Hey, everybody, this is Running River here. I just need to voice my concern on this Alligator Alcatraz thing. I’m sitting in my cell up here, FCI Fayette, and I’m watching the news. And as an Indigenous man, like I just can’t sit back and allow these lies to keep being told to the people, to the people of this land that they call America. This is Turtle Island. This land is not called America. It’s Turtle Island. And for these people to be building a migrant prison down there in Florida on indigenous land, calling it Alcatraz, calling it, what is it called, the Alligator Alcatraz, is a slap in the face to everything that is Indigenous.
Anybody who consider yourself Indigenous, whether you come from Africa, Ethiopia, Asia, anywhere, we should all be upset and just agitated how we can allow these people, who are the true migrants who migrated here to get away from religious persecution, from England and other places, to come here to this land, and tell individuals who can and can’t come here. Us, as Indigenous people, we should play that part to let it be known who can and can’t come here, because this is Indigenous land. But no, now we have this system, this corporation, that tells us who can and can’t come here.
And it’s sad to say, and it really hurts my heart, that majority of these people that I see coming here and crossing the border, they’re coming from South America, and we have to pay attention that the people — the Incas, Mayans, Aztec, Toltec, so on and so on — so how can you tell these people who are ancestors and descendants of tribes, that they can’t come to a land that is truly, really theirs? These people from Venezuela, El Salvador and all these other places, they are native. They’re Indigenous, and you’re telling these people that they can’t migrate to their homelands? America, Canada, Mexico, that’s all one land base. This is their home. These are Indigenous people.
And now we have these migrants who come here and tell other people that they can’t come here, who actually belong here. It’s baffling my brain, and I just wanted to expose this mockery for what it is. Alligator Alcatraz, we should all rally against that. Any Indigenous man, any Indigenous group, we should all rally together and support the immediate shutdown of that. We cannot allow it, and that’s all I have to say. Thank you.
These commentaries are recorded by Prison Radio.
