Intercontinental Cry (IC) is pleased to announce the release of People Land Truth, an anniversary eBook marking eight years of independent journalism for the global Indigenous movement.
Their first major online publication, People Land Truth features more than three dozen stories, including 37 revised and updated articles from the website, exclusive reports on the situations in West Papua, Honduras and Wirikuta, and some very generous contributions from the Indigenous Environmental Network and the Sacred Land Film Project.
John Schertow, founder of IC, author and editor of People Land Truth said, “For the past eight years, IC, a volunteer-driven journal, has worked to keep the international community informed about the struggles and challenges that face all Indigenous Peoples. Most mainstream and alternative media outlets are only willing to cover one or two situations per year. That doesn’t even scratch the surface of what’s going on. We’ve documented more than 500 struggles.”
“Around the world, Indigenous Peoples are striving to secure ancestral lands, re-develop sustainable economies, preserve traditional languages, protect their bio-cultural heritage and help to introduce a climate of global political accountability, responsibility and healthy living. Meanwhile, they are collectively dealing with what I can only characterize as a full spectrum assault at the hands of governments, corporations, paramilitary groups, settler-mobs and non-governmental organizations.”
“It’s difficult keeping up with it all, but it’s something we have to do. We all need to know about these struggles, learn from them and support them in meaningful ways. Indigenous Peoples are the front-line for the defense of Mother Earth.”
“People Land Truth is all about this ever-growing movement. It’s far from a complete catalog, but it highlights some of the best articles and commentaries that we’ve published in recent months. In the spirit of sharing and solidarity, we are giving away the eBook for free,” said Schertow.
The People Land Truth eBook can be downloaded at the IC website. Print versions are available for a $20 donation. Donations can be made through Paypal or people can help out with a fundraiser that will be announced in the coming days.
Special thanks to Natalie Lowery, Brenda Jo McManama, Tracy Barnett, Jay Taber, Martin Pelcher and The Sacred Land Film Project for their invaluable contributions to PEOPLE LAND TRUTH.
For more information
John Schertow, info@intercontinentalcry.org
Attachment(s)
Press Release, People Land Truth.pdf
John Ahniwanika Schertow is an indigenous rights activist of Mohawk (Kanienkehaka) and mixed-European descent. For the past 8 years, he has served as the e... 
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this is a very exciting project. The book is beautifully done, and an invaluable resource. I have recommended it to readers of Climate & Capitalism, and I encourage everyone who can do so to contribute financially.
Congratulations on 8 years of essential reporting.
Ian Angus, Editor
Climate & Capitalism
In February 2012, when Ahni invited me to begin contributing an op-ed column at Intercontinental Cry, we’d already been corresponding for a couple of years on the intersection of the pro-democracy and indigenous human rights movements. As a contributing editor of Fourth World Journal, I’d been looking for venues in addition to academic publications to engage in discussions with writers, activists and scholars on an informal basis–where ideas essential to indigenous peoples liberation and their civil society allies might firm up their commitments and allow them to develop intellectually at their own pace.
Realizing what Ahni had in mind for IC was a sort of news magazine that helped bridge this gap, I was delighted to participate in his ambitious project. Looking back at how this has played out, it’s clear to me that the earlier conversations we had in private were laying the groundwork for important public discussions on such topics as democracy and the public good–in a popular, accessible format that nicely complemented my more formal endeavors.
While my scholarly colleagues contribute valuable insights into the human condition, it is the presentation and interpretation of these ideas by publications like IC that makes their work applicable to the ongoing struggle by indigenous peoples — as well as their friends and allies — to live dignified, fulfilling lives.
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I’d love to read some of your academic work Jay, if possible. I have tried to search for your academic publications, but all I can find are blog posts, self-published books, and some stuff in FWJ which is not peer-reviewed. Can you point me to some of your work that has appeared in academic publications? thanks.
Thanks for asking, Bill. To clarify, the academic work of mine that I refer to consists of papers I wrote in graduate school. One of those — The Power of Moral Sanction — is included in People Land Truth. Others, including my senior thesis and master’s thesis, are in my self-published book War of Ideas. To make these accessible, I have posted some of these papers as essays on my blog Skookum, as well as on the Public Good Project website under special reports.
In case you wondered, I am not affiliated with academia, other than through my advisory and editing roles at the Center for World Indigenous Studies, publisher of Fourth World Journal.
Sorry for the confusion.
Something else that occurs to me in reference to your question, Bill, is how I ended up in the roles I now play at CWIS, Public Good, and Intercontinental Cry.
In the 1970s, I worked as a sea captain alongside American Indian fishermen in Washington and Alaska. During that timeframe, federal court decisions about Indian fishing rights were handed down, resulting in the mobilization of resentment by Anti-Indian organizations. In the 1990s, as an environmental organizer, I again encountered mobilized resentment against Indian tribes as they asserted their right to regulate development on their reservations. Since they and my non-Indian activist friends were being threatened by Wise Use vigilantes, I joined the Public Good network to provide investigative research that would help prevent violence. That’s when I first met CWIS chair Rudolph Ryser.
As a result of Public Good interventions, vigilantes building bombs to murder my friends were convicted on explosives and firearms charges. When I took a hiatus from organizing and field research to attend graduate school, I attempted to put the lessons I’d learned into an academic format, as well as into my memoir. It is these lessons I often try to convey to the audience here, in order that they might be applied in social conflicts today.
While I might have ended up in academia had I completed my masters when I was twenty-five rather than fifty, I would not have had the political experience that motivated me to seek to an academic understanding of activism and social change. Having not taken that path, I am especially grateful to indigenous intellectuals like Rudolph Ryser, Taiaiake Alfred, and Andrea Smith for providing the thought-provoking analysis I try to interpret.
As a writer and storyteller, I am humbled by their acumen, and consider myself fortunate to associate with some exceptional scholars I would never otherwise have met. Needless to say, my journey has been full of surprises.