American Indian Airwaves

The “Peace and Dignity Journeys” is an indigenous and First Nation ceremonial run that invites the participation of Native and non-Native individuals committed to the survival of Native American cultures, nations, and the uniting of the indigenous peoples across Turtle Island (North, Central and South America). With its roots in traditions of running as prayer and as an expression of indigenous cu...

With Hollywood film production costs easily exceeding millions of dollars per film, and given the constant marginalization, erasures, and stereotypes about Native Americans and Indigenous peoples for more than a century, as well as the film industry’s chronic unwillingness to unconditionally support an abundance of Native American film productions, distributions, and exhibitions, many Native Ameri...

Once numbering at least 40-60 million, settler colonial men once hunted the buffalo through the train windows for sport – who had the most kills. By 1890, however, there were less than 1,000 buffalo with only 23 surviving in Yellowstone’s Pelican Valley. Today, in Yellowstone National Park, the buffalo are trapped for slaughter and quarantine. In fact, once migrating into Montana, the buffalo are...

In a coordinated effort between several federal and local government agencies and private contractors, more than 400,000 tons of toxic and hazards waste are planning to be removed from Lahaina and transported to the temporary debris storage site in Olowalu. The toxic and hazardous waste includes high levels of household waste, asbestos, arsenic, lead, and other toxins. Meanwhile an emergency decla...

How does history relate to the present? What is settler colonialism? How are the two related to each other and what is the connection between the past to the present? What is Zionism? What is the Doctrine of Discovery/Dominion? Moreover, how does this relate to Indigenous peoples across Turtle Island? What are the parallels between the legacy of settler colonialism in what is presently the United...

Thursday, 01/25/2024, on American Indian Airwaves “Defiling Mother Earth: Stopping the Mountain Valley Pipeline” Today on American Indian Airwaves listeners will hear an update the $6.6 billion Mountain Valley Pipeline construction struggles and how the Mountain Valley Pipeline, LLC, a joint venture of several companies operating in the extractive industries, could desecrate Native American sacred...

Today on American Indian Airwaves, we will hear highlights on what happened at the 30th Anniversary of the Beginning of the War Against Oblivion, the armed uprising of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) on January 1st, 1994, against the colonial state of Mexico and global capitalism. The anniversary-gathering was organized by thousands of Zapatista support bases, Mayan men, women, bo...

Diné ‘defender of the sacred, artist, activist, musician, author, land defender, Warrior,’ Klee Benally Walks On or transitioned on the morning of December 31, 2023. He was 48 years old and from what the place of many houses in what is known as Flagstaff, AZ. He was from the Tódích’íi’nii (Bitter Water People clan and born for the Wandering People clan). Klee Benally was a long-time advocate in co...

December 29th of every year marks another anniversary of the Wound Knee Massacre of 1890 and the Occupation of Wounded Knee occurred from 02/27/1973 to 05/08/1973. The Wounded Knee Massacre of 1890 is the result of the United States (U.S.) 7th Calvary stopped Miniconjou and Lakota Ghost Dancers and community members from returning home to Pine Ridge in what is now known as South Dakota. The Would...

So far, 2023 has been a remarkable year for Indigenous musicians across Turtle Island. Many Native Americans bands, First Nation’s musicians, and Indigenous peoples from the Siberian region have released new music over the past several months, and two different First Nations bands from Australia were recognized at the 19th National Indigenous Music Awards on August 12th, 2023 – one band inducted i...

Since 1970, Indigenous people & their allies annually gather on Cole's Hill in Plymouth, MA to commemorate a National Day of Mourning on the US Thanksgiving holiday. Many Native American peoples do not celebrate the arrival of the Pilgrims & other European settlers. In fact, the settler colonial Thanksgiving Day is a reminder of the genocide of millions of Native American peoples, the theft of Ind...

With Lake Mead, Lake Powell, and the Colorado River decades-plus declining water levels with a one-year reprieve last year, and an ever-increasing demand for the water in the living Colorado River over the centuries by the states of California, Nevada, and Arizona, agricultural businesses and other commercial industries, Native American nations have historically been denied their fundamental treat...

With 1,272 Buffalo relations killed in 2023 so far in part due to the Yellowstone National Park Service buffalo management practices, the Yellowstone National Park Service just released its Draft Environmental Impact Statement for Buffalo Management which will be more detrimental to the Buffalo. Moreover, over the years, the Yellowstone National Park Service along with state of Montana, Montana ra...

Both guests for today’s program chronicle the historical legacies of Indigenous/Latine’ struggles and experiences in the Kumeyaay traditional territories now known as San Diego, CA. Both guests discuss theater, Spanish settler colonialism, the Indigeneity, the dismantling and resistance of Chicano masculinity, the interrelations between the urban population and Indigenous peoples, the importance o...

In the region of the Lacandon forest in Chiapas, Mexico, Indigenous peoples throughout the region continue experiencing even more escalated state-military-cartel violence within systemically and vehement capitalized world. The cartel-state-corporate violence has increased substantially over the past six months and Indigenous peoples are responding. Our guest for today provides an update on numerou...

On June 10th, 2022, a Bolivian court sentenced former de facto president of Bolivia, Jeanine Áñez, to 10 years in prison. Áñez assumed power during a violent and illegal coup in November 2019 that ousted the country’s popular Indigenous president, Evo Morales, sending him into exile, and killing over 37 people. During Anez’s short term as the illegal president, her government killed dozens of civi...

Thursday, 8/31/2023, on American Indian Airwaves on KPFK, 7pm to 8pm (PCT) “The Living Histories of Lahaina and Self Determination for Hawaiian Nation and Cannabis: From Gold Rush to Green Rush” Part 1: The living histories of Lahaina are told through the intergenerational means of passing traditional stories, songs, language, and life from one Kanaka Maoli (Native Hawaiian) generation to the next...

On August 8th, 2023, a deadly fire swept through the Hawaiian town of Lahaina, destroying nearly everything in its path. The number of lives taken has reached at least 115 as of 8/22/2023, more than 800 people are still missing, and more than 2,000 structures were destroyed. Eight hours before a deadly fire swept through the Hawaiian town of Lahaina, a small brush fire broke out on the edge of a r...

One day before International Indigenous Peoples Day, President Joe Biden created on August 8th, 2023, a new national monument in Arizona covering close to a million acres of lands surrounding the Grand Canyon important and sacred to nearby Native American nations. The Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni (Ancestral Footprints of the Grand Canyon National Monument) is the fifth designated monument by Biden i...

Today on American Indian Airwaves, a renewed effort towards seeking freedom for international, political Indigenous prisoner Leonard Peltier, who since 1977 wrongfully continues serving two consecutive life sentences in a federal penitentiary despite ongoing severe health issues, plus more here on American Indian Airwaves. Leonard Peltier is from the Anishnaabe and Lakota Nations and was unjustly...

Part 1: In the United States, American Indian/Alaskan Native and Native American peoples experience higher rates of violence than any other demographic. In fact, Native American women and girls are disproportionately affected by the violence. For example, a 2016 study by the National Institute of Justice estimated that 84 percent of American Indian and Alaska Native women have experienced violence...

During the Red Power Movement, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), as part of its COINTELPRO (counterintelligence program), actively surveilled, infiltrated, and attempted to neutralize Native American activists and the American Indian Movement (AIM). With the establishment of the Los Angeles Chapter of the American Indian Movement in Box Canyon, Ventura County, CA back in mid-1970s, the FB...

Over the past several months under the Biden Administration, several fossil fuel mega projects or “carbon bombs” have been approved with a mega gold mining project currently under proposal and in opposition by numerous Alaska Native organizations, communities, and nations. For instance, on March 13th, 2023, the U.S. Interior Department approved the ConocoPhillips $8 billion Willow oil and gas dril...

Indigenous peoples are approximately 5% of the world’s population, manage at least 25% of the world’s land surfaces, 40% of the world’s protected areas, and steward about 80% of the world’s biodiversity. Each year Indigenous peoples from scores of different nations and cultures across Mother Earth convene at the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (UNPFII) in the settler colonial c...

”United Nation Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues 22nd Session: 17-28 April 2023 Highlights on Indigenous Peoples, human health, planetary and territorial health and climate change: a rights-based approach” Indigenous peoples are approximately 5% of the world’s population, manage at least 25% of the world’s land surfaces, 40% of the world’s protected areas, and steward about 80% of the world’s b...