Decolonization and Indigenous Self Determination

Decolonization and Indigenous Self Determination
Descolonización y Libre Determinación

SoundCloud:
June 22, 2021
Interview with Tupac Enrique Acosta, Huehuecoyotl
Rapid City in the 1868 Ft. Laramie Treaty Territories

Archives of Aztlan
TONATIERRA

January 4, 1994 Letter to Mexican President Salinas de Gortari

It must be mentioned as well that the proposals for a NAFTA trade corridor which would traverse the territories of the Tohono O’Odham Nation in the region of Sonora/Arizona were never submitted for consideration by the Tohono O’Odham peoples who would be most affected.

Sr.  Presidente, we also take this opportunity to express our concern regarding the unilateral action which you have taken regarding the recognition of Indigenous Codices as valid documentation for the protection of aboriginal land titles in Mexico.  It is our understanding that under the Law of Agrarian Reform, these indigenous documents were admitted as valid and enforceable until your office issued a presidential decree in 1992 unilaterally abrogating this indigenous right to primordial titles.  This development cannot but be seen as another deliberate effort to undermine the land base of the aboriginal sovereignties of Mexico, and an element of the instability in Chiapas.

************************

January 1, 2019

Self Determination and Human Rights of Indigenous Peoples in the New NAFTA Trade Zone of North America [Canada-US-Mexico]

With the adoption of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP 2007) which affirms the international right of Indigenous Peoples to Self Determination, equal to all other peoples, the purported claims of dominion of the colonial states over the inherent human rights of the Original Nations of Indigenous Peoples of Mexico, Anáhuac comes to its demise as a legitimate principle in the rule of International Law. The Original Nations of Indigenous Peoples of Anáhuac, Mexico are free to determine their own future in their own terms on their own territories in our continent of the Great Turtle Island Abya Yala.

Since UNDRIP, no state, no matter how benign, can legitimately delegate, define or diminish these collective Indigenous Rights.  It falls to the states to recognize, respect, and institute guarantees for the Protection of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples with effective restorative consequences for the violation of these rights.

In this sense, the critical question of historical context that emerged in contrast and contradiction in the Zócalo of Mexico City on December 1 was punctuated by the signing in approval of the final draft text of the USMexicoCanada Agreement 2018 (USMCA) on the evening of November 30, the night before, by exiting Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto. The USMCA is being promoted as a revised and “modernized” version of the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) between Canada, the USA, and Mexico.

Just as on January 1, 1994 with the original NAFTA, December 1, 2018 marked the latest updated version of the colonial project of corporate capitalism riding south from the Rancho Grande of North America. Now disguised as a development strategy in alignment with the UN Sustainable Development Goals 2030, the US-Mexico-Trade Agreement is being unleashed.

Simultaneously, the indigenous resistance to the USMCA is being packaged and delivered to its new political managers, as yet just another commodity to be marketed in the public square, via social media platforms, as long as the corporate colonizing project itself remains on track. AMLO himself reaffirmed this in his speech announcing the decision of his government to ramrod the Maya Train project in the Yucatan which is already set to begin construction. 

Of particular serious concern is the lack of recognition and respect given by AMLO in his inaugural address to the principle of Free, Prior, and Informed Consent (FPIC) regarding economic development projects that impact the territories and Human Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

January 26, 2018

TONATIERRA: Communique and Demand to President Enrique Peña Nieto, Mexico

Señor Presidente:

It is with growing concern with which we hear of developments in Mexico that give testimony to the degradation of the Territorial Rights and Human Rights of Indigenous Peoples of the country.  We are aware that ever since the adoption of the principle of “Original Property of the Nation” in the Mexican Constitution of 1917 that the “nefarious” principles of the Doctrine of Discovery and the Papal Bulls of Pope Alexander VI “Inter Caetera” have served to legitimize the usurpation of the territorial rights of the Indigenous Peoples of Mexico under the cultural, political, economic, and legal superstructures of the Spanish invaders who brutally attempted to dominate and colonize Mexico directly for 300 years, until independence in 1821.

*************

Nahuacalli Educators Alliance: DACA and the Doctrine of Discovery

September 16, 2017

Nahuacalli Educators Alliance

 

DACA Position Statement

Self Determination is an inherent human right. It is not a delegated status to be distributed according to the Machiavellian raison d’état of the state, much less to be assigned or denied upon the whims of this or that political party in power in the capitols of the settler state systems of America whose very presence on our continent of Abya Yala is based upon the globally denounced, repudiated, and racist Doctrine of Discovery of October 12, 1492, embedded in the jurisprudence of the US legal system by the SCOTUS decision Johnson v. M'Intosh (1823), extended continentally by the Monroe Doctrine (1823) and instituted by the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (US-Mexico 1848) in violation of the Right of Free, Prior and Informed Consent of Indigenous Peoples, as is once again being now "modernized" in the era of the global Empire of Petropolis by the renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (1994-2018).

*************

YouTube:
Faithkeeper Oren Lyons addresses the United Nations General Assembly on the 10th anniversary of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, calling for an INTERNATIONAL CONVENTION on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples