January 2021 #1

Turtle Island News Briefs #1 By Jennifer Rose (January 2021)

"Turtle Island News Briefs" is intended to be a regular, periodical news report by anarchist prisoner Jennifer Rose, cofounder of the Fireant Collective. Jennifer is a "white" identified, part-Native/Cherokee two spirit (or transwomxn) and an aspiring prison journalist. Her purpose is to educate, inform, and raise public awareness in support of Indigenous Peoples' and Native Resistance struggles across the U.S. colonial occupied ceded/tribal territories of Turtle Island.
#FreeTheLand!

Native American Heritage Month 2020
November marks not only the U.S. elections and National Day of Mourning (known as "Thanksgiving") but also Native American Heritage Month. One of the earliest documented advocates of Heritage Month was a Seneca man named Dr. Arthur C.
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Parker who was the Director of the Museum of Arts and Science in Rochester, New York at the time. Parker convinced the Boy Scouts of America to 'set aside a day for the First Americans", which they did for 3 years from 1912 to 1915. Around this same time, Rev. Red Fox James, also known as Red Fox Skiukusha, began a 4,000 mile trek on horseback to Washington, DC., to petition the U.S. government for an "Indian Day". The American Indian Association president Rev. Sherman Coolidge, an Arapaho minister also issued a proclamation on September 28, 1915, which declared the second Saturday of May as an American Indian Day. Several states followed suit in 1919 by declaring days in early September honoring America's first people.
In 1986, President Reagan signed a resolution proclamation designating November 23-30 American Indian week. On April 3, 1990, President George H. W. Bush signed a resolution declaring November as "National American Indian Heritage Month."
The National Congress of American Indians
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says that Native American Heritage Month "is a time to celebrate... and to acknowledge the important contributions of Native people. ...to educate the general public about tribes, to raise a general awareness about the unique challenges Native People have faced both historically and in the present, and the ways in which tribal citizens have worked to conquer these challenges." (from Debahjimon, November 2020)

Certain Days 2021 Honors Sogorea Te'Land Trust
the 2021 Certain Days: Freedom for Political Prisoners Calendar, for the month of November, features the vibrant artwork of Annie Banks, honoring the Sogorea Te'Land Trust, the first urban Indigenous womxn-led land trust, with the slogan "Rematriate The Land." An essay written by Aric McBay discusses the intersection of food, farming, and justice. November is Native American Heritage Month, which also celebrates the liberation of Assata Shakur, the birth of the Zapatistas, and the ongoing liberation struggles in Puerto Rico, Haiti
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and amongst the Indigenous/Native Peoples on the mainland of Turtle Island. Follow Certain Days on social media:
Facebook: facebook.com/certaindays
Twitter: @ certaindays
Instagram: @ certaindayscalendar
(from Prison Break, - Certain Days Nov. 2, 2020; http://itsgoingdown.org/prison-break-nov-2020).

Gray Wolf Loses ESA Protection
On October 29, 2020, following an announcement by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Ojibwe clan animal and central Anishinabe creation stony figure, Ma'lingan (Gray Wolf) lost Endangered Species Act protection after being delisted. Ojibwe tribal leaders denounced the move as premature and spoke out against wolf sport hunting seasons expected to start in 2021. (from Mazina'igan, Winter 2020/2021; Great Lakes Indian Fish & Wildlife Commission (GLIFWC) 2020; http://www.glifwc.org/mazinaigan)/
End.
- Jennifer Rose, I.A.C.