Idle No More | Onkwehon:we Rising’s Statement to the African People’s Solidarity Committee

“Whatever criticisms can be made about this movement due to the involvement of neocolonial agents attempting to direct it towards pacifist and reformist ends, this movement has profoundly awoken  Onkwehón:we in a way that has not happened since the rebellion of the Kanien’kehá:ka people at Kahnawà:ke in so-called Quebec in 1990.”

The following is OR‘s statement of solidarity that was sent into the International Conference of the African People’s Solidarity Committee under the leadership of the African People’s Socialist Party. A member of the APSC and a friend of OR, comrade Jesse Nevel, did OR the honour of reading the statement out.

O’-Si-Yo’, Halito. Buzhu, Shé:kon, Hau, Ya’at’eeh, Posoh

Uhuru

Greetings comrades, brothers and sisters

Onkwehón:we Rising greets this vital conference of the African People’s Solidarity Committee being held in St. Petersburg, Florida, a town quite aptly known as the “City of African Resistance”, with much excitement. To the African People’s Solidarity Committee and to all the Uhuru Movement we send you our warmest greetings and the knowledge that we stand in complete, unwavering solidarity with you and your movement.

Five centuries ago Europe stretched out and assaulted the majority of the world in order to enrich itself. This assault was the material basis for the emergence of capitalism. European Imperialism also brought with it new, alien social formations and imposed them through violence and coercion on the masses of the colonized: patriarchy, institutionalized mystery religion, capitalist social relations (including private property) etc. Additionally, today imperialism not only oppresses and exploits the colonized nations of the world, but wages also a war on the very Earth itself as it attempts to drive profits ever higher. Imperialism now threatens the very continued existence of human and animal life as we know it. The situation facing the world today is truly grave.

However, our peoples are fighting back – they have always been fighting back. Today in Canada alone, as the government of Stephen Harper attempts to bring to fruition plans from the 1960s to finalize the elimination of Onkwehón:we as distinct peoples and national entities, Onkwehón:we are rising up. In a grassroots movement known as Idle No More thousands of Onkwehón:we, who before could truly have been said to be “idle”, have been mobilized into action. Whatever criticisms can be made about this movement due to the involvement of neocolonial agents attempting to direct it towards pacifist and reformist ends, this movement has profoundly awoken  Onkwehón:we in a way that has not happened since the rebellion of the Kanien’kehá:ka people at Kahnawà:ke in so-called Quebec in 1990.

Everywhere on our continent our people, whether they are called Indian or Indio, Metizo or Metis, Inuit or Eskimo, are on the move. Colonized people are on the move all over the world, from India to Palestine, from Iraq to the Philippines, from Turtle Island to Africa. We are shaking this world to its very foundations and White Power is running scared.

In this crucible of this resistance theories that have failed the colonized are burned away and new revolutionary sciences emerge to take their place. It is in this context that Chairman Omali Yeshitela and the Uhuru Movement have developed the theory of African Internationalism. African Internationalism flips previous Eurocentric “communist” ideologies on their heads, showing us the development of the parasitic capitalist world system from the perspective of the slave. To the critics who say that it would appear to be a theory only concerned with the liberation of African people, Onkwehón:we Rising says this: African Internationalism is a scientific body of work that all revolutionaries, whether in occupied Turtle Island, Afghanistan, Iran, Africa, the Arab World or in Europe can utilize to advance the broad international struggle against parasitic capitalism.

This is centrally important with regards to this conference because African Internationalism, more than all previous threads of revolutionary thought, shows us what should be the correct relationship between White People and the struggles of the colonized for liberation. It shows us how White People can leave behind their historical allegiances to imperialism and the emiseration of the great majority of the world’s peoples and join with them in genuine unity and solidarity. It is the theory of African Internationalism that gave the basis for the founding of the African People’s Solidarity Committee and drives its work and this conference today. This what makes the African People’s Solidarity Committee so profoundly different from all other previous organizations that claimed to express solidarity with the struggles of the world’s oppressed.

Onkwehón:we Rising wishes the African People’s Solidarity Committee all the best in its struggles to bring White People back into the human family, from which they have been so long self-isolated, and to aid the struggling peoples of the world as they fight to overturn the parasitic capitalist world-system and put an end to the destruction of the Earth.

Forward the Revolution!

Forward Towards Genuine White Solidarity!

Tiahui!