#ThanksGivingNoThanks – Decolonizing Our Minds And Hearts

Thanksgiving week brings many contradictions, we want to connect with people, but the history of these days comes from the opposite – genocide, colonization, and disconnection. Just transition is about navigating contradictions, and we are committed to doing what we can to create justice and peace. We believe we need to decolonize our minds and hearts while we navigate contradictions and build spaces for local peace economies to grow. Today we offer some ideas on how to decolonize our minds and hearts, and to challenge current ideologies, re-imagine ways to relate with people and the earth, and take action.

Last year, CODEPINK and others had the amazing opportunity to support the movement in Standing Rock. The transformative vision of sustainability that this community created, sprouted the need and idea of helping get solar panels for solar democracy in indigenous communities. The $75 thousand dollars YOU helped raise went to the development of indigenous-led projects for the collective sustainability of peoples in North Dakota and specifically in White Earth. The funding help create:

• AKiing and Ojibwe solar, a project intended to do green economy work focused on renewable energy and small scale manufacturing
• Murals for the awareness and honor of nature and indigenous culture
• 7 Solar thermal panel installations
• 20 kilowatts of solar for the Pine Point school
• And more!

For more information about these projects, please read Winona LaDuke letter of gratitude (find below) and/or check out their website. And please keep supporting this powerful work! These projects have shown how possible it is to live without the extraction and exploitation of natural resources and our peoples, and in a regenerative, peaceful way.

CODEPINK is in solidarity with indigenous communities around the world. We stand with the original defenders and protectors of ancestral lands, water, and spiritual, historic, and cultural resources. This week and onward, we call for the reparations and transformative justice for indigenous peoples. Join us in efforts to build local peace economies, decolonize our souls, and build the world “where many worlds fit” (Zapatista saying).

Check out Paula Kahn’s Decolonization: The Just Transition Begins With Unlearning for thoughts and resources on how to decolonizing.

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“Dear Judy, Jodie and Friends

Thank you again for your support of our work. I want to give you an update on both the work in North Dakota and exactly what you’ve funded here at White Earth.  I also want to say, that I am going to spend some time, when I complete the rather exhausting regulatory hearings on the proposed Enbridge pipeline- Line 3, I will be working more closely with many of Bob Gough’s ideas to see what we can actualize.  As he was a board member of Honor the Earth, our board will be meeting in January, having our feast for him, and deliberating on how we can further Bob’s work.  I”ll share that with you, and I am also going to share with you here, our work in restorative agriculture.

So, first as to what you have supported here on White Earth. Honor the Earth, while a national foundation has been working more closely with the village of Pine Point, a community with literally no jobs and nothing going to trickle down.  Honor the Earth created Akiing and Ojibwe Solar  which is intended to do green economy work focused on renewable energy and small scale manufacturing.   To begin with we did a series of murals in the village and solar thermal installations. Here’s a picture of the murals, which I think I shared before.  We’ve installed seven solar thermal panels there, and now with your help, we’ve installed 20 kilowatts of solar for the Pine Point school.   We are working with the locally based Rural Renewable Energy Alliance  and are planning a set of solar installs for our villages, as well as trainings.  To make this work, however, we are working with the White Earth Tribal government to create tribal utility and renewable energy policies as we face rather punitive local utilities and cooperatives.  We intend, along with the Leech Lake, Red Lake and Fond du Lac reservations to move into the next energy economy.   And we are grateful for your support in this work.

In the longer term, we will continue our battle against Enbridge. This is the last big tarsands pipeline battle.  Two weeks ago, the Energy East Pipeline in Canada was cancelled, KXL has no customers, and the Kinder Morgan pipeline is in deep litigation.  The Enbridge Line 3 proposal is moving towards us from the north and the south, and we have mounted a  formidable opposition, legally, in regulatory challenges and on the ground.   As of spring we will know if we have a pipeline approval at the state level, but we may win then. Otherwise if they issue a permit, there are already hundreds of people committed and camping on the front lines, white landowners and lakeshore owners included.

Having said all of this, I am asking you to consider supporting a separate effort. That is my work to restore and create local agriculture and a hemp farming , fiber, honey and post petroleum, horse powered agriculture. That’s what I actually do; restorative economics. It is clear to me that the Trump administration has taken the political system, but the economic system is what we need to change. I want to relocalize our economy, regionally, working with seven Ojibwe tribes and the great lakes. This is my beginning. And I am asking for an investment in me.

I would really appreciate you considering it, and sharing it with your friends. Im attaching a letter as to our tax exemption for the Anishinaabe Agricultural Institute, and I am attaching a link to my kickstarter. The kickstarter as you know is an all or nothing proposition- and I’ve raised $57,000 out of $l00,000 and I have till Thanksgiving; so that would be a huge help.  See the link here- it’s a really great project, and I would really love to have your support.

More than that however, I value an ongoing relationship with you as we put our heads together to make a good future for our children.

Please see the attached letter, and thank you so much for considering this support.

Miigwech,

Winona LaDuke”