Rifka

19/10/2025

📌 words via

18/10/2025

18/10/2025

Rosa Parks /
"As long as people use tactics to oppress or restrict other people from being free, there is work to be done."
"Rosa Louise McCauley Parks was an American activist in the civil rights movement best known for her pivotal role in the Montgomery bus boycott. The United States Congress has honored her as "the first lady of civil rights" and "the mother of the freedom movement". On December 1, 1955, in Montgomery, Alabama, Parks rejected bus driver James F. Blake's order to vacate a row of four seats in the "colored" section in favor of a White passenger, once the "White" section was filled. Parks was not the first person to resist bus segregation, but the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People believed that she was the best candidate for seeing through a court challenge after her arrest for civil disobedience in violating Alabama segregation laws, and she helped inspire the Black community to boycott the Montgomery buses for over a year."

11/10/2025

Repost 🔁

11/10/2025

Palestinians are living under the 'longest military occupation in modern history'

11/10/2025

When I hear words like “Columbus, the original American hero,” I feel a heaviness in my chest — not because I am angry, but because I know how stories can wound when they are told without truth. Our people have lived on this land since long before that man ever dreamed of crossing the ocean. The rivers already had names. The stars already had songs. The people already knew the Creator. To call him a hero, and to erase the names of the ones who were here, is to speak only half a story — and half-stories have always been dangerous things.

When the leaders of a nation use their power to lift up conquest and silence the survivors, it tells me they have not yet learned the meaning of kinship. A true leader does not fear truth. A true leader does not need to erase others to stand tall. Our ancestors taught that greatness is not measured by how far you travel or how many lands you claim, but by how well you remember your relatives — all your relatives — the four-legged, the winged, the swimmers, the crawlers, and the human beings.

When I was young, the old ones told us that stories are medicine, but they can also be poison if told without humility. This proclamation feels like that — words dressed in honor but carrying harm. It forgets the women and children who suffered, the languages silenced, the songs that were not allowed to be sung. It forgets that this so-called discovery began a long night for our peoples, one we are still waking from.

I do not speak these things to divide us. I speak them because truth must be spoken if there is ever to be peace. We do not need to hate Columbus to honor our own story. But we must not let his name stand above the countless ancestors who greeted him with open hands and were repaid with chains.

Today, when the government once again chooses to remember the colonizer and forget the Indigenous, it is not surprising — it is just a reminder that our work is not done. We must keep teaching the children who they are. We must keep speaking our languages, planting our medicines, walking softly on the land that still remembers us.

So I say this: we will not disappear because a proclamation forgets us. We were here before Columbus, and we will be here long after the politicians are gone. The land remembers. The water remembers. The wind carries our names. And as long as we breathe, we will keep telling the whole story — the one that begins not with discovery, but with belonging.

—Kanipawit Maskwa
ᑲᓂᐸᐏᐟ ᒪᐢᑿ

06/10/2025

A reframe. ⁠
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By the time a childhood trauma survivor gets to the point of going no-contact, they've already been in a continued lifelong process of lowering their expectations of having a healthy connection to fathers, mothers and siblings. ⁠
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We know they are not going to respect us - we tried. ⁠
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We know they are not going to see us - we tried. ⁠
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We know they are going to choose the most abusive person over a relationship with us - we tried. ⁠
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We know they are going to say, "I knew you'd do this." ⁠
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What gets lost on the toxic family is our reasons for going no-contact. ⁠
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-that we value respect of others, including ourselves. ⁠
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-that we want honesty, empowerment, love, and support in our families. ⁠
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-that we believe in raising terror and shame-free children. ⁠
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-that we believe in maturity and accountability vs BS and drama. ⁠
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-that we believe in autonomy of self and body. ⁠
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-that we believe in relationships that are mutually satisfying. ⁠
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-that we believe in hard emotional work vs being miserable or stuck. ⁠
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The audacity of a family to demonize someone leaving to go and try to cultivate these things for themselves, their children and their relationships.

25/09/2025

18/07/2024

Online zoom workshop on this evening for those interested in making a submission in support of Senator Thorpe’s genocide bill

Slides 1-8 repost 🔁

Submissions are now open for the Genocide Bill Inquiry. This is your chance to have your say.

Submissions close July 26. Link in bio to make your submission, register for our workshop and learn more!

Slides 9 & 10 repost 🔁

ICC accepts evidence from Birchgrove Legal in formal investigation into G*nocide in P*lestine