Decolonizing
Our Work for Justice: Join the UU College of Social Justice and Lummi Nation
for a Program on Indigenous Rights & Climate Justice, April 25-May 1
“Whose land do you live on?”
It’s an uncomfortable question for those of us known as “settlers,”
and one that we do not regularly have to face. Last year, as part of the UU
College of Social Justice’s “Solidarity with Original Nations and
Peoples” program, I
had gone in considering myself someone whose eyes were open to the injustices
done to the original peoples of the United States. As I stood on the rocky shorefront
of the Salish Sea, listening to Lummi organizer Freddie Lane explain the
history of this sacred site under threat, I realized that my knowledge barely
scratched the surface.
I did not know
that Federally Unrecognized Tribes lack government acknowledgement only because
they never signed a treaty with the United States and they were never
conquered. I did not know that the U.S. military’s very origins were in the domination
and genocide of the original people of this continent. And I did not know the scale
of the determination, cultural pride, creativity, and hospitality that I would
find among the Lummi leaders and organizers that invited us onto their
sovereign Nation.
Today, one of
the most urgent challenges the Lummi people face is the struggle to prevent
construction of an immense coal terminal on their sacred land at Cherry Point.
Designed to facilitate export of some of the dirtiest fossil fuels, such a
terminal—and the multiple rail lines serving it—would be disastrous to the
land, water, and culture of the people who have lived there for thousands of
years.
The UU College
of Social Justice’s second annual journey, “Solidarity With
Original Nations and People”[AK1] , taking place from April 25-May 1 will
not only introduce participants to this specific justice struggle; it will also
empower us all to return to our own locations and look with new eyes on the
history of the towns and cities where we live, and to find new pathways to
solidarity with First Nations across the continent.
As Unitarian Universalists we have demonstrated our
ongoing support for the Lummi Nation’s struggle to preserve Cherry Point. Lummi
Nation Council member Jay Julius and Master Carver Jewell James spoke to a
crowd of over 2,500 at last year’s Public Witness[AK2] at
General Assembly in Portland, hundreds of us wrote to President Obama asking
him to block the Gateway Pacific Terminal, and through Faithify[HH3] we
raised nearly $14,000 to for the Lummi Nation’s totem
pole journey[HH4] for
climate justice and building solidarity among tribes along the coal train
route.
By asking “Whose land do you live on?” instead of “Who
were the Native Americans who originally lived in your city or state?”—which
places First Nations peoples in the past—I am learning to decolonize the
question, and my work for justice. I hope you will join me.
Hannah Hafter
Senior Program Leader for Activism
Unitarian Universalist Service Committee
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