DAY OF THE FOREST DEFENDER

by the PRP Central Committee

The Day of the Forest Defender is January 18, marking the third anniversary of the date that the Venezuelan environmental activist Manuel “Tortuguita” Paez Terán was murdered by Georgia State Police during a raid on their encampment that had been setup in defense of the Atlanta forest as part of the Stop Cop City movement. Tortuguita was among this movement brought together to defend of the South River Forest from environmental destruction, as well as prevent the planned “public safety” facility that would increase militarization of targeted communities after the 2020 uprisings following yet another murder of George Floyd at the hands of police. As we witness the continued murders at the hands of the state through brutality of the state and private interests, we continue to witness the violence of catastrophic environmental destruction and ecocide. This imperial plunder continues today, whether in the extraction of oil or the corporate poisoning of water, and all too often settler Communists have abandoned their Indigenous comrades at the forefront of these struggles. People’s Revolutionary Party stands in solidarity with our forest, water, and land defenders, who we consider as the vanguard of National Liberation, and calls on settlers to join them on the frontlines. So many of these struggles intersect. At this moment, there is an immediate call to action from the Oyuhpe Tokala, a traditional Lakota society based on the Pine Ridge Reservation, to unite the Lakota Nation to defend from threats of an invasion from ICE.”(1) 

Indigenous and First Nations communities have been on the front lines of land protection from the earliest days of european colonialism on Turtle Island. These nations have been constant targets for settler-colonial violence, whether it be in the form of direct state violence, direct environmental extraction or degradation of the ecosystem, or settler violence so prevalent that it is named, recorded, studied, and conceptualized as Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Relatives (MMIWR). Due to legal loopholes where Indigenous Nations lack the authority to prosecute people who are not enrolled in the Nation, reservations, in addition to their purpose as concentration camps, have been sites of predatory settler violence and human trafficking, and Indigenous Peoples are incredibly vulnerable to state and individualist settler violence.(2) In the case of MMIWR, much of the online data has been removed by the current administration.(3) The so-called United States is a settler-colony built over Indigenous nations whose communities have endured genocide of apocalyptic nature. By now, hopefully the message is clear to all: Marxists should not only support Land Back, but they should support decolonization if they truly understand foundational theory and texts. We understand that Marx was informed, as so often happens, by limited understanding of his time. However, full decolonization of a settler colony is necessary, otherwise the contradictions of a settler colony are unresolved and colonial violence, genocide and ecocide, never ended and continues today.

Long before the founding of the so-called US, “explorers” recognized the material wealth of Turtle Island, now so-called North America, and they sought to plunder and exploit its resources. Millions of people already resided in the so-called Americas prior to colonial conquest, and had done so for at least 20,000 years.(4) Under the custodianship of hundreds of Indigenous Nations there existed an ecological balance sustained by complex social systems and a profound understanding of the natural world. Even bourgeois science can no longer fully deny this. Recent studies prove that in regions where Indigenous communities hold custodianship over the lands, biodiversity thrives and carbon emission rates remain low.(5)(6) For example, the Karuk of northern California made extensive use throughout their history of controlled burning of underbrush (a highly valued cultural tradition known as “cultural burning”) in forests to prevent larger wildfires from occurring, to make space for forest animals for more sustainable hunting practices, and to kill insects harmful to the forest itself or to other humans.(7) In the Northeast, the landscape flourished from controlled burnings, which increase the rate at which forest nutrients are recycled into and enrich the soil, a practice that had been in place as early as 5,000 BC.(8) It has only been recently that some areas of the US now actually utilize controlled burns to mitigate future wildfire damage, especially with the help of Indigenous nations. Historically, that wasn’t the case, especially after the Big Burn in 1910 (3 million acres burned down in 2 days, including some parts of Canada) where the federal government officially outlawed all forms of forest burning. Such traditional practices have been reintroduced in an attempt to mitigate the damage and prevent catastrophic results from occurring. Indigenous Nations have been targeted across the so-called Americas since they have been recognized as an impediment to their ancestral territories, and for their role in protecting the land. As imperialism causes ecocide and genocide, from the present-day Fairy Creek old-growth logging protests called by the Pacheedaht First Nation territory to the water protectors of Standing Rock, Marxists must recognize these as front line struggles and commit to supporting them.

Fairy Creek old-growth logging in British Columbia is the largest act of civil disobedience in the history of so-called Canada, with 1,188 arrests to date. First Nations and Indigenous Peoples are not only at the forefront of land and water protection struggles, they are also incredibly vulnerable and at high risk, and some have gone missing during the Fairy Creek land struggle. This particular struggle was recently resurrected in blockades over the summer of 2025 with the Walbran Valley blockade, where land defenders have been working to protect the remaining old-growth forest from logging companies.(9) The unique conditions of Earth’s climate that allow wood to be formed is unknown elsewhere in the universe; it is difficult to articulate the rarity of old-growth forests, the species they support, and their ecological importance.(10)

Through colonization of what is now deemed as the United States, also known as Occupied Turtle Island (OTI), settlers built over generations of Indigenous knowledge that had created flourishing, abundant ecosystems. Marx’s philosophy of dialectical materialism comes to similar conclusions as the practices of many Indigenous Nations, who have perfected them in their own contexts through thousands of years of practice of relating to material conditions in the direct local context and adapting these over time, and they will continue to adapt in relationship to the conditions of the ecological climate. Following the leadership of Indigenous communities, Marxists in the oppressor nations must serve wherever possible the cause of Indigenous National Liberation and join the Comrades at the forefront of land and water protection struggles. Now that we are in the midst of a climate crisis after having disrupted Indigenous ecosystems globally, we cannot merely try to assimilate Indigenous knowledge and land practices into capitalism or social democracy, nor should settler Communists expect to do this through an extractive process or by imposing imperialist interpretations of Marxism onto these struggles (Trotskyism and Marcyism). We cannot replicate the colonialism and expect Indigenous Nations to take our solidarity seriously just because it has a red paint-job. We cannot parse through Indigenous epistemology and cherry pick what we think is compatible with a kinder, more sensitive, “socialist” version of America. Through colonialism, settlers have disrupted not only the material basis of Indigenous society, but the superstructural advances of Indigenous knowledge, politics, culture, and spirituality. Indeed, if we, as settlers, erroneously decide that we should extract what we understand and value as settlers that can “save” us from climate crisis, while discarding the epistemology of Indigenous nations that exist as a part of those traditional practices, we are reducing the ontology that existed as a whole, and we are reproducing the parasitic nature of settlers. In general, Marxists may use methodology to understand and thus dismantle capitalism, but they will need to allow the systems in place before the arrival of the settlers, as well as the keepers of that knowledge, to be the vanguard. Marxists must understand that Indigenous practices in land cultivation and stewardship are the result of dialectical materialism, and Indigenous Traditional Knowledge, also known as ITK, in fact consists of numerous dialectical-scientific inquiries such as described by Marx.(11)

Across the world, imperial plunder violates the sovereignty of Indigenous Nations who are at the forefront of defense for their ancestral lands, such as in so-called Venezuela, where imperial interests continue to plunder the Amazon and Orinoco basins, crucial fore planet’s ecological balance, and violate sovereignty of Indigenous Nations there. In Greenland, the Indigenous Nations of the Kalaallit, the Tunumiit of Tunu, and the Inughuire are at risk now that the territory has been recognized as a source of extraction. On OTI, just over the border in so-called Canada, the Wabanaki Nation has denounced cranberry farm development projects that destroy the natural environments and threaten their ancestral treaty rights. In so-called New York State, the Tonawanda Seneca Nation has been attempting to utilize the judicial system to protect lands from the newly proposed by STREAM US Data Centers and their financial backer, private equity multinational Apollo Global Management; indeed, data centers are among the newest iterations of extraction and land devastation at an extreme level, exploiting the land and poisoning the living conditions of the most exploited proletariat and lumpenproletariat populations of the US. PRP’s New York Chapter has been bringing attention to corporate pollution, as shown in social media posts about pollution from Great Lakes Cheese, among others. Marxists should engage with Indigenous Nations, commit to understanding of Indigenous practices, and examine their relationship to the land on which they live, whether as a settler or as Indigenous to it, and build a respectful, supportive relationship to the communities that have endured genocide of apocalyptic nature; these issues are vital to the national question and must be integrated into praxis to whatever extent possible.

The Atlanta Cop City, the very one that Tortuguita had attempted to prevent, opened in May of last year. After the 2020 uprisings in the wake of the murder of George Floyd, other cop cities (“public safety facilities”) have been constructed across the US. With the heightened “mask off” state violence of the current moment, in collaboration with the labor aristocracy domestically and abroad, Indigenous Nations are in the crosshairs. Members of the Oglala Sioux Tribe were taken in custody with no information released, “…unless the tribe ‘entered into an immigration agreement with ICE(12).'” The leadership of some other Indigenous Nations have collaborated with state power; some have walked this back after collaboration was brought to the awareness of the public and residents of their Indigenous Nations. We do not assume that every Indigenous Nation has a governance structure that is not influenced by corporate and private interests; these nations have been ravaged by colonialism and are plagued by the same issues of basic survival of all oppressed nations on OTI, and these questions are dealt with inwardly, such as we see in Kahnawà:ke Mohawk activist Taiaiake Alfred. Marxists must understand the Indigenous Nation upon whose land they reside and support their immediate front line struggles; if they fail to do this, they are failing to understand theory and implementing praxis in the context of a settler colony. The Miccosukee Nation, local to so-called Florida, had fought for years to attain tribal control over a small but important portion of the Everglades and had finally won it through the Miccosukee Reserved Area Act, but this was vetoed by the current administration as punishment for their opposition and legal challenge to the construction of Alligator Alcatraz, the infamous detention center for detainees. Indigenous resistance has been continuous and the contradictory force to colonial violence, and there are any number of struggles to support; the immediate call to defend the Lakota Nation from an invasion from ICE comes as a necessary action.

If you cannot support these struggles through direct presence today, here other ways to support, even if it through letter writing campaigns and fundraising for resources or legal aid. As we mentioned in an earlier post, a good starting point to learn about the situation of the Indigenous Peoples and Nations on on whose land you reside is https://native-land.ca/ . Create or join a campaign to support land and water protection prisoners, such as the Prarieland Defendants, who you can read about here https://prairielanddefendants.com/ . Donate to “Help Oyuhpe Tokala Protect Our Community” available at https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-oyuhpe-tokala-protect-our-community , or find/start a local fundraiser or campaign.