Recently, the UNM Kiva Club and the New Mexico Genders and Sexualities Alliance (NMGSAN) met to discuss Standing Rock. While we know we experience marginalization, we also grow from the cultural resilience that has been passed down from our ancestors. We know that by coming together we can both speak to the violence that affects all of our communities and support our indigenous two-spirit warriors. Our struggles are intertwined. We have chosen to make a collective statement to articulate the importance of this issue.
The New Mexico Genders and Sexualities Alliance Network stands in support of our indigenous two- spirit family! Our histories are tied together by historical genocide and the ongoing brutality our communities face. Clean water and sacred religious spaces are a vital necessity for all people, and the blatant disregard that the US government and big businesses hold for indigenous communities is intolerable. Our two-spirit community are vital protectors at Standing Rock. We will stand together against this threat to sacred ground and life while also helping to defend Standing Rock in any way that we can. We are committed to defending the land, water and sacred practices that support our two-spirit family.
As resource extraction developments encroach upon Native lands, there has been a clear correlation of the violence that flourishes in nearby border towns and reservations with corporate trespassing in the name of greed. This violence impacts women and members of the LBGTQ2S+ community specifically. Whether It be in the form of further impoverishment due to the lack of or corruption of basic resources, or to the way addiction and suicide rates are shown to skyrocket after indigenous communities come into contact with extractive projects; it is most often feminine presenting and non-binary people who suffer the burden of this violence. Lakota and Dakota people have long battled extraction corporations, the army corps of engineers, and the US federal government for generations in an effort to protect their sacred way of life which honors feminine power. Patriarchy is nurtured when corporate interests successfully impede the right to life, land, and the sacred. It is the correlation between patriarchal mindsets and the desecration of sacred spaces that directly harms and dehumanizes our two-spirit relatives.
This is not just a Standing Rock issue, or indigenous issue, or a two-spirit issue. This issue affects all of us. Having access to clean water is a basic human right. Water is life!
Let’s rise up and bring healing to our communities. Let’s remember that we cannot be buried and forgotten, for we are seeds and water is our life! #NoDAPL #TwoSpirit
In solidarity and comradeship!
-The New Mexico GSA Network
