National Day of Mourning speech by The Red Nation

The Red Nation attended this year’s 55th annual National Day of Mourning on November 28, 2024, in Plymouth, Massachusetts. In 1970, Indigenous people and organizations of New England and the American Indian Movement protested at the settler colonial monuments of the Mayflower II and Plymouth Rock, disrupting and disproving the myth of so-called Thanksgiving and providing a counter-narrative that cuts the myths of colonization right to the core.

For more information on the event, visit the United American Indians of New England website.

Listen to this week's episode of The Red Nation Podcast to hear other National Day of Mourning speeches. Watch our report from the day of on TikTok, Youtube, and Instagram!

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The following is a speech written collectively by members of The Red Nation and read by Demetrius Johnson. Watch on TikTok, Instagram, and Youtube!

Speech:

Greetings my relatives. We are honored to be back here representing The Red Nation on the 55th year of the National Day of Mourning. The Red Nation has had the honor of speaking on this platform before in 2017 and 2022. Thank you for inviting us back. 

The Red Nation is an Indigenous liberation organization and this year is our 10 year anniversary! Our name is derived from a Lakota term “Oyate Luta” which means “people who are made from the red clay of the earth.” A Red Nation. Red also signifies our leftist political orientation. Red is a powerful color that represents courage and spiritual strength. “Oyate Luta” also represents unity. It doesn’t imply “people” in the plural sense of many individuals; it implies “people” as in “one people, one nation.” 

My Lakota relative and comrade, Levi, explained to us: For Lakota’s Red is the color of the North. North brings the cold, harsh winds of the winter season. These winds are cleansing. They cause the leaves to fall and the earth to rest under a blanket of snow. If someone has the ability to face these winds like the buffalo with its head into the storm, they have learned patience and endurance. Generally, this direction stands for hardships and discomfort. Therefore, north represents the trials people must endure and the cleansing they must undergo.

In the early days, we rose to combat Bordertown Violence and the sinister ways it manifests on our lands. Border towns are settlements that encompass our reservations - where Indigenous people routinely face discrimination from settlers and settler owned businesses, sleep unsheltered on stolen land, and have to fight for our right to simply exist. In 2014 our beloved relatives Allison Gorman and Kee Thompson, also known as Cowboy and Rabbit, were brutally murdered by settlers while they slept. The only rationale that we can use to understand this senseless violence is the same rationale that has been used by settler colonies to justify their countless crimes against our people. An ideology which persists throughout this crumbling empire; that merely existing as an Indigenous person within settler occupied Tiwa territory is deemed a crime worthy of death. 

We rejected this racist ideology back then. We took the streets to demand justice. We called on our relatives. We spoke out and from that point on, our mission has sought to center justice and dignity for all Indigenous people of this earth. We are Indigenous feminists, internationalists, revolutionary socialists and Anti-imperialists. 

That is why we are here at this 55th national day of mourning, because those who were there in 1970 laid the liberatory groundwork for people like us, like you and your children to show up to demand, witness, and speak truth. 

In the last year we have seen how the settler colonial states manifests themselves. We have seen how mainstream media is used by the settler states to justify, perpetuate, then make invisible ~yet again~ a genocide in Palestine without consequence. We have seen how the truth is suppressed and how journalists are slaughtered by the dozens. Even they realize that the truth is our greatest weapon. Our power lies in our words. That is why this day is so important- The National Day of Mourning embodies an Indigenous counter narrative that dissolves settler lies. Today, with tongues like sharpened iron we will cut open colonialism and expose its rotten core. 

On November 4, 2023, The Red Nation traveled to Washington DC for the first national march for Palestine, and it is here that we proclaimed: 

We know the entire history and future of Palestine because we have lived it. We endure the settler colonial project that calls itself the United States. We survived the elimination and removal of our ancestors. We are in our fifth century of resistance and we know that Palestine’s future is a certain future because we are still here!

Wapnanoag people are still here!

And it is here that we shall all remain.

In these dark times of great suffering, where it is difficult to keep despair at bay, we remind our relatives that colonialism is falling, crumbling under the weight of its own conceit. The fort is breached, and the wagons are burning! The end of colonialism nears because the end of colonialism is inevitable! 

The United States wages endless wars to maintain its position as the supreme settler colony of the world. Ours is the oldest struggle against U.S. colonialism. Now is the chance to redeem your humanity, settlers of our stolen lands, by standing with the Indigenous people of the world. The end of U.S. imperialism is the only solution—for us, for Palestine, and for the world!

The humble people of the Earth have spoken! There is no place for colonialism on Mother Earth. For the Earth to live, colonialism must die! A free Palestine frees us all to build a future of peace and equality. Today, we join our Palestinian relatives in a righteous struggle to author a new society.

To our relatives in Gaza, we say K’é bee nihídził—together we are strong! May our message carry far across the sea: Gaza, Gaza, you will see, Palestine will truly be free!

Today, we deliver a devastating blow to colonialism. As Indigenous people of Turtle Island, we proclaim that decolonization and land back are the only forms of justice for the crimes of settler colonialism.

Today, as we stand together in solidarity, we affirm that the fight for Indigenous liberation is far from over. It is our collective responsibility to resist erasure, to amplify Indigenous voices, and to ensure that future generations inherit a world where dignity, sovereignty, and justice are realities—not dreams.

We leave here not just with grief but with determination. As Indigenous peoples, we know that our ancestors survived centuries of violence so that we could be here today. Their strength lives in us, and their fight continues through us.

Together, let us carry this message of resistance and solidarity forward: for the Wampanoag people, for Indigenous nations across Turtle Island, for Palestine, and for all oppressed peoples fighting for liberation. We will never give up, and we will never back down. Until liberation for all!

Ahéhee’ (Thank you)!