You are cordially invited to join the Department of Political Science at Gustavus Adolphus College on Thursday, April 18 from 4:00-5:30 pm in Wallenberg Auditorium (located in the Nobel Hall of Science) for the 2024 Ronald S. and Kathryn K. Christenson Lectureship in Politics and Law.
Our speaker is Kevin Washburn, N. William Hines Dean and Professor of Law at the University of Iowa College of Law. Mr. Washburn is a nationally recognized expert on federal Indian law and a citizen of the Chickasaw Nation of Oklahoma.
The title of Dean Washburn’s presentation is Land Back for Indian Tribes. In the current era of social justice, calls to return land to Indian tribes have increased markedly. Landback has already been incorporated into federal policy in ways that some may find surprising. Dean Washburn will describe the moral basis for “landback,” describe some of the ways it happens as a part of routine federal Indian policy, and discuss some other restorative justice and conservation initiatives that are related. Finally, Dean Washburn will provide some insights about landback that some may find surprising, including that landback efforts are not particularly partisan.
For more information, please visit our website.
This event is free and open to the public. Free visitor parking is available in lot A (outside of the Jackson Campus Center) and lot J (outside of the Nobel Hall of Science): https://gustavus.edu/academics/departments/music/concertFiles/media/Campus_Parking_Map.pdf
UPDATE:
UUFM donated $2199 to this cause. Thank you for the demonstration of solidarity with our indigenous siblings.
The UUFM Education and Justice (EdJ) Coordinating Council will be donating our annual Philanthropic (aka Benevolence) budget of $350 to this reconciliation and reparation action as our UUFM community.
Your donations will be added to this $350 and in the name of our UUFM community will be sent to the Anishinaabe people. We will be collecting donations from Dec 1 – 12, 2021.
Below is a letter from
Honor the Earth’s Executive Director, Winona LaDuke, explaining the project in detail:
I’m writing to ask you to help me buy my freedom.
Historically, enslaved people were sometimes about to purchase freedom for themselves and their families. In this moment, for Honor the Earth and our sister organizations
are asking your help to gain freedom from a predator by purchasing the land surrounding our headquaters. You see,
Land Back is not an abstract concept when you are dealing with Anishinaabe people and corporate predators who come to our territories.
As we continue our battles against the Enbridge corporation that recently completed construction of the Line 3 tar sands pipeline and other polluters, we need your help. Here’s the story:
In 2019, as they prepared to build their toxic pipeline through treaty territory, Enbridge purchased 120 acres of land on two sides of our 40-acre parcel outside of Ponsford, Minnesota. They even worked with a local realtor in a very unethical manner to aquire land we had an option to buy. By doing so, Enbridge effectively cut us off from White Earth Reservation. Since then, they have used the land to not only promote their destructive pipeline project, but also for extensive surveillance on our organization and people.
Shown: Parcel purchased by Enbridge “Tri-state Holdings” outlined in yellow, Akiing office in adjoining lower left corner with Kai Contreras Pieratos and his mother Dani.
Enbridge now owns a good portion of northern Minnesota, but they should not own the land around our organization, nor our community.
We also want to protect the rural land in Ponsford where Honor the Earth is headquartered because great things happen there.
Our land in Ponsford is a vibrant part of the White Earth community. It’s there we build solar thermal panels and grow food for our relatives through Honor the Earth’s sister organizations Akiing and 8th Fire Solar.
Together we are building a renewable energy economy for our people. This past year, we supported solar projects on the reservation, sold solar thermal panels regionally, trained and certified young people in solar photovoltaics and solar thermal.
We will continue to expand our renewable energy and farming work as we rematriate our economy. We also collaborate with and support Anishinaabe Agriculture Institute – a farming organization focused on Indigenous agriculture and hemp. That is our future. We are not a wealthy organization, but we are growing and committed. We need to protect our dreams from Enbridge.
In September of this year, I asked Enbridge to donate or sell us the land adjoining our community. They offered to sell it back to us at the price they purchased it, $166,000. Thus far, we’ve raised about $100,000 from donors, but we need more.
I hope you’ll consider joining, and together we will buy the freedom of a place to build a better world.
While building a vibrant new economy, our organization is working to weather the brutality of Enbridge’s legal, political and police repression. I, along with over 900 others, face criminal charges in three counties because of Enbridge’s tactics.
We see that Minnesota and federal politicians have abdicated responsibility and allowed a Canadian multinational to burn our rivers, pierce our aquifers, suck dry our rivers and criminalize us. Our organization has supported legal challenges to Enbridge and state of Minnesota actions, and our tribal government has brought the Line 3 pipeline into Tribal Court, in the first Rights of Manoomin case, remanded back to tribal court by the federal court. The
United Nations is reviewing the violations of our human rights by Enbridge and Minnesota law enforcement.
As we see massive divestment from tar sands extraction, we will work with other Anishinaabe to stop the expansion of Enbridge pipelines and other fossil fuel projects.
I’m hopeful that you will join us, by supporting our work to buy our freedom and make a good future. And by doing so, your donation is tax exempt.
Miigwech,
Winona LaDuke
P.S. While we look to the future and reclaim our land, we continue our legal and political battles against the corporate crimes of Enbridge, in the courts, regulatory and with financial institutions. I hope we can count on
your continued support.P.P.S. Our music video
No More Pipeline Blues has been nominated for a Grammy! Check it out at honorearth.org!
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