The Turtle Island Solidarity Network (TISN) is a network of CPT reservists engaged in Indigenous solidarity and decolonization. This network strives to take part in actions, be available for accompaniment, provide opportunities for education and advocacy, and work in coalition. By working together across Turtle Island, we strive to erase the colonial border between Canada and the US.
Undoing Settler Colonialism
Providing guidance to the CPT body on how we can undo settler colonialism, including the Doctrine of Discovery and ideology of terra nullius, within our organization
Network Focus
Indigenous Solidarity
Actions events accompaniment petitions advocacy
Settler Education
Undoing Oppressions workshops
Resources on dismantling the Doctrine of Discovery, Presentations to educate CPT’s constituency.
Coalition-building
Supporting Indigenous rights and the struggles of our partners
Turtle Island is a term commonly used by Indigenous people and anti-colonial activists to refer to the continent of what is now known as North America. Origins of the term can be found in the creation stories of the Anishinabek. Since contact, Indigenous People have been resisting practices and policies of colonization as the settler colonial states of Canada and the United States seek to erase Indigenous identity from the land. The policies of erasure have included, but are not limited to, removing and confining Indigenous People on reservations, kidnapping Indigenous children and placing them in border schools or with settler families, and massacring or starving Indigenous Nations into submission of the state. While Canada and the US have often apologized for these actions, both states continue to fail at respecting Indigenous sovereignty and giving land back. Their apologies are hollow as government policies of displacement and erasure continue through resource extraction projects, disproportionate incarceration of Indigenous People, and white supremacy that is endemic in social services.
Indigenous Peoples are resisting these injustices across Turtle Island, and Community Peacemaker Teams have been honoured to join in the resistance, standing alongside Indigenous communities fighting for their rights. We have supported communities like Asubpeeschoseewagong/Grassy Narrows since 1999. We first accompanied their road blockade to prevent a logging company from entering their territory and carrying out logging activities without consent. In later years, we joined members of Grassy Narrows in fighting for mercury justice. On the east coast, CPT supports the Mik’maw lobster fishers as they fight for food sovereignty. On several occasions, CPT has stood with Haudenosaunee as they re-occupy their lands of the Haldimand Tract. We have joined Land Defenders and Water Protectors at Standing Rock, Line 3, Oak Flat, and Wet’suwet’en Territory.
Dismantling Settler Colonialism
In 1525, the Christian church decreed that European empires had the moral and legal right to “discover” and claim non-Christian lands as their own. This was known as the Doctrine of Discovery. The Doctrine of Discovery is rooted in the idea of Terra Nullius – that because this land was “empty,” it was there to be taken. The Doctrine of Discovery and Terra Nullius, created by the Christian Church, denied the humanity of the millions of Indigenous People who lived across Turtle Island—and this denial allowed them to justify centuries of acts of genocide and the implementation of settler colonialism.
Settler colonialism is a system, process, and ideology that relies on the disappearance of Indigenous identity from the land and the implementation of settler systems into all aspects of life (economy, ideology, security). CPT is committed to dismantling settler colonialism across Turtle Island. This is why we not only stand in solidarity with Indigenous communities taking action, we also join local movements that desire to create a new society that is anti-capitalist and without police and prisons.
But settler colonialism does not just impact Turtle Island. This structure of violence is used in places like Australia and Palestine!
Join us in dismantling settler colonialism!
Invite a CPTer to speak to your community
Take part in an Undoing Oppression workshop
Keep the work of Indigenous accompaniment alive
Prayers from Turtle Island
Imagining better futures at River Run
Time after time, when oppressed people rise to demand equity and freedom, people with relative power and privilege react fearfully and angrily.
A call for Mercury Justice
Members of Asubpeeschoseewagong Netum Anishinabek First Nation (Grassy Narrows) are once again preparing to travel 1900 km to Toronto to call for mercury justice. The
Pro-Palestine activists targeted by police
For over nine months the US-sponsored Israeli genocidal war has continued in Palestine. For nine months people around the world have taken to the streets