FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

AIM-WEST presents

PO Box 410534

SF CA 94141

Contact: 415-577-1492

Email: eltonyg@earthlink.net  

“LIBERATION DAY” at Ocean Beach

AMERICAN INDIAN MOVEMENT-WEST, AIM-WEST, invites the general public on Monday morning, February 15, 2010 to join us at Ocean Beach in San Francisco from 9 am to 12 noon, to acknowledge “Liberation Day” as a time for cultural recovery and struggle for self-determination.

Mr. Leonard Foster, Navajo/Dine Nation, Wounded Knee veteran, AIM activist and spiritual advisor, is the invited guest and Master of Ceremony. We stand in solidarity with “Liberation Day” and with the Pine Ridge Tribal Council resolution in South Dakota who acknowledge the occupation that occurred at Wounded Knee, which began February 27, 1973. We honor these veterans and those who struggle to retain their traditional homelands, their culture and spiritual freedoms. (The gathering at Ocean Beach located across from Beach Chalet restaurant, was specially considered to bring blessing and attention to land, environment, threat to ocean, sea and animal life, rising water levels and threat to islands, and climate and global warming).

Although February 15^th is designated in the U.S. as ‘President’s Day’ (holiday) it also provides an opportunity to cast aside myths and instead raise historical awareness, and provides access to networking and building alliances with and between Indigenous communities, supporters and the youth, connecting issues with peoples being directly affected by colonialism, racism and poverty.

Drummers, dancers and singers are welcome. A fire ceremony with tobacco and sage offerings will be conducted in recognition of the many American Indian nations across the Americas, who struggle in these times of climate change/systems change, and to support their traditional and cultural way of life. The gathering will include invited speakers with a view to the seven generations, address violation of treaty rights, and unratified treaties, political prisoners like Leonard Peltier, climate change and global warming, and desecration of sacred sites.

The public is reminded the name of San Francisco is called in Muwekma Ohlone language “Chut’chuii” and is still alive and well. We assert also the Muwekma Ohlone representatives should be included in all future pertinent decisions affecting development projects in THE CITY! We also demand US President Obama to sign the UN General Assembly “Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples” adopted in 2007.

Special attention will be to address the boycott of the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, B.C. “No Olympics on Stolen Native Land”. Indigenous peoples are impacted by the long-term plunder of their lands, disproportionately experiencing poverty in urban areas, and are the primary targets of repressive policing and surveillance resulting in countless arrests. The 2010 Winter Olympics will take place on unceded Indigenous land from February 12-28 2010.

(gather at John F. Kennedy Drive/ The Great Hiway across from Beach Chalet Restaurant or take Muni bus # 5 Fulton Street) in San Francisco. The press is invited. A Mayan ceremony will open the occasion at 8 am.

Evening activities February 15th with special guests:

Bahai’i Center, 170 Valencia Street, San Francisco from 6 to 9pm-films:

“Broken Rainbow” Directed by Maria Florio and Victoria Mudd. Academy award best documentary.

In 1974, Congress passed a law forcing 10,000 Navajo Indians to relocate from their ancestral land to depressing tract housing in the Arizona desert. They were given until 1986 to finish the task, and despite testimonials before Congress and pleas to reconsider, the forced move went ahead as scheduled, a process which did much to complete the destruction of a people’s tradition that had been underway for over a century. The story also brings us into the uranium mines of the Southwest, where hundreds of workers slaved away while breathing in toxic gases that led to lung cancer (with no compensation of any kind, of course). And Peabody Coal, that beneficent entity that sought only profit, helped contribute to widespread air pollution and water contamination, which resulted in rates of birth defects that are twice the national average.

“The Earth is Crying” (75 minutes 1986, Dutch, English)

Five hundred years after Columbus, four Native Americans ‘discover’ the Netherlands and visit a nuclear power station, an anthropological museum, a zoo and a peace camp. With Leslie Marmon Silko, Floyd Red Crow Westerman, Bill Wahpepah and John Graham.

Donation at the door, lucky $ 7! Nobody turned away/wheel chair accesible/refreshments/snacks/vendors/raffle/speakers/announcements!