American Indian Culture and Research Journal

It’s getting hotter, harder to breathe, Why should I calm down, I know I’ve been deceived. Like oceans of regret, all these questions rise. Will they drown with our mistakes, or will they learn to fly? She said it’s over, overwhelming. We’re past the breaking point, the breaking point again. It’s getting hotter, and harder to see. Balancing the contradictions, how much do we really need? Standing on the broken edges of apathy, Occupied by your destruction, your waves crashing over me. So restless, she’s shaking, Can you feel her temperature rising? We’re so complacent and apathetic, while she’s given us everything. —Blackfire (Diné Nation) On 1 August 2007, Indigenous nations from within the United States, Canada, Australia, and Aotearoa (New Zealand) signed a treaty to found the United League of Indigenous Nations (figs. 1, 2, and 3). The Treaty of Indigenous Nations offers a historic opportunity for sovereign Indigenous governments to build intertribal cooperation outside the framework of the colonial settler states. Just as the Pacific Rim states have cooperated to limit Native sovereign rights and build polluting industries, Indigenous nations can cooperate to decolonize ancestral territories and protect their common natural resources for future generations.