – a hideous lurid orange lucky charm in a warbonnet that the local white power privilege majority tries to preserve. Every action like this Abolish Columbus Day event further proves my point to my community that CONTEMPORARY Native Americans demand and deserve respect for the real and beautiful culture that was violently stolen from them by Europeans like Columbus. We need to force all schools to teach the TRUTH! Without protests like this and without the ban on “indian’ mascots enforced by Oregon’s State Board of Education the white power privilege majority will never understand the issues. Beautiful and inspiring work! Keep it up! I hope we could have one in Portland Oregon next year, too! My heart is always with you!
Expanding this to Portland would be great! I actually live in Portland, and drove up to Seattle at the invitation of Nahaan. I know there’s an active Native community around NAYA and then another overlapping Alaska Native community (ANB Columbia River Camp.) The Portland Sealaska shareholder meeting (ANCSA Corporation representing Southeast Alaskan Natives: Tlingit, Haida & Tsimshian) is always well attended. Perhaps if we started now we could get something going. Of course, maybe there is a Portland area event that I don’t know about?
Reblogged this on Occupied Cascadia.
From the lens of Abolish Columbus Day: The 1st laws to define Ownership of land, property (women were included as ‘property’) from the Vatican was “The Charter of Liberty”. The 2nd law to define Conquest was “The Charter of the Forest” – the right of discovery of Pagan Lands. Columbus represents the European Conquest mentality based upon the Vatican’s Discovery Doctrine. Check out my YouTube description of the 4 Phases of Conquest. The Social Movements “Occupy” and the Euro-centric Environmentalists initiated “Idle No More” mobilization of Indigenous People is a mass Remembering and Reawakening to Conscience and breaking silence in order to expose the historical lies and justification for Exploitation of the 4 sacred elements of our Mother earth, water, fire and air and the Victimization of Indigenous People worldwide.