Reporter's Notebook: In the beginning

Reporter's Notebook

Brenda Norrell, Censored News, http://www.bsnorrell.blogspot.com/

In the beginning, there was Michoacan. We arrived by buses from the border, with the Yaqui and Mayo from Sonora and Sinoloa. There was a heavy fog in the mountains of Michoacan, as the National Indigenous Congress gathered. A man in his twenties from Guerrero with one leg came aboard our bus. He was very thin and said there was little to eat in his home state of Guerrero, where logging companies and oppression were intense. He hopped everywhere he went. He served on security on the Zapatistas caravan across Mexico. He was one of the bravest men I've ever known. The Zapatistas caravan across Mexico was one of the best things I've ever know.

Photo two: Riley, Choctaw AIM member from Oklahoma, and Demetria Martinez, award winning author of 'Mother Tongue,' among those protesting NAFTA in Tucson in the beginning. In her book Mother Tongue, Martinez, once arrested as she documented the Sanctuary Movement at the border, tells of the real struggle of Indigenous fleeing torture in Central America.

Photo three: In memory of Willie Lonewolf, on the Longest Walk 2008, at the Ute Indian Museum in southern Colorado. Keep singing.

Photos by Brenda Norrell