By RELLANA SOPHROSYNE and INNES COREA
At noon on Nov. 27, the National Day of Mourning, hosted by United American Indians of New England (UAINE), brought together Indigenous voices from across the world. On top of the hill overlooking Plymouth Rock, a crowd of over 2000 heard speeches from Indigenous peoples of the United States, Mexico, and Palestine.
The event continued with an energetic march through the town of Plymouth, with Indigenous community members taking the lead and non-Indigenous attendees following in solidarity. The march returned to gather next to Plymouth Rock to hear more speeches on the struggles of Haitian, Dominican, and Indigenous Women. The crowd marched to hear the final speeches from Wampanoag Tufts students outside the Plymouth courthouse.
In the first gathering, co-leader of UAINE and two-spirit person, Mahtowin Munro gave an inspiring speech, bringing to light Indigenous issues and their connections with other struggles in the U.S. and internationally. This included a variety of topics, budget cuts on food and health-care benefits, attacks on trans and two-spirit peoples, and the erasure of Indigenous history and voices by the federal government, including the removal of information regarding murdered and missing Indigenous women from the Department of Justice’s website.
There was also a strong call for uniting the Indigenous communities of the U.S. with those internationally and for all Native peoples to oppose ICE raids and deportations. Mahtowin stated, “One reason, but not the only reason, is that many of the people being directly impacted are our Indigenous relatives who come from Mexico, Guatemala, and many other countries. Who are the pilgrims and their descendants to decide who should live or study here?”
Continuing, Mahtowin made it clear that this solidarity also applied to the victims and survivors of imperialist wars, citing the aggression against Palestine and Venezuela: “No boots on the ground! No bombs in the air! U.S. out of everywhere!” The sentiment was felt deeply throughout the crowd, with cheering and spontaneous “Long Live Palestine” chants throughout. Near the wrap-up of the speech, Mahtowin hammered the necessity for international cooperation, commenting, “Resistance is our survival, and that resistance cannot exist without solidarity.”
For decades, Leonard Peltier has given a written statement to be read out at the National Day of Mourning. Continuing the excitement of his release earlier this year, this year’s event was the first where Leonard’s words were heard from his own mouth. A prerecorded video filmed at Turtle Mountain Reservation, where he is being kept in home confinement, was played for the crowd and posted online here.
In this speech for the crowd, Leonard spoke on his condition as he acclimates to being out of prison and on his excitement to be able to speak directly to his community. He continued by discussing international liberation, relating the fight for Indigenous communities domestically to those abroad: “For years, they tried to hide what they did to [Native Americans] and keep […] the public from learning about it. We wanted to learn. Our word was we wanted to expose them so they wouldn’t be able to do it again. Well, they’re doing it again. Look what they’re doing in Palestine. Look what they’re doing in Ukraine. Look [what] they’re trying in Iran.”
Lea Kayali, a member of the Palestinian Youth Movement, and a previous speaker for the Day of Mourning, described the act of mourning as a collective response to trauma, and spoke of colonialism as a thief of this process. She said that this is currently evidenced by the unremitting genocide in Palestine, as continuously perpetrated by the colonizer state of Israel, in which the relentless onslaught by the “colonial violence factory” attempts to force us into capitulation. She explained that the “ceaselessness of violence […] forces us to count the mounting bodies, rather than visit the old graves.”
Kayali connected this to the exhaustion we feel in the face of unceasing oppressions, yet called on us to recognize that, despite our exhaustion, we are winning against these oppressions through energetic, collective resistance both historical and present. Kayali grounded this both in the victories we’ve claimed, most notably in context to the Day of Mourning the release of Leonard Peltier, and the obstacles in front of us. These include the immense expenditures on AI propaganda hailing from the prevailing imperialist powers. The fact that so much resources are used for blurring reality points to the increasing desperation of our oppressors.
Other speakers called for the support of Indigenous people in Haiti, Brazil, Venezuela, Ukraine, Sudan, Congo, and any fighting for their homelands. Emphasizing the necessity of international solidarity, and the importance of maintaining our historical memory.
The overarching perspectives of this year’s National Day of Mourning called for international solidarity with Indigenous peoples in Palestine, Ukraine, and all Indigenous liberation struggles everywhere. Speakers such as Lea Kayali further emphasized colonialism and capitalism’s interconnectivity, speaking to the necessity of these intertwined systems of simultaneous erasure.
How to put theory into practice was on the minds of speakers and attendees throughout the Day of Mourning. This gave weight to the characterization of NDOM as an energetic, communal, and grounding event for people—one that makes space for participants to examine their relations with the land they live on and to reflect on their interactions and solidarity with marginalized peoples. The National Day of Mourning remains a vibrant, steadying reminder that our collective power, future, and resistance must lie in the intersectional, internationalist movements of working and oppressed people with strong Indigenous participation and leadership.
The authors are members of UMass Young Socialists.