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Turtle Island is in New Zealand complete with radical activists. But the connections are global.
For example:
Cozca Pierces the Colonial Veil – Portrait of an Indigenous Freedom Fighter on Turtle Island
From Standing Rock to urban resistance, an unflinching Indigenous land defender confronts colonial power while facing relentless persecution - and her story demands to be heard.
Cozca is a walking refusal to assimilate into the violent settler-colonial project called “America.”
Cozca (Tracy Molina) is an Indigenous land defender who grew up for 20 years on what was formerly the Oregon Coast Reservation in the Siletz tribal community. She is Chichimec, Nahua, Mexica, and European, and while she is not an enrolled member of any federally recognized tribe, she has blood relatives enrolled in the Siletz tribal community. Cozca lived for 17 years on Yakama and Warm Springs reservations, marrying into the Longhouse (Washat) family.
Cozca carries with her deep and urgently relevant movement knowledge spanning the Oregon Indian Wars after the Oregon Trail was established, to Standing Rock in 2016 and beyond. She draws from her relatives and mentors in the American Indian Movement, including those who participated in the 1973 Occupation of Wounded Knee and the 1975 Incident at Oglala Jumping Bull Ranch. Cozca is an unfettered force that pierces through the colonial matrix with her unapologetic refusal to cede a single inch to the settler state.
Everything changed for Cozca after Standing Rock: The land defenders gave her an eagle feather as a promise - that if they needed her to come back she would, but for now she and others would take the “Water is Life” message back to where they were from. Cozca has carried the message with her diligently, committing herself even more fully to the struggle against white supremacy and settler-colonialism over the past decade.
Cozca’s defiance as an Indigenous freedom fighter resisting ongoing genocide on her ancestral land has made her a notorious nuisance to colonial authorities, who target Cozca with sustained patterns of harassment, abuse, assault, and incarceration. Police have beaten and arrested her at a slew of actions where she was protesting ICE, the Proud Boys, and police institutions. Cozca is not someone who merely shows up to campaigns and rallies as they trendily pass by — her life’s purpose organizing toward Land Back and global Indigenous sovereignty resides in her spiritual core, her community, her ancestors, and her creations, moving through and with her wherever she goes.
(etc. etc….)
https://theconnections.substack.com/p/cozca-pierces-the-colonial-veil-portrait