Mutual Aid Media is honored and humbled to work with frontline communities across Turtle Island who are leading some of the most inspiring resistance, power building and sovereignty fights of our time. These women warriors collectively: have recuperated their land from narco-traffickers, fighting against impunity in Honduras, have been protecting their Yintah (territory) from some of the biggest oil and gas companies for a decade, shined a national and international spotlight on Cancer Alley, and are taking on Formosa Plastics to stop them from constructing one of the largest US plastic plants.

In the face of ongoing colonial violence and racial capitalism these communities are organizing a traditional university, recuperating territories to house climate refugees, leading COVID-19 community responses, revitalizing their languages, living their spiritual and cultural practices, growing food forests and using land based healing programs to address the harms of colonization. Below you can find out more about the Wet’suwet’en in so-called Western Canada, COPINH & OFRANEH in Honduras, L’Eau Est La Vie Camp & Rise St. James in Louisiana. Check out their individual bios below!

COPINH

copinh.org

The Civic Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras (COPINH)

A grassroots Lenca Indigenous organization in Honduras, comprised of thousands of Indigenous communities who struggle for a world that centers people and planet. COPINH was pivotal in resuscitating Lenca culture after hundreds of years of colonialism, violent attempts to force assimilation after independence, US-backed dictatorships and neoliberal policies that threatened to annihilate it. Berta Cáceres, one of the co-founders of COPINH, said, “Wake up! Wake up humanity! There's no more time. We must shake our conscience free of the rapacious capitalism, racism, and patriarchy that will only assure our own self-destruction.”

Berta Zúniga Cáceres

“I want a country where what the people say...think, and decide would be heard. A country where we’re not afraid to go out and protest. Where we don’t fear that someone would threaten, criminalize or kill us. A country where we can decide about the project of building this country. Where Indigenous peoples aren’t denied. Where women aren’t beaten, threatened, abused. Where we can dream and build our dreams for good. That’s what we would need to say this is a free country.”

Bertha Zúniga Cáceres is the general coordinator of COPINH. Bertha was born to what she’s described as “a people of great dignity and strength.” She also was born into struggle. She was just a toddler when her mother, Berta Cáceres, co-founded COPINH.

Growing up, with her siblings, Bertha went to marches and protests – she learned young how to best avoid breathing in tear gas – read about racism, and spent time in the Indigenous communities where her Mom was organizing. The experience forever shaped her. As she put it, “To make the ancestral struggles of the communities yours, is to assume a way of seeing and being in the world.” She learned early that in Honduras speaking truth to power is a dangerous act. Weeks after Bertha assumed leadership of COPINH, she along with two comrades, was attacked with rocks and machetes and their vehicle was nearly pushed off a cliff.

Like her mother, Bertha will not be silenced. As she wrote in a column published, in Spain’s El País, “If I could tell my mother anything now, it would be ‘don’t worry: your fight lives on in me, in my sisters and brother, and in our community.’”

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Miriam Miranda

“We want to generate life. We want to produce. We want to have things for the future generations. We want to fight so the young people don’t leave. We must build another Honduras.”

Miriam has spent her life defending the culture, the environment, and land rights of the Garífuna people. While studying in the university, Miriam began working with women in the economically marginalized neighborhoods on the outskirts of the capital, Tegucigalpa. She listened to their stories and talked to them about their rights. “That’s where my feminist consciousness was born,” Miriam explains. In 1978, the Black Fraternal Organization of Honduras (OFRANEH) was founded. Miriam has led OFRANEH in key organizing battles to reclaim their land. “In December of 2015 the Interamerican Court of Human Rights handed down two judgments in favor of Garifuna communities, finding that the Honduran government had violated collective ownership rights, and failed to provide judicial protection and adequate consultation. ‘It’s not only a victory for the Garifuna people,’ Miriam states. ‘I think it is a significant contribution of the Garifuna people and OFRANEH to the rights of Indigenous peoples throughout the world.” Despite continuous threats to her life, surviving a kidnapping (prevented by her ancestors according to Miriam), being arbitrarily detained and painted as a criminal by the mainstream media, Miriam presses on in her work and continues to be a source of inspiration for the 100,000 Garífuna people living in Honduras.

“We cannot accept nor perpetuate this supposed development which does not take into account or respect nature and the earth’s natural resources…We should and must have the obligation to leave water, air, food and secure the safety for our sons and daughters and other living things.”

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Wet'suwet'en

The Wet'suwet'en Hereditary Chiefs represent a governance system that predates colonization and the Canadian Indian Act which was created in an attempt to outlaw Indigenous peoples from their lands.

The Wet'suwet'en have continued to exercise their unbroken, unextinguished, and unceded right to govern and occupy their lands by continuing and empowering the clan-based governance system to this day. Under Wet'suwet'en law, clans have a responsibility and right to control access to their territories and protect them.

Unist'ot'en

unistoten.camp

The Unist’ot’en (C’ihlts’ehkhyu / Big Frog Clan) are the original Wet’suwet’en Yintah Wewat Zenli distinct to the lands of the Wet’suwet’en. Over time in Wet’suwet’en History, the other clans developed and were included throughout Wet’suwet’en Territories. The Unist’ot’en are known as the toughest of the Wet’suwet’en as their territories were not only abundant, but the terrain was known to be very treacherous. The Unist’ot’en recent history includes taking action to protect their lands from Lions Gate Metals at their Tacetsohlhen Bin Yintah, and building a cabin and resistance camp at Talbits Kwah at Gosnell Creek and Wedzin Kwah (Morice River which is a tributary to the Skeena and Bulkley River) from seven proposed pipelines from Tar Sands Gigaproject and LNG from the Horn River Basin Fracturing Projects in the Peace River Region.

Freda Huson

Freda Huson is the face of Indigenous sovereignty in Canada’s Northwest. After leaving a comfortable life on the reservation over a decade ago, she moved onto her ancestral lands to protect them from the invasion of multiple pipeline companies. As she coordinated hundreds of volunteers to build cabins, lodges, and a three-story healing center on her traditional territory, she was dubbed an “Aboriginal extremist” by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, and her home was labelled Canada’s “ideological and physical focal point of Aboriginal resistance to resource extraction projects.” Facing off with pipeline workers and police, a woman with no prior background in politics or public relations became the spokesperson for the Unist’ot’en people of the Wet’suwet’en Nation. It’s a role entrusted to her by the elders and highest ranking chiefs of her clan, who honour her by giving her the chief name Howilhkat.

Today Freda runs the land based healing programs in the Unist’ot’en Village, along with her niece Dr. Karla Tait, as a space for Indigenous people to heal from the trauma of colonization and reconnect with their cultural and ancestral practices. The ongoing trespass of industry and police however disrupt land based healing programs and continue to wage colonial violence on Indigenous lives.

Gidimt'en

yintahaccess.com

The Gidimt'en is one of five clans of the Wet’suwet’en Nation. The creation of the Gidimt'en Camp was announced in the Wet’suwet’en feast hall, with the support of all chiefs present.

The Gidimt’en Yintah Access Checkpoint is controlling access to Cas Yikh House territory within the larger Gidimt’en clan territory at 44.5 km on the Morice River FSR. The collective House Chiefs made the decision to support Gidimt’en Yintah Access December 14th, 2018.  The five clans ratified the decision in a bahlats (feast) in Witset on December 16th, 2018.

On Friday, December 21st, a judge granted Coastal Gas Link an extension to their injunction against individuals at the Unist’ot’en Camp, applying it to all resistance camps South of Houston.

In response to CGL’s injunction, the Gidimt'en Yintah Access Checkpoint was
established on the road leading to the Unist’ot’en Camp.

Jen Wickham

Jen is a member of Cas Yikh (Grizzly Bear House) in the Gidimt’en (Bear/Wolf) Clan of the Witsuwit’en people.
She is a poet, land defender, beader, mother and bad-ass aunty!

Jen has a Bachelor of Arts in Humanities from the University of Victoria with a major in English and a minor in Indigenous Studies, as well as a Bachelor of Education from the University of Northern British Columbia, focusing on secondary years. She is currently the Media Coordinator for the Gidimt’en Checkpoint, and working on a feature-length documentary film about Witsuwit’en sovereignty as a creative producer. She has broad experience working as an educator, poet, writer, a mental health advocate, and as a community support worker.

Jen is currently living in Gidimt’en yintah (territory) in what is now known as northern British Columbia. She loves to bead and spend time with family. She dreams of freedom for her people and bright shiny futures for all the young people!

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L'eau Est La Vie

facebook.com/LeauEstLaVie

L’eau Est La Vie Camp was founded as a floating pipeline resistance camp. Although they have no leaders, they value the voices of their indigenous, black, femme, and two spirit organizers. Through a population education campaign and over 100 plus direct actions, they fought in the bayous of Louisiana, Chata Houma Chitimacha Atakapa territory, to stop the Bayou Bridge Pipeline (BBP), an Energy Transfer Partners project and the tail end of the Dakota Access Pipeline. BBP resistance is a continuation of our fight in Standing Rock, and furthermore a continuation of the centuries old fight to protect sacred stolen territory. Today the camp continues to be a place of active resistance against corporate water polluters, as well as a source of regenerative agriculture, disaster mutual aid efforts, Indigenous cultural and knowledge sharing.

Cherri Foytlin

Cherri Foytlin co-founded the L’eau Est La Vie Camp. She’s a journalist, speaker and mother of six who lives in south Louisiana. She is out on a joy ride for justice. She is the author of “Spill It! The Truth About the Deep Water Horizon Oil Rig Explosion,” and regularly contributes to www.BridgetheGulfProject.org, the Huffington Post, and several local newspapers. She is active in the environmental justice movement of clean air, water and soil as a human rights issue.

Cherri takes us on her journey of moving to Louisiana with her husband for him to work on the oil rigs to becoming one of the leading activists in the fight to stop oil pipelines. After the BP oil spill hit, Cherri saw first hand the devastation that the environment and the people depending on that environment suffered. Instead of shrugging her shoulders and going on with her busy life, she took a hard look in the mirror and asked herself what did she do to cause that and what could she do to fix it. It was then that Cherri decided to embark on a radical journey to challenge our way of life, to help people see the harms in our current economic systems and dependence on extraction. She’s an advocate for a just transition to sustainable energy, but she never loses site of understanding what drives ordinary people to work in the industry and she leaves room for their humanity too. All the work that Cherri does to build a different world is rooted in love and love is a radical action especially when confronted by consistent campaigns by mainstream society that seek to dehumanize you. When Cherri was arrested on felony charges for non-violent direct actions, she pressed on. When Cherri was assaulted for her work to protect water and people’s ways of life, she pressed on. Both Cherri’s charm and actions inspire the radical imagination that is necessary to build a different world.

Anne White Hat

Anne White Hat is a member of the Aśke Gluwipi Tiośpaye of the Sicangu Lakota, one the Seven Council Fires of the Oćeti Śakowin. Miss Anne is a direct descendant of Chief Hollow Horn Bear. She is the proud mother of three, a community organizer, and founding member of the Indigenous Women’s Advisory Council of the L’eau Est La Vie -No Bayou Bridge Resistance Camp, Board Member of the Native American Women's Health Education and Resource Center, and member of Another Gulf Is Possible collaborative. White Hat Botanicals is her trade name featuring what she calls her ‘community determined’ botanicals and remedies. She is a grant writer by trade, community organizer out of love for her people, jack of all trades by hustle and blessed to work with plants for you.

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facebook.com/risestjames

Rise Saint James is a community group that fights for community, children, and health. Taking inspiration from her late father, who was a local NAACP leader, Sharon Lavigne founded the group. It’s located in the Saint James Parish community, a predominantly black community in the middle of what is now known as Death Alley (formerly Cancer Alley). It was founded with the goal of stopping two new chemical plants, Wanhua and Formosa, from coming in and further poisoning their community. A subsidiary of the Tawinese based Formosa Petrochemical Corp.--one of the largest chemical companies in the world--wants to build a $9.4 billion petrochemical complex in Saint James to make products like car casings, plastic bottles, grocery bags, drainage pipes and antifreeze, among other things.

Sharon Lavigne

Sharon Lavigne has lived all of her 68 years in St. James Parish, Louisiana. She can tell you about a time when the fig and pecan trees in her neighborhood produced plenty to eat and sell, and when her grandfather caught fish and shrimp in the Mississippi River. The land and the water surrounding it wasn’t always poison.

Today, Saint James is part of the 85-mile stretch along the Mississippi River between Baton Rouge and New Orleans filled with more than 100 petrochemical plants and refineries. Formerly known as “Cancer Alley” for the prevalence of cancer among its residents, the community now calls it “Death Alley.” Sharon too suffers from liver damage and other medical issues, including aluminum exposure.

In early 2018, when Sharon learned that Formosa Plastics Group, a Taiwanese supplier of plastic resins and petrochemicals, had announced that St. James Parish would be the site for a massive project that would create 14 chemical plants, she says she asked God for advice. “Do I need to sell my home? He said no. I said, ‘Do I need to sell my land, the land that You gave me?’ He said no.” “God told me to fight,” she continues. “And I’ve been fighting ever since. I’ve been going in the fast lane.”