Join us for an Inter-Tribal, International Forum on Indigenous Resistance, Environmental Struggle and 21st Century Survival.
Following a weekend of private meetings of Native leaders from throughout the hemisphere, this public event will feature music, poetry and presentations from local and regional attendees, including: PennElys Droz (Anishinaabe/Wyandot) of the NDN Collective; Gizelxanath Rodriguez (Yaqui) of the award-winning Afro-Yaqui Music Collective (AYMC); and leaders of Massachusetts-based nations, among them Nia Holley (Nipmuck). Dr. Droz, who has worked on ecologically, culturally, and economically resilient Native nation-building, will discuss Indigenous environmentalism. Rodriguez, a Mexican operatic vocalist with ties to the Zapatista movement as well as her own peoples in Northern Mexico, will share stories from the Venezuelan-based Eco-Socialist International. Together with other members of the AYMC, she will perform a sampling of their eclectic fusion of revolutionary sounds.
This event is the public celebration of the private weekend gathering at UMass Amherst of 50 activist leaders from different Indigenous Tribes, Nations, organizations and geographical regions of Native American movements across the whole continent, focused on experiences and strategies of resistance from the Red Power period in the 1960s, over Standing Rock, until today.
This FREE and PUBLIC event is sponsored by the UMass Amherst Resistance Studies Initiative and the Gathering for the Revitalization of Native American Resistance Movements. Co-Sponsored by the W. E. B. Du Bois Deprtment of Afro-American Studies, UMass Amherst.