The American Indian Movement (AIM) is a Native American grassroots movement which was founded in Minneapolis, Minnesota in July 1968, initially centered in urban areas in order to address systemic issues of poverty, discrimination, and police brutality against Native Americans. AIM soon widened its focus from urban issues to many Indigenous Tribal issues that Native American groups have faced due to settler colonialism in the Americas. These issues have included treaty rights, high rates of unemployment, Native American education, cultural continuity, and the preservation of Indigenous cultures.
The Wounded Knee Occupation, also known as Second Wounded Knee, began on February 27, 1973, when approximately 200 Oglala Lakota and followers of the American Indian Movement (AIM) seized and occupied the town of Wounded Knee, South Dakota, United States, on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. The protest followed the failure of an effort of the Oglala Sioux Civil Rights Organization (OSCRO) to use impeachment to remove tribal president Richard Wilson, whom they accused of corruption and abuse of opponents. Additionally, protesters criticized the United States government's failure to fulfill treaties with Native American people and demanded the reopening of treaty negotiations to hopefully arrive at fair and equitable treatment of Native Americans.
The Dakota are a Native American tribe and First Nations band government in North America. They compose two of the three main subcultures of the Sioux people, and are typically divided into the Eastern Dakota and the Western Dakota.
Settler colonialism is a type of colonialism in which foreign settlers immigrate and permanently reside on land already inhabited by Indigenous residents. Settler colonialism causes the replacement or reduction of existing peoples and cultures; some, but not all, scholars describe the process as inherently genocidal. It may be enacted by a variety of means, ranging from violent depopulation of the previous inhabitants to less deadly means, such as assimilation or recognition of Indigenous identity within a colonial framework.
Native American feminism or Native feminism is, at its root, understanding how gender plays an important role in indigenous communities both historically and in modern-day. As well, Native American feminism deconstructs the racial and broader stereotypes of indigenous peoples, gender, sexuality, while also focusing on decolonization and breaking down the patriarchy and pro-capitalist ideology. As a branch of the broader Indigenous feminism, it similarly prioritizes decolonization, indigenous sovereignty, and the empowerment of indigenous women and girls in the context of Native American and First Nations cultural values and priorities, rather than white, mainstream ones. A central and urgent issue for Native feminists is the Missing and murdered Indigenous women crisis.
Indigenous feminism is an intersectional theory and practice of feminism that focuses on decolonization, Indigenous sovereignty, and human rights for Indigenous women and their families. The focus is to empower Indigenous women in the context of Indigenous cultural values and priorities, rather than mainstream, white, patriarchal ones. In this cultural perspective, it can be compared to womanism in the African-American communities.
Leanne Betasamosake Simpson is a Mississauga Nishnaabeg writer, musician, and academic from Canada. She is also known for her work with Idle No More protests. Simpson is a faculty member at the Dechinta Centre for Research and Learning. She lives in Peterborough.
Angelique EagleWoman is a Dakota law professor and scholar of Indigenous law. She is a citizen of the Sisseton-Wahpeton Dakota Oyate of the Lake Traverse Reservation. EagleWoman was the Dean of the Bora Laskin Faculty of Law at Lakehead University in Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada from 2016 until she stepped down in June 2018, citing issues of systemic racism leading to constructive dismissal.
Kim TallBear is a Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate professor at the University of Alberta, specializing in racial politics in science. Holding the first ever Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Peoples, Technoscience and Environment, TallBear has published on DNA testing, race science and Indigenous identities, as well as on polyamory as a decolonization practice.
Eve Tuck is an Unangax̂ scholar in the field of Indigenous studies and educational research. Tuck is the associate professor of critical race and indigenous studies at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto.
The Sioux Chef's Indigenous Kitchen is a recipe book written by Sean Sherman with Beth Dooley, published by the University of Minnesota Press in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Sean Sherman is an Oglala Lakota chef who was born in Pine Ridge, South Dakota, and is currently based in South Minneapolis. Sherman opened an Indigenous cuisine restaurant within the Water Works park development project overlooking Saint Anthony Falls and the Stone Arch Bridge in Minneapolis in 2021.
Bonita Lawrence is a Mi'kmaw writer, scholar, and professor in the Department of Equity Studies at York University in Toronto, Canada. Her work focuses on issues related to Indigenous identity and governance, equity, and racism in Canada. She is also a traditional singer at political rallies, social events, and prisons in the Toronto and Kingston areas.
J. Kēhaulani Kauanui is a Kanaka Maoli woman born and raised in California with ties to family in Anahola on the island of Kaua`i and throughout the islands. She is an author, editor, radio producer, educator, serves on advisory boards, and is one of six co-founders of the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association (NAISA). She was awarded a Fulbright (1994-1995) at the University of Auckland in New Zealand where she was affiliated with the Māori Studies department. Her research areas focus on indigeneity and race, settler colonialism, decolonization, anarchism, and gender and sexuality.
Angie Morrill is a member of the Klamath tribes in Oregon. She is a former Native admissions recruitment officer for the University of Oregon. She is currently the Program Director of Title VI Indian Education for Portland Public Schools.
Zoe Todd is a Métis anthropologist and scholar of Indigenous studies, human-animal studies, science and technology studies and the Anthropocene. She is an associate professor in the Department of Indigenous Studies at Simon Fraser University and a Presidential Visiting Fellow at Yale University during the 2018–19 academic year.
Xicanx is an English-language gender-neutral neologism and identity referring to people of Mexican descent in the United States. The ⟨-x⟩ suffix replaces the ⟨-o/-a⟩ ending of Chicano and Chicana that are typical of grammatical gender in Spanish. The term references a connection to Indigeneity, decolonial consciousness, inclusion of genders outside the Western gender binary imposed through colonialism, and transnationality. In contrast, most Latinos tend to define themselves in nationalist terms, such as by a Latin American country of origin.
Farhana Sultana is a Full Professor of Geography at Syracuse University, where she is also a Research Director for the Program on Environmental Collaboration and Conflicts at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs. Her research considers how water management and climate change impact society. Her first book, The Right to Water: Politics, Governance and Social Struggles, investigates the relationships between human rights and access to clean water. She is a feminist political ecologist whose work focuses on climate justice, water governance, sustainability, international development, and decolonizing global frameworks.
Glen Sean Coulthard is a Canadian scholar of Indigenous studies who serves as an associate professor in the political science department at the University of British Columbia. A member of the Yellowknives Dene First Nation, he is also a co-founder, educator, and on the board of directors at Dechinta: Centre for Research and Learning. He is best known for his 2014 book, Red Skin, White Masks: Rejecting the Colonial Politics of Recognition, which has been released in both English and French.
Sarah Hunt, also known as Tłaliłila’ogwa, is an Indigenous researcher, author and professor based in British Columbia, Canada. Hunt is a community-based researcher with an academic focus is on Indigenous politics, methodologies, decolonial methodologies, and issues facing women, girls, and two-spirit people.
Man camps are temporary workforce housing to accommodate a large influx of high-paid workers in the resource extraction industries, especially in Canada and the United States. Twentieth century boom–bust housing cycles related to the oil and gas industry made companies reluctant to invest in permanent housing for temporary workforces.
