Last Updated on March 18, 2025
Solidarity as a strategy — exemplified by the 1994 Zapatista/Civil Society alliance against NAFTA — made clear the power of unifying the indigenous peoples movement, the human rights movement, and the environmental movement. Taking a lesson from the iconic uprising in Mexico, the U.S. military reorganized its intelligence and public relations capacities to engender a more sophisticated form of psychological warfare and counterinsurgency that includes co-optation of reform-oriented, Civil Society NGOs.
Working in tandem with State Department initiatives to undermine indigenous nations’ jurisdiction under international law, especially the 2007 UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, the Pentagon and NATO now frequently create a distorted image of human rights as part of the cover story when destabilizing or overthrowing non-NATO governments. Reinforcing State and Defense Department efforts to subvert the international human rights regime, Treasury and other departments of the U.S. Government — through the austerity agenda — are steadily eroding the ability of Civil Society to support the indigenous peoples movement.
Austerity, as such, is not merely a larcenous agenda by federal governments in cahoots with Wall Street and the European Central Bank; it is equally valuable as a tool of oppression of the populations impoverished by the financial services empire.
The audacity of austerity’s exponents also serves a purpose: transforming economic desperation into a sense of fear and hopelessness creates a submissive citizenry, inoculated against revolutionary politicization. Deprived of the resources necessary to organize a viable opposition to the empire, these downtrodden citizens thus become a reservoir of resentment from which modern states can mobilize sycophants to intimidate and outmaneuver democratic reformers.
In the absence of resources for resistance to austerity, the oppositionally politicized are tempted and encouraged to mobilize disorganized, which ensures their ineffectiveness. Marches, protests and demonstrations are means, not ends; unprepared to challenge the power of empire, they demonstrate at best a false hope, at worst a romantic delusion.
Across the world right now, Indigenous peoples are facing a renewed assault on their lands, rights, and ways of life.
From extractive industries pushing deeper into ancestral territories, to governments rolling back hard-won protections,
the threat is global—and it is growing.
What makes this moment especially dangerous is how little attention it receives.
Stories like this are disappearing in real time. Mainstream media
barely covers it and the coverage is fragmented. The public is left without the context
needed to understand what is truly at stake.
That is exactly why IC Magazine exists..
For more than 20 years, IC has reported on Indigenous struggles worldwide — consistently, independently, and without compromise.
We don’t follow news cycles; we trace patterns. We don’t sensationalize; we provide context.
And when the world looks away, we stay focused.
But this work is increasingly difficult to sustain.
We refuse to lock our reporting behind a paywall. We don’t sell access through subscriptions.
And we don’t answer to advertisers. IC Magazine survives solely because readers like you choose to
support independent Indigenous journalism.
Please donate today if you can. Every contribution helps us to continue this crucial work.
Thank you,
John Ahni Schertow
Founder and Editor in Chief
