Actions Planned to Demand Trump and Oklahoma Governor Close the Camp in Ft. Sill
Lawton, OK. - On July 20, 2019, the Indigenous Environmental Network will participate with over 400 community members of local and national organizations who will take escalated action outside of the Fort Sill military post in Lawton, Oklahoma, which is currently being turned into a concentration camp by the Trump administration to incarcerate children.
For twenty years beginning in 1894, our Apache relatives were held as prisoners of war at Fort Sill. We as Indigenous peoples know the pain and generational trauma that comes from Fort Sill and camps just like it. It is our moral responsibility to take a stand with our Indigenous relatives trying to cross the so-called “border.” Generations of Indigenous youth have suffered and have been forced to assimilate at Fort Sill’s boarding school, we cannot stand by as this happens again.
Ft. Sill is also the same place where 700 Japanese immigrant men were detained without due process during World War II. We will not allow anymore pain to happen at Ft. Sill.
This multiracial coalition of organizations was led by immigrant youth, their families and Japanese American, Black, Indigenous, Jewish and white allies who all vehemently reject this administration's immigration policies including the concentration camps that have been built across the country to incarcerate immigrants and children, and which have resulted in severe abuse, trauma and multiple deaths by the deportation force of ICE and CBP.
Throughout the action, we will call on Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt to get ICE out of Oklahoma and to stop supporting Trump’s administration as they criminalize immigrants, separate families, and kill asylum seekers.
The local and national organizations that took part in the action with Indigenous Environmental Network include: Dream Action Oklahoma, United We Dream, Black Lives Matter Oklahoma City, Democratic Socialists of America - Oklahoma City, Native Voice Network,Tsuru for Solidarity, Oklahoma Call for Reproductive Justice, ACLU OK, Women’s March OK, Indian Territory behind American Indian Movement, NACA-Inspired Schools Network, The Majority, Workers Defense, Bend the Arc, Sunflower Community Action,Center for Popular Democracy, Sunrise Movement, The International Union of Painters and Allied Trades, and others.
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Established in 1990, The Indigenous Environmental Network is an international environmental justice nonprofit that works with tribal grassroots organizations to build the capacity of Indigenous communities. IEN’s activities include empowering Indigenous communities and tribal governments to develop mechanisms to protect our sacred sites, land, water, air, natural resources, the health of both our people and all living things, and to build economically sustainable communities.
Learn more here: ienearth.org