My choice for Mothers of the Year are the Mohawk grandmothers who publish Mohawk Nation News. While the Mohawks demonstrate courage, they also show us all that it is love, a deep love for humanity, that is at the root of resistance to oppression.
When the Mohawk warriors came to the southern border, at the Indigenous Border Summit of the Americas in 2007, they spoke out against the border wall and the holding facility, "the cage", that looks like a dog's cage on O'odham land. The Mohawks rushed to rescue migrants, Mayan women and children, being arrested by Border Patrol agents, as the van sped away with them. The Mohawks spoke out in disbelief against the US spy tower on Indian land.
The border summits in 2006 and 2007 were in the San Xavier District on Tohono O'odham land, an hour's drive from Sells, Arizona, and the border. Now, in that same district, San Xavier, some tribal politicians have been planning a migrant prison for years, with their cozy US co-conspirators.
Tohono O'odham, speaking out for the Him'dag and the sacred way of life, will be releasing statements and speaking out in the weeks to come, urging a halt to this migrant prison on O'odham land. Like all migrant prisons, it will feed on racism and xenophobia at the border, and serve to profit politicians and the prison industry.
It is part of the system to profit border hustlers, like Boeing with their million dollar dysfunctional spy towers, Wackenhut with its migrant transport buses and the Israeli's Elbit Systems with its Apartheid border spy technology and drones. Migrant prisons became a cash cow for GEO and others, cashing in on the US hysteria fueled by television news.
The border will remain the line which determines which Indigenous Peoples live, and which die, or go to prison. As for this planned prison, as one Mohawk said, "It is a prison within a prison."
Sometimes it is difficult to determine who the imprisoned one is, and who the free one is.
On one August day, when the temperature was over 115 degrees, I wrapped myself in wet towels and went to the border. I could not imagine how people like Mike Wilson, Tohono O'odham, were walking all day in this relentless sun searching for the bodies of dead Mayan women.
Those mother's children walked to safety, but the women died in the scorching sun, no doubt giving the last of their water to their children, hoping for their better lives. Other children were not so fortunate. Tiny graves are marked with the crosses and the beads of children. The bodies of other women are thrown from cliffs and hung from trees in this desert. They are women from Oaxaca, Guatemala, Chiapas and all the places where corporations have seized the lands of Indian corn farms, and the US sends in dollars for corrupt militaries to kill Indian people. Their lives never make the Six O'clock News.
This is a tribute to the Mohawk women for their courage, and to all those women who walk, especially for those women who are walking across the desert with hopes of a better life. It is my hope that all people will celebrate the sacred way of life.
Brenda Norrell
Associate Editor
U.N. OBSERVER & International Report
Please also see:
MNN Mohawk Nation News http://www.mohawknationnews.com
Brenda Norrell, Censored News http://www.bsnorrell.blogspot.com
Censored Blog Talk Radio http://www.blogtalkradio.com/Brenda-Norrell
Earthcycles Longest Walk Radio http://www.earthcycles.net
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