We hope you enjoy swimmin through these links. There are many to pour over!

Interview with Anti-colonial Organizer Guillaume Beaulieu

Interview with Guillaume Beaulieu

The above link is for an audio interview anti-colonial organizer Guillaume Beaulieu. He speaks on their work around the 2010 winter olympics with the Olympic resistance network. The interview also focuses on the Canadian governments use of repression in response to resistance to the 2010 winter olympics.

Interview From the Vancouver Media Co-op

Reflections on Black Blocs and Warrior Societies

This next piece from Wilhelm Friedrich takes a jab at the parallels between the tactic of Black blocs and  the community based groups of Warrior Societies. While the very action of this comes across as colonial in nature, many good points do evolve from this piece.

On Black Blocs and Warrior Societies

No Repression Without Response!

Report from Vancouver March in Solidarity with G20 Arrestees

Continuing with articles from the Vancouver Media Co-op,  Annie Elations’ article recounts a Toronto g-20 solidarity demo that challengers her readers to recognize the sometime not-so-obvious fact that many of the hidden faces behind masks are the same ones working openly within our communities of resistance.

From No Repression Without Response!
…”many people are arguing that you cannot separate the militants from the community builders.”

G20 Policing, Political Targeting, and Anarchy

This last article AW@L Statement on Targeted Policing at the Toronto G20 Convergence and the Continued Criminalization of Community Organizations, is one of the most recent articles to recount the continuing repression that has followed the most recent G-20 protests.

One of the articles focuses titled  Shades of Fascism analyzes the daily exposure to police violence that many communities face daily.

From the text:

“…Police violence is resisted daily by poor and migrant communities and all Indigenous Nations of Turtle Island, including on the illegally occupied Grand River territory of the Haudenosaunee People, where this statement has been created. Police repression of culture or political dissent is also found in racially profiled areas of North American cities and states, it is found in Honduras, El Salvador, Haiti, Afghanistan, Palestine, and other targets of the neo-colonial ravages of neoliberal economies. This is the political function of the police; they maintain the power imbalances that have defined our colonial society for its settlers over its entire history. The G20 summit’s policing merely brought this reality to those whose privilege normally shields them from such targeting, and directed massive efforts against politically involved youth. Between the daily illegal actions of the police and their equally unreasonable actions at the G20, we can see what the police are actually protecting, and the violence they require to do so. We refuse to accept this violence as inevitable throughout our lives. We must challenge the assumptions and circumstances that create and sustain such a system. One of these assumptions is that the police need the latest weapons and the most expensive and high tech equipment. While we cannot take back all the new population control training the local, provincial, and federal police forces received in the lead-up to the G20 or the other militarized mega-event of the year–the olympics–we can demand a return of their new weaponry and a complete disarming of all police who took part in the brutality of the of the G20, and those who enable these illegal acts through not speaking out when their conscience pleaded to do so. To counter an increasing level of militarization of the police and our streets, we can unite to refuse their culture of fear.”

The article also dives into how the diversity of tactics debate:

The demonstrations against the G20 summit embraced a diversity of tactics. A wide spectrum of tactics and approaches were represented; what was shown and conveyed through corporate media is both limited and polarised. Corporate media portrayals have tried to equate a diversity of tactics with militancy—this is a blatant misrepresentation and misunderstanding. The word “diversity” itself should make clear that a plurality of approaches can be applied side by side and accommodated. A diversity of tactics makes space for militancy, and for pacifism, and for everything in between and beside. It allows people to respond to injustices as is necessary; affected communities can decide what an appropriate response is. All chosen tactics are political actions if performed as such, and all actions undertaken around the G20 were undertaken in such a political context. Refer to AW@L’s statement on Diversity of tactics for a deeper analysis of this topic.

We bring you a new zine put together to help gather support for saving the San Francisco Peaks. To get a glimpse of the zines content you can look to the conclusion:

Within these texts a few calls for support are shared with it’s readers. We urge you to challenge yourself. Please do not let your location or hesitation stifle your ability to answer this call. Rather that be e-mailing the council or attending the meeting or using your creativity.

As the time-line shows Snowbowl has been occupying and desecrating the San Francisco Peaks far too long. To think that the compromising of the peaks sacredness would not pull the heart strings of many would be a cracked notion. To ask readers to hold in their emotions after pouring out all this information on you would be unfair. The August 30, court date rapidly approaches. Please do as your heart and mind guides you. Help hold the peaks sacred. Refuse to let Snowbowl take indigenous ways lightheartedly.

For further information on the San Francisco Peaks please visit these pages on the internet:

True Snow

Save The Peaks

For a PDF of the zine click the image below

Hills zines such as We Shall Live Again provide unmeasurable amounts of insight into past movements for Indigenous liberation. In his zine Colonization and Decolonization under the name Zig Zag he illustrates the process of colonization within the form of a workshop outline. He also did a simpler two page zine on Decolonization.

The first interview is via radio from the Vancouver media co-op. It was from August 13, and it is focused on the crucial influence of the ”Oka Crisis”, 20 years after this major episode of the Kanienkehaka [Mohawk] Resistance.

The second interview from May 24, was done on behalf of PM press. this interview was focused on his book 500 Years of Indigenous Resistance. Here it is

Some of his most recent visual Art work was focused on the 2010 olympics.

On Friday July 16, a group entered the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality’s (AZDEQ) phoenix office building to deliver a message. Chanting “Save the Peaks” the group breezed through the main lobby and approached the main office. Once in the office the group made an announcement to the two secretaries at the desk. The group demanded that the AZDEQ use their role as a tentacle of the capitalist system to intervene with the Snowbowl companies’ further desecration of the San Francisco Peaks. The group held it down in the office for a while and then relocated back to the main lobby area chanting strewing caution tape about. As the echoes of the chants ricocheted off the cold walls of the AZDEQ building Everyone beside a lonely security guard and the group occupying the lobby the rest of the business building hackers scrambled upstairs, into elevators and their office waiting for the group to leave.

The group stretched out a banner that read “Danger” “Quarantine” “Snowbowl hazardous to public health”. Others mingled about the lobby clapping hands screaming chants and holding “Danger Health Threat” “Stop Snowbowl” signs.

After the intent of the groups visit had rung through the ears of everyone present they safely left the building with the rest of their day of resistance ahead of them.

The San Francisco Peaks stand vibrantly 5,000 ft. above the Colorado plateau north of Flagstaff in northern Arizona. The Peaks sit sacredly in the hearts of more than 13 indigenous tribes. The peaks are literally an intricate part of many of the tribes’ creation story. They are also home to more than 200 species of mammals and birds.

From the Save the Peaks Coalitions web page:

From many places in northern Arizona, the horizon is dramatically marked by three 12,000-foot volcanic peaks that rise out of the Colorado Plateau south of the Grand Canyon and north of Flagstaff. The San Francisco Peaks are sacred to 13 tribes. For the Navajo, the Peaks are the sacred mountain of the west, Doko’oo’sliid, “Shining On Top,” a key boundary marker and a place where medicine men collect herbs for healing ceremonies. To the Hopi, the Peaks are Nuvatukaovi, “The Place of Snow on the Very Top,” home for half of the year to the ancestral kachina spirits who live among the clouds around the summit. When properly honored through song and ceremony, the kachinas bring gentle rains to thirsty corn plants. The peaks are one of the “sacred places where the Earth brushes up against the unseen world,” in the words of Yavapai-Apache Chairman Vincent Randall.

About Snowbowl the company

also from the Save the Peaks Coalitions webpage

Arizona Snowbowl Resort Limited Partnership (ASR) is a privately owned entity that holds a special use permit (SUP) to operate a ski area on federal land located on the San Francisco Peaks. The San Francisco Peaks are environmentally sensitive. The Peaks, including the SUP area, are also “extensively documented and widely recognized as a place of extreme cultural importance” to the tribes.

Due to, in large part, inconsistent snowfall and limited demand, the Snowbowl ski area has been experiencing financial difficulties. To help provide ASR with a “consistent/reliable operating season,” the Forest Service (FS) agreed to allow ASR to expand the ski area and to introduce snowmaking using non-potable treated sewage effluent. Thousands opposed the project and challenged the adequacy of the FS review, consultation, and approval processes throughout the administrative process. After being rebuffed in the administrative process, a coalition of tribes and environmental groups filed suit challenging FS actions under, in part, NEPA, NFMA, and the NHPA. Plaintiff Tribes also asserted violations of the government’s trust responsibility to the tribes, and a violation of RFRA.

The issue at hand is not merely the usage of reclaimed sewage water or not. They are the part of the notion that no part of this “resort” should exist. Every discretional piece of this resort is a visual representation of colonialisms continuous sprawling of endless cultural genocide. The future of the Peaks are very at risk for as long as Snowbowl exists.

What does the state have to say about the desecration of the peaks?

The US forest service recognizes that there will be an adverse affect on native American religious beliefs but because of “other benefits” of the lodge The US forest service finds it a substantial and compelling reason for continuance and improvement of the [Snowbowl] development area.

After considering all affects the US forest service prefers development because legal requirements have been met. Public sentiment favors development the environmental affects can be mitigated, it benefits local economy and is consistent with forest services plans and policies.

What does “development look like in this situation? Here are a few of the lowest points:

-   Develop approximately 1,110 ft of additional on-mountain access road

-    74 acres “clear-cut” for new trails

-     “Approximately 87 acres” are proposed to be “stripped of topsoil resources, reshaped and contoured”, “rocks and stumps protruding from the surface would be pushed into concentration areas and buried or hauled off site”

-    47 acres of “tree thinning”

-     14.8 miles of buried pipeline to transport wastewater from Flagstaff to Snowbowl

The full details of expansion can be found here: Elements of expansion

What is the status of this “development”? The conclusion of a recent August 5 article from the Arizona Republic titled Snowbowl pipe plan moves ahead can add much insight to that:

…. resort owner Eric Borowsky said that he will begin construction on new ski runs within the next few weeks….

More information on Saving the peaks can be found at:

Save The Peaks Coalition

TrueSnow.org

There are also those in the other camps who do not like the fort or its ways. In any case, there are many who want to fight those that run the fort this is where we can unite with all the other camps, and all those that want to come into our circle should be welcomed.

— We Shall Live Again by Gord Hill 1997