“We need to identify the processes that so often lead people who are honestly seeking to resist and destroy colonization to unconsciously re-create the elements of their own oppression.”

John Mohawk (jahn mow-hawk)

Seneca philosopher and activist

IMAGE SOURCE: Photo by Danny Beaton. “The Iroquois Speak out for Mother Earth.” First Nations Drum. 29 Apr. 2019.  | QUOTE SOURCE: “Our Strategy For Survival.” Thinking in Indian: A John Mohawk Reader. Edited by Jose Barreiro. Fulcrum. 2010.

IMAGE SOURCE: Photo by Danny Beaton. “The Iroquois Speak out for Mother Earth.” First Nations Drum. 29 Apr. 2019. | QUOTE SOURCE: “Our Strategy For Survival.” Thinking in Indian: A John Mohawk Reader. Edited by Jose Barreiro. Fulcrum. 2010.

QUOTE CONTEXT: “We need to look to history because primarily the past offers us a laboratory in which we can search to find that inherent process of Western Civilization that paralyzes whole societies and makes them unable to resist the process of colonization.”

QUOTE QUESTION: What ways of thinking help us to avoid recreating elements of our own oppression?


IMAGE CONTEXT: L-R: Masie Shenandoah - Oneida Nation; Clayton Logan - Seneca Nation; John Mohawk - Seneca Nation;  Audrey Shenandoah - Onondaga Nation; Chief Oren Lyons - Onondaga Nation.

IMAGE QUESTION: Who do you stand with in your efforts to decolonize?


MEDIA LITERACY CONTEXT: The quote is from a book of the collected writings of John Mohawk. The photo is from a Canadian first nations newspaper.

MEDIA LITERACY QUESTION: What media channels share the voices of your people?


LEARN ABOUT AND SUPPORT JOHN MOHAWK’S  IROQUOIS WHITE CORN PROJECT:

https://ganondagan.org/whitecorn/about

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“In my vision as a Mohawk midwife, reproductive justice and environmental justice intersect at the nexus of woman's blood and voice.”

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“Because we were sovereign nations we had to start fighting for the land the Creator said was where we were supposed to live.”