URGENT APPEAL: Maori plea for support
Stop the State Repression of Indigenous Peoples!
Kia Ora Koutou Whanau, to all my Relations Greetings & Respect
Global oppression has intensified as Indigenous Peoples are organizing at the international level to control their resources and halt oppression. Maori leaders in the sovereignty, environmental and peace movements have been arrested. Tame Iti is in prison without bail. New Zealand authorities are attempting to brand the Maori as terrorists. New Zealand is under international pressure to adhere to the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples adopted by the U.N., which recognizes the right of Indigenous Peoples to their ancestral lands. Earlier, New Zealand, the United States, Australia and Canada voted against the UN Declaration.
Just now, Wednesday morning (October 17) the US Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has announced it will revisit its ruling halting a plan to make snow from sewer water on sacred San Francisco Peaks, a place of healing ceremonies and healing plant gathering for 13 area Indian Tribes. The federal Appeals Court said it is responding to pressure from the United States and Snowbowl Ski Resort.
In the south, the military oppression is unabated in Chiapas and Oaxaca, while mining corporations crush communities in Central and South America.
All of this comes at the same time that Zapatistas are organizing at the international level and Indigenous Peoples are fighting the corporate destruction — copper and gold mining, oil drilling, coal mining, power plants, uranium mining and nuclear dumping — from the Andean highlands in South America to the Inuit in Alaska and Aboriginals in Australia, and uniting in solidarity.
At the same time in Canada, Indian Nations are rising up to protect their ancestral territories, resisting colonization and the seizure of their lands for uranium mining, housing developments and oil drilling, as the Bush administration rushes to seize the oil in the melting Arctic.
http://bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2007/10/global-oppression-intense-as-indigenous.html
In the Kulin Nations (Melbourne) we will be holding a solidarity rally on the 27th of October. This rally will also be a condemnation of the 4 settler grubbyments that refuse to acknowledge and affirm our rights as Indigenous peoples to exist, to self determination and to sovereignty.Our solidarity will also be extended to out brothers and sisters in Turtle Island, as this phenomena of state suppression on Indigenous peoples is nothing new and still a common daily occurrence.
Stop the State Repression of Indigenous Peoples
Solidarity with the Urewera 17! Free them now!
Free Political Prisoners/Drop the Charges
Drop the Charges against Lex Wotoon NOW
Free Tame Iti NOW
Drop the Charges against Shawn Bryant NOW
Free Leonard Peltier NOW
In the Spirit of Indigenous Unity & Solidarity
Respect and Regards to all form my heart.
Ka Whawhai Tonu Matou Ake Ake Ake
Always Was Always Will Be Aboriginal Land.
Sina Brown-Davis
Te Roroa, Te Uriohau, Fale Ula, Vava’u
URGENT APPEAL: Maori plea for support
Dear Friends, Colleagues and Family,
It is in great distress that I am urged to write this appeal and to
inform our international community of the recent events that are
happening within Aotearoa (New Zealand) social justice, environmental
justice and indigenous movements.
For the past 60 hours Aotearoa activists have been subjected to home
invasions,raids and interrogation under threats of terrorist
activities against the state.The Crown has decided to employ its
recent Terrorism Suppression Act to lockdown on social justice
activist, movers and shakers and this is now world widenews with many
of our close friends and families houses (mine included) being
invaded, possessions confiscated and charges being threatened which
will allow for solid activists to be charged under the Terrorist
Suppression Act that carries sentencing for life.
The ages of people currently under custody range from 18 – 64. Many of
us being implicated in this investigation are young people trying to
do good things for our communities.We are headed into an election year
and these events are the largest scale operation headed by special
operations from the head of states office. We have difficulty in
understanding the timing for these invasions of our privacy except for
political campaigning off of our backs.The indigenous movement for
self – determination is what is being blamed by the media for
instigating acts of terrorism.
The Police showed up at my house with files of my activities over
years, my phones have been tapped for years, my house under
surveillance and everything subject to their review. We have not been
involved in any activities that could allow the police to make these
claims and the distress they are causing for our families and children
is devastating.
Right now we are fighting for friends in Police Custody to make bail.
A number of these requests have been denied. A number of people are
now been moved between prisons and I will be liasing with them and
their families.
Court costs, travel costs, food costs and lawyer costs are above the
heads of many of our people and we are asking for support from our
communities both national and international to come to our aid in this
time of need.’Terrorism’ world wide has become a cause for unjust
state intervention into the lives of many peoples committed to change
and now we are seeing that reality play out here in our own backyards
within our own community.
Please support us in anyway specifically: Sending your concerns
against state interventions to Annette King, Minister of Police
(aking@…) and to your local New Zealand Embassy’s;- By
sending financial support towards the Family Support Network to assist
with food, travel expenses and Court costs and; By sharing our stories
with your own networks.We have had some international support by
indigenous brothers and sisters by way of protests on the streets
outside the NZ Embassy’s, we encourage any of you to organize and do
the same. Thank you all for taking the time to hear what is happening
for us here in Aotearoa, these are very troubling times.
For further information please refer to:
http://www.indymedia.org.nz/
http://www.stuff.co.nz/4240168a25364.html
Most of our Internet sites have been taken down also in relation to
these chain of events however all responses and correspondence can be
made through me.
Mauriora,
Kiritapu Allan Co – Director, Conscious Collaborations
http://www.conscious.maori.nz/
Collaborations
http://www.conscious.maori.nz/
—
” Revolutionary movement and opposition to state power, in the defence of truth is at the heart of anti-imperial struggle. Frantz Fanon wrote,”You do not show proof of your nation from its culture….you substantiate its existence in the fight which the people wage against the forces of occupation. No colonial system draws its justification from the fact that the territories it dominates are culturally non-extant. “Struggle then is the signal of an oppressed peoples still beating heart in a colonial situation. Action is the life sign of peoples who existence is officially denied……we must fight for what is precious to us, or it will be stolen away and used for someone else’s enjoyment, Fight, not Talk.”
Fundamental Human Rights 