There are lots of Mayflowers – Mayflowers Kill

*With the intention to give our respondents full company of their Indigenous identities we don’t alter any language they use, which incorporates of us who Establish as a part of multiple group as represented on this recording. We welcome any recommendation on how one can enhance this marketing campaign, thanks!

**Share your perspective with the individuals of Plymouth, England by means of the Speedwell (“No New Worlds”) Set up. Go to their web page, scroll down and write your response so as to add your voice to the set up: stillmoving.org/initiatives/speedwell

The #MayflowersKill marketing campaign is a partnership between tribal members within the U.S. and Survival Worldwide to amplify the story of Native American genocide internationally, reveal the way it’s now being repeated in different continents, and present the way it can and should be stopped.

4 hundred years in the past, in 1620, the Mayflower caused 100 Puritan refugees to North America. Escaping persecution and discrimination in England, the colonists have been helped by Indigenous individuals to outlive on this new and – to them – hostile land. To those that had lived there since time immemorial it was after all a plentiful atmosphere which had lengthy been formed and safeguarded by its inhabitants to offer for future generations.

It’s nearly a miracle we’re nonetheless right here. We’re the descendants of a Individuals who survived tried genocide- the lack of our Ancestors’ lives, the erasure of our spirituality, tradition, lands, and pure sources, all to a distorted notion of western superiority and a self-declared divine proper to dominate different individuals. We’re painfully conscious that historical past can’t be allowed to repeat itself.

Chairwoman Cheryl Andrews-Maltais, Aquinnah Wampanoag

The welcome given to the settlers was not returned by them. The Mayflower touchdown led to centuries of invasion, battle and illness which killed tens of hundreds of thousands of Indigenous individuals. This genocide and discrimination nonetheless ripples all through the continent. It’s seen within the extraordinarily excessive charges of poverty, illness, home abuse, police brutality, imprisonment, suicide, and the low life-expectancy of Indigenous individuals in North America in comparison with the descendants of immigrants. These tragedies are felony and stem from the racism perpetrated by the settler colonial society.

Colonists couldn’t ignore that the indigenous inhabitants of New England had a declare to the land. Nonetheless, having rationalized their rightful place because the extra civilized individuals, the colonists deemed their declare to be extra vital and generally usurped or manipulated the rights of the Natives.¹

Paula Peters, Mashpee Wampanoag

Regardless of this, these survivors who’re capable of, proceed to withstand and defend their lands and id.

This historical past is repeated in different elements of the world, significantly in South America the place many Indigenous Peoples stay topic to first lethal contacts with outsiders. This routinely leaves at the very least half their inhabitants, typically rather more, lifeless inside a number of years.

Celebrating the Pilgrims’ voyage is celebrating colonialism, it’s celebrating genocide. With no query concerning the tragedy of what adopted the pilgrims’ arrival, we’re led to surprise, how ought to we bear in mind this occasion? And, for lots of the members of the Wampanoag Nation, it’s one thing to be mourned, not celebrated. Public notion of this historical past is vital. It shapes our rhetoric, the best way we discuss what occurred right here. It’s essential that our story is heard, however not in a method that additional erases our survival and resilience. We have to discuss it in a method that displays the obstacles we have now overcome and the large successes we have now achieved regardless of all of the tragedy.

Samantha Maltais, Aquinnah Wampanoag

COVID-19 is simply the newest of many imported illnesses which threaten the survival of Indigenous Peoples within the Americas. Their survival is a crucial part of humanity’s range, on which biodiversity relies upon, and on which all of us rely.

The #MayflowersKill marketing campaign is combating again, and invitations you to affix – for Tribes, for nature, for all humanity.

1. Peters, Paula. Preface. Of Plymouth Plantation by William Bradford: the four-hundredth Anniversary Version, Kenneth P. Minkema, Francis J. Bremer, and Jeremy D. Bangs, 2020, I-XXIII.