Beating Hearts Press: Indigenous Titles

INDIGENOUS

Works by, for and about Indigenous peoples (not forgetting that we are ALL Indigenous to somewhere) and their struggles. In the words of American Indian author and activist Ward Churchill:
"Let's imagine that the United States [or any colonial nation state] as a whole were somehow transformed into an entity defined by the parity of its race, class, and gender relations, its embrace of unrestricted sexual preference, its rejection of militarism in all forms, and its abiding concern with environmental protection (I know, I know, this is a sheer impossibility, but that's my point). When all is said and done, the society resulting from this scenario is still, first and foremost, a colonialist society, an imperialist society in the most fundamental sense possible and with all that this implies. This is true because the society does nothing at all to address the fact that whatever is happening happens on someone else's land, not only without their consent, but through an adamant disregard for their rights to the land. Hence, all it means is that the immigrant or invading population has rearranged its affairs in such a way as to make itself more comfortable at the continuing expense of indigenous people."
Thus we can conclude that, if we claim to take liberation seriously, we must make the decolonization of our lives and landbases, and supporting indigenous struggles in general, the highest of our priorities.

Check out our links and reading library for more info, and our Anti-Civilization section for some related reading.

500 Years of Indigenous Resistance. $3
A5 zine. 58 pages.
Sadly, this isn't a comprehensive account of 500 years of global Indigenous resistance - which could no doubt fill several books - but of 500 years of Indigenous resistance on the North American continent alone, from 1492 to 1992. That said, this is a crucial historical chronology of resistance to what amounts, by any interpretation, to protracted genocide, from the arrival of Columbus to the Indigenous struggles of the early 1990's.

False Promises: An Indigenist Perspective on Marxist Theory and Practice. By Ward Churchill. $1
A5 zine. 20 pages.
This is an essay taken from Churchill's book Since Predator Came, addressing the problems of marxism - especially when applied to indigenous peoples. Churchill, himself a Keetoowah Band Cherokee American Indian, finds traditional marxism to be completely incompatible with even the basic premises of indigenous life such as existing "within rather than upon the natural order", and national sovereignty. A challenging and important read for Australian radicals.

First Fleet Back: Uncle Kevin vs the Queen. $20
DVD. 22 minutes. PAL/all regions.
A profoundly important, and absolutely hilarious, film by our friends at Tallstoreez Productionz, made in collaboration with Arabunna Elder Kevin Buzzacott. It interweaves Uncle Kevin's recent history of "dishonestly appropriating" a brass coat of arms, taking John Howard and his mates to court on charges of genocide, and trying everything he can think of to break through the racist realities of colonized Australia, with spoof news updates on Uncle Kevin's latest actions as the 'Minister for Invasion Affairs', including a televised campaign to "Vote Them Off The Island On The First Fleet Back"!!! The most important film to come out of Australia this year. A portion of the proceeds go directly to Uncle Kevin to help fund his work towards Aboriginal sovereignty.

"You don't belong to this land. You don't have any authority whatsoever. You can have your guns and your batons and bully people around and lock people up, but you ain't got any jurisdiction whatsoever to be operating on this land the way you people do. You're a bloody whitefella, come from somewhere else, come from England, and I'll tell you what, your day is coming. You will pay." – Uncle Kevin to a line of cops at Baxter detention centre in 2003, as depicted in First Fleet Back

Indigenous Resistance in New Guinea. $20
DVD. 184 minutes. PAL/all regions.
A compilation of 4 films about indigenous resistance in New Guinea put out by our friends at Solidarity South Pacific. The films are: Freedom for West Papua, which has commentary from a Papuan activist and serves as a good introduction to that border conflict between tribal culture and civilization, The Coconut Revolution, an inspiring film about the incredible resistance the indigenous of Bougainville gave to the world's largest mining company, Hell in the Pacific, which investigates three seperate conflicts between Papuan traditional landowners and predatory industrialism, and First Contact, which documents the 'first contact' between Papuan highlanders and Australian gold prospectors in the 1930s, with original footage and reflections from surviving participants on their swift introduction to Western colonialism. Crucial viewing.

Listening to the Land: An Interview with Ward Churchill. by Derrick Jensen. $1
A5 zine. 12 pages.
This is a zine-format reprint of the interview with American Indian author and activist Ward Churchill that appears in Derrick Jensen's Listening To The Land: Conversations about Nature, Culture and Eros. Ward Churchill, as always, is outstandingly frank and informative - I actually think he's at his best when he's doing spoken word or being interviewed like this, when he's just working off the cuff and speaking from the heart. Derrick Jensen, as you'd expect, asks exactly the right questions for the conversation to stay focussed and also cover a broad array of issues - from the connection between Nazi and North American genocide, to the problems of dogmatically nonviolent resistance, to the theft of Indigenous spirituality, and finally the importance of Euro-American (and, for that matter, Euro-Australian) decolonization: as Churchill says, "These colonizers are colonized." All up, this is one of the best places you could start for educating yourself about the importance and strategies of Indigenous resistance to the colonized modern world.

Pawa Na Pipel! : Strikes, Land Struggles and Fighting the IMF. $2
A5 zine. 16 pages.
This is an interview with a Melanesian solidarity activist in Papua New Guinea, conducted by a Solidarity South Pacific activist who travelled to PNG in 2003. The discussion covers topics such as industrial sabotage, worker’s strikes and student occupations against privatization and IMF-enforced 'structual adjustment' in PNG, the subsequent brutal repression by the State, the connections between the indigenous struggles in PNG, West Papua, and Bougainville, and Australia's role as a neo-colonial power in the region.

Solidarity South Pacific Newsletter. FREE
A4 newsletter. Varying page count. No ISBN.
Solidarity South Pacific is a UK-based anarchist network dedicated to actively supporting the struggling indigenous populations of the South Pacific – primarily West Papua, The Philippines and Bougainville. As well as carrying out solidarity actions and fundraising, they publicise the voices and struggles of the indigenous rebels via this free (approximately annual) newsletter, pamphlets like Pawa Na Pipel! (see above), and their informative website: www.eco-action.org/ssp. Considering Australia’s role in exploiting and oppressing these regions, SSP material should be mandatory reading for Australian radicals.

"Against the Death Culture, Rebellion Grows…"

Stolen Wealth: Breakdown Press Poster Series #1. $4
A3 newspaper. 22 pages. No ISBN.
21 tabloid-sized newsprint posters in glorious colour, throwing down, in various ways, some hard truths about Australia's treatment of its indigenous occupants, and some inspiring truths about their resistance to unrepentent genocide. Featured writers and artists (indigenous and non-indigenous un-Australians alike) include Robbie Thorpe, Gary Foley, Kevin Gilbert, Tom Civil, Lou Smith, Archie Roach, Bruce McGuinness and lots more. Check out examples of some of the posters at the Breakdown Press website. All profits go to The Black GST collective.

All prices are postage paid in Australia.

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