And So, So this is a special episode of the Red Nation podcast. We are here with

Leanne Simpson and O'okie Malay to discuss a letter that was signed by 132 indigenous activists and

intellectuals condemning the continued Israeli genocide ongoing in Gaza.

By the time this airs, I'm sure the death toll will continue to mount pending a ceasefire.

But before we start, I just wanted to turn it over to we can start with Leanne if you want to just do an introduction and maybe why we put together this letter as indigenous activists, intellectuals, and scholars.

Sure, Anikinuaya.

It's so wonderful to be here and meeting

this present moment with some of the fierce resistance that I think has gone into the last 400 years of resistance and of fighting colonialism on Turtle Island.

And so I think myself, I was in Palestine in May

as part of the Palestinian Festival for Literature,

traveling around the West Bank in 48. I had a very visceral

reaction to what I saw and the people that I was visiting with, the homes that I

went into, it reminded me of being of being home it reminded me

of being on reserves and reservations the settler colonialism was very familiar to. I felt like I was thought I was going to learn about Palestinian resistance and the Palestinian history, but what I learned was about myself, I learned about

colonialism. You could see every stage of colonialism taking place in a very

small geographic area at the same time.

So it was like a collapsing of time in a way, seeing what my ancestors would have faced,

knowing what I faced, but also very much accelerated and with one of the most powerful armies on the planet.

So watching what happened on October 7th again was in education when I saw breaking through that wall in Gaza and feeling

those first few seconds of freedom and what was possible. Because I think I didn't imagine that that was

possible and that was a teaching to myself to dream bigger and to and to find a way

over all of those walls that the colonialism sets up.

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