CALL TO ACTION: A Red Deal for Farmington, NM

Melanie Yazzie

Sep 23, 2019 — 2 min read

Download this media release here.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

FARMINGTON, NM. THE RED NATION TO HOST A DAY OF PLANNING & ACTION TO SAVE THE EARTH

WHAT: The Red Deal Workshop & March

WHEN: Saturday, September 28, 2019 from 2pm-5pm

WHERE: Identity Inc., 204 W. Main St, Farmington, NM, 87401

WHY: In collaboration with American Indian Movement-Diné Territory, The Red Nation invites relatives, comrades and allied movements to a listening session and workshop to draft and implement the Red Deal, a movement-oriented document for climate justice and grassroots reform and revolution. After the listening session, we will take action and march to protest the ongoing bordertown violence of missing and murdered Diné relatives and continued colonial land grab in Dinétah.

Farmington is known as one of the deadliest bordertowns in the so-called United States, even though its economy depends almost entirely on Native labor and dollars. The term ‘Indian rolling’ was’ coined to describe the extreme violence that Native people experience in Farmington and other bordertowns. We recognize Indian rolling as the continuation of white supremacy, racism, and an attempt by the colonial US state to subjugate our Diné relatives within our own ancestral homelands.

In 1974 on the backroads of Chokecherry Canyon, three white high school students mutilated and murdered three Diné relatives. They were never charged for the killings. Native people in the region responded immediately to this injustice. In the summer of 1974, Native people crowded the streets of downtown Farmington and marched to protest bordertown violence. Following the march, a coalition of grassroots organizations published The Farmington Report. This 1975 report elaborates and documents the prejudice, maltreatment, and consistent injustice against Diné relatives in the Four Corners region.

Like the Diné freedom fighters of that generation, we recognize that anti-Indian racism and discrimination in bordertowns is grounded in resource extraction. Violence against the land is enacted by corporations like BHP Biliton, APS, uranium extraction, and fracking, all of which pose an ongoing threat to our health, rivers, surrounding landscape, and farming livelihood. These industries poison the water and the land, all while operating out of bordertowns like Farmington where local executives live in mansions overlooking the wasteland they have carved out of our beloved homelands.

According to a recent study by the Sovereign Bodies Institute, Farmington is one of ten cities with the highest number of missing and murdered Indigenous womxn and girls not in law enforcement records. The time is now to speak up against this blatant injustice against our Diné relatives and homelands. Join us!

Read here to learn more about the Red Deal.

Twitter: @The_Red_Nation

Instagram: @therednationmovement

Facebook: The Red Nation

Email: editortherednation@gmail.com

Facebook Event Page: The Red Deal Workshop & Action-Farmington

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