Walking with Integrity: The Peoples' Walk Carries Sacred Items to the East

by Brenda Norrell     
Tohono O'odham and other Native Americans focused on protecting the rights of passage for Indigenous Peoples at the borders have made it to DC area. The Peoples Walk, arriving from the south, includes Tohono O'odham, Hopi/Pueblo, Dine', Lakota and other Native Americans. Walkers in the Peoples Walk are carrying sacred items and completing their journey.

 

 

While in Washington D.C., the walkers will meet with international leaders and international organizations, but will not meet with leaders of the United States government. The U.S. government has betrayed Native people, carried out genocide and is currently involved in the promotion of xenophobia and Nazi-style tactics at the borders, oppressing Indigenous Peoples at the southern and northern borders in their traditional homelands.

 

Ceremonial routes are being destroyed by construction of the border wall and graves of the ancestors are being dug up at the southern border. Mohawk grandmothers have been beaten by special forces at the northern border, resulting in Kahentinetha Horn, publisher of Mohawk Nation News, being hospitalized after suffering a heart attack in a police stress hold. In the south, O'odham live in fear for their lives because of threats from Homeland Security, Border Patrol and tribal police.

Further, at the southern border, human bone fragments were found in the tracks of heavy machinery constructing the border wall and all federal environmental laws were waived by Homeland Security to build the border wall. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff has declared open season on endangered species at the border, including the endangered jaguar, Sonoran pronghorn and all life that springs from sacred Mother Earth.

Meanwhile, corporate private prison profiteers are imprisoning migrants for profit, including Indigenous Peoples who are displaced and starving in Mexico and Central America as a result of NAFTA. They are being driven off their lands by multi-national corporations and many are dying in the southern desert of thirst, including on Tohono O'odham lands.

Migrant prisons are being built across the Southwest to reap the profits of the television news induced racism and xenophobia.

 

The Peoples Walk is comprised of Native youths and elders and currently numbers about 20. They have really been walking across America without fanfare or much support. Please consider helping them.

They are in need of funds for food, a place to camp in D.C. and gas to return home. To contact the group, please e-mail Ofelia Rivas, O'odham Voice Against the Wall, at uyarivas@hotmail.com (Donations can be sent by WalMart moneygram or wire transfer to D.C. area, but please contact Ofelia to give the confirmation number.)

 

More at: http://www.bsnorrell.blogspot.com/

 

 

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