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Moira İvana Millán is one of the women leaders in the struggle for land and freedom of the Mapuche people. She is one of the important figures representing the Mapuche women’s movement.1
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When the Terricide renders the air unbreathable, the problem is not solved with an oxygen mask. You must clear the air, the earth; you must remove centuries of dirt and shit which constitute the foundations of power.
Everything smells rotten, like an ancient decomposition that never seems to end. We are sick to our stomachs. So much impunity makes us nauseous, but still we can’t manage to overcome our fears in order to clean out the territories and free them from the terricides and the death speculators.
Thousands of burned acres, added to thousands of others, become millions. The earth moans under its mortal pain and we, indigenous women, begin to roar with telluric cries for our dead and those of our children, now not only because of the famine, the contamination, the stolen water, or the racist violence. Now, they are burning our souls by setting our lands on fire.
We have become disposable bodies, sacrificed territories, throw-away lives, denied justice. They kill the earth and its guardians, and that doesn’t even seem important. The violent expulsions go on and the territories are disposed of shamelessly to mining, gas, forest firms, and all manners of terricides. I wonder if there will be a human life in the future to pick up our bones and the remains from the terricide.
We are told that the genocide of the indigenous people was necessary for the birth of this bloody colonial Nation-State. What birth do they expect to obtain from this current terricide? We don’t yet have the exact figures of the zones burned down this summer because the fires are ongoing. All of them intentional.
Nor do we have the statistics on feminicides because they are still assassinating us: we don’t have the exact number of deaths and the different assassination methods the system uses. But we are certain of one thing: that we must urgently take action to put an end to all these deaths.
You will certainly say that this COVID scenario is not suitable for taking to the streets and fighting, but it certainly is suitable for the advancement of mega-mines, frakking, dams and extra-activism of every kind. The States are determined to avoid our death by COVID; however, they can kill us themselves through hunger, pollution, repression and sexism. But of COVID, you are forbidden to die.
I’ve seen the burning mountains of a brownish red and I thought to myself that it was the red of anger, of the anger of power against the people saying No to extraction! They punish us for having defended life; but the clear light of dawn will take over and bring the truth.
This is why we, indigenous women, say that as long as we will not have justice, there will be no peace!
From the bottom of my piwke/heart, I ask for your support.
Terricide must be considered a crime against nature; and terricides must be condemned.
Xepenge kom pu che!
Moira Millán, Weychafe Mapuche
In Puelwillimapu, Chubut, March 12 2021