ABSTRACT
Greetings! At the outset, we share our commitment to, as Alayna Eagle Shield has said, “Indigenous Peoples and Black Peoples seeing each other as relatives.” We believe what we have learned and can learn from the ongoing Movement for Black Lives and from the Standing Rock movement for Indigenous sovereignty, land, sacred sites, treaty rights, and a healthy Earth Mother for all people is central to any possibility of getting free on Turtle Island (the place most commonly referred to within ongoing settler colonialism as the nation-states of the US, Canada, and Mexico). We believe if we can see each other and understand our foundational connections through stolen land, stolen labor, and stolen lives and through ongoing resistance and joy, love and desire, that we as Native and Black people can, together and apart, offer the educational and cultural future we are living and that we need. It is important that we share up front the important fact that Native and Black peoples on Turtle Island are of course not mutually exclusive peoples, as we have many relatives on Turtle Island who are both Black and Native. And, of course, globally, Black peoples and Indigenous peoples are not mutually exclusive peoples.
