Roxanne White
“The first man camp was in 1492. They came and for the first hundred years they were here, they set up camp and they had brothels. There were people—there are people—that enslave human beings, that rape women, and they brought that here. They abused and they murdered and raped our grandmothers, our ancestor people. Those were the first man camps.
Today what our man camps look like—they’re all over. Here on the water [in Seattle] we have ships. Those ships go into Alaska and they set up for their cruise on Alaskan land, on indigenous lands, wherever they go—if it’s a farm or if it’s an oil Bakken—whatever it is, they set up and they bring in cheap labor of predominantly men that aren’t from our communities. Men that don’t know us, that have no ties to us, and that don’t respect our people, our women, our children.
They don’t respect Native people because history has portrayed us as savages, as drunks, as homeless people. As disposable. That’s what this country has said, time and time and time again, they have sent this message out that we are not protected. You can go and take the life of an indigenous woman or girl, you can murder a Native man, and nothing will happen to you.
That’s what this country has been saying about our people—about our women—and these man camps, they’re coming up all over the place. There’s one right now in South Dakota, they said 600 modules; those modules are like trailers and they will house men that might be violent offenders, sexual predators, drug dealers. They have access to a lot of money, and they bring in drugs. They’re a big part of the trafficking and that’s the studies that we’re seeing.”
Rachel Heaton
“Mazaska Talks gave us a platform to bring out issues that were important to our communities. In a lot of our bank actions we talk about missing and murdered Indigenous women, which is an issue that affects our community. When pipelines are built, these man camps are also built, and that’s when our remote reservations that are out in Montana and North Dakota—these huge concentrations of women—Native women particularly—go missing.
Also, there’s the human trafficking that occurs along the borders. We have the highest rate of trafficking, and murder is the third cause of death for our people. The result of these man camps is that women go missing but they’re never searched for, so there’s all this injustice where all of these women have not been looked for.”
Pamela Cəlalákəm Bond
“The thing with climate change, and the thing with colonization, and the thing with what’s happening to indigenous people—with the horrific number of women and children that are missing—you have to remember that more than half of that is men. Out of all the indigenous people that are missing and murdered, our men are 65 percent of those disappearing. So, while I love our women, our men and their sacred breath is not less sacred than a woman’s sacred breath.
Our indigenous people are missing at a higher rate than any other nationality of people and it comes with man camps. It comes with the continued oppression and environmental genocide—a cultural genocide that continues to happen today. These man camps that follow the black snake are where the trafficking is happening. If you put a pin marker in every place where indigenous women are missing they’re in very close proximity to man camps and pipelines. So that black snake doesn’t just pollute the land and the water it’s on—it’s consuming indigenous people.”
— source blogs.scientificamerican.com | Barbara Clabots | Oct 14, 2019