We see these acculturative and assimilative forces that they really stand in contrast to the decolonizing insights of Indigenous elders such as these Yakama women. They described that the historical content these Indigenous elders as an invasion leading to unrelenting outbreaks of disease and forms of cultural genocide. This idea of invasion and resistance to subjugation is captured in Indigenous histories. These oral narratives presented their own versions of messianic visions of healing, they provided ritual forms of deliverance that recenter traditions in a storied resistance to oppression. Pictured here then are some examples of this retelling which were then so easily dismissed by dominant culture, say simply mythic and naive on the top the Cargo Cult, the building of the plane by native peoples in the South Pacific and the sense of the prosperity coming as planes landed and cargo was unpacked and these Pacific Islanders re-imaging their own history of what's happening and developing rituals that sustained them and their resilience and so also the Mau Mau rebellions in Kenya in Central Africa. The stories told among African peoples of what this rebellion was about and what it was that the people were trying to preserve in the face of colonialism and finally the Ghost Dance again the image of the tragic deaths at wounded knee of the Lakota peoples coming to Sun Dance but if you look at the image you see a history here and Indigenous people on the Northern plains who are recovering a sense of dignity in their performance, it may seem like an apocalyptic statement that the end is coming, but for these people they were rolling back the world to restore the buffalo, restore their ancestors. These are strikingly different expressions and these three examples are all ways in which Indigenous peoples were telling their histories through the power of story and ritual. The mythic Cargo Cults, as we've said of the South Pacific, they re-centered ideas about materiality and prosperity. The Mau Mau rebellion among Kikuyu and other African peoples asserted land, freedom, and self-governance against British colonialism and the revitalizing rituals of the Ghost Dance among many Northern plains and other Indigenous peoples of North America, it replaced ancestors and Buffalo at the center of their story. These forms of ritualized resistance reasserted Indigenous knowledge, culture, sovereignty and rights in the face of exploitation. This spiritual resistance to outsider exploitation and domination continues into the present around the world. Here we see the Penan, Kelabit peoples and their blockades as they watched the cutting of their homelands to make room for mono-culture palm oil plantations. This is really a powerful and very tragic image we have here of people who stood up for their homeland and watched it being cut in front of their eyes. Indigenous leaders and elders have argued for the rights of their communities from the earliest encounters. Their legacy of resistance and reassertion has laid the groundwork for contemporary restoration of Indigenous rights labeled terrorists and often criminalized by those who would silence them. Indigenous leaders now express their struggle in the language systems of ecological sciences, international politics as well as their own Indigenous thought and lifeways. The rights of Indigenous peoples to their land and culture has been more fully recognized in global documents such as the Earth Charter of 2000, the United Nation's Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous People of 2007, which we have earlier considered, and the Universal Declaration of the Rights of Mother Earth in 2010. As we see in the Earth Charter, the call to affirm the right of Indigenous peoples to their spirituality, knowledge, lands and resources and to their related practice of sustainable livelihoods that this statement comes from the guidance of Indigenous elders themselves, the participation of Indigenous elders in the framing and the development of the Earth Charter. Also all these other documents they come out of the wisdom and the insights of Indigenous peoples is now expressed in the legal systems and the languages of the nation-states in which they find themselves. Using those expressions, native peoples have not abandoned their own Indigenous lifeways and symbol systems and knowledge path. Among Indigenous communities around the world, restoration is now manifest in diverse pathways of survival, self-determination, and recovery of responsibilities. Indigenous knowledge for restoration will be an important feature of the United Nation's Decade of Ecosystem Restoration beginning in 2021. Restoration for Indigenous peoples include survival not simply as physical individuals and communities, but also languages and lifeways of art, of ritual, and of spiritual vitality. Survival for Indigenous people, we might say surviving it's to use the phrase of Anishinaabe writer. It's inherently connected to their kinship with all life, such as Salmon, which we see here in this moment of resistance and restoration. We find these individuals that are pictured here, they stand for the alliance of their tribal nations with state governments and with local environmental groups for Salmon Restoration. This is alliance building that is happening throughout the Pacific Northwest, it's happening throughout South America, North America, throughout all the Indigenous regions that we will have occasion to cover in this course. In many of them it's supports river restoration, dam removal, and revitalization of Indigenous peoples. We have at the end this consideration that the self-determination among Indigenous peoples restores voice and participation of the people in decision-making. These are growing movements of restoration around the world by Indigenous peoples drawing on their traditional environmental knowledge. These include forms of responsibility for rivers, forests, fish, and the biodiversity of life all recognized as expressions of the interdependence of life. Responsibility among Indigenous community, it's circle again and it comes to the foreign, it comes to other non-Indigenous communities, now it's coming full circle. Just as Indigenous peoples recover sovereignty and voice to listen to and speak with the living world, so also they are with non-Indigenous people exploring with them that recovery, a voice to speak with the living world.
