POLITICAL PROGRAMME of the

INDIGENOUS PEOPLE’S LIBERATION PARTY–

KANADA
 POLITICAL PROGRAMME of the
INDIGENOUS PEOPLE’S LIBERATION PARTY–
KANADA
For Consciousness, Organization and Liberation Struggle!
— INTRODUCTION —
The Indigenous People’s Liberation Party is
a Revolutionary Indigenist organization. Its
primary focus is to unite Indigenous People
to resist ongoing colonization, genocide
and ecocide, and to free our land with an
eye towards the development of a genuine
broad-based Indigenous People liberation
movement.
Our struggle is fundamentally a
struggle to achieve and actualize national
liberation and decolonization. We do not
seek to seize the reins of power of the
settler occupational states, but rather hold
that our liberation is to be found in fully
detaching our nations and peoples from
this rotting corpse of an empire.
The material basis for this empire is
its occupation of our lands and the
destruction of our peoples. In detaching
ourselves from it we eviscerate it, in the
process destroying its ability to wield
continued power over us, eventually
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eliminating the very thing itself. In this
radical dismantling of the entity we call
“north amerika” we see the potential not
only for our own liberation, but the
liberation of all oppressed peoples on this
land. It is also possibly the greatest act of
solidarity we could send to the masses of
oppressed and exploited peoples around
the world.
To that end we state openly that the
Party is avowedly revolutionary in its
orientation. We see no value in strategies
that do not recognize the need to remove
parasitic colonial power as the fundamental
prerequisite for our liberation and that
would rather grovel at the feet of our
oppressors for piecemeal reforms to the
status quo.
The Party is also anti-capitalist. We
consider to be snakes in the grass those
neocolonial wannabe settlers who
administer ottawa and washington d.c.’s
colonial regimes and promote ideologies of
“Indian capitalism” that would seek to
integrate Indigenous People into the
parasitic society of the colonial oppressor
nation. They are enemies of our people.
Globally we recognize that only the total
overturning of the current parasitic
capitalist world-system can ensure not only
our own liberation, but the liberation of all
oppressed and exploited peoples around
the world.
In place of the parasitic capitalist-
colonial power on this continent we raise
up high the revolutionary banner of
Indigenous Socialism. We strive for a
society in which all land, resources and
labor are divided in a way that is just too all
members of our nations and the
ecosystems in which we are embedded.
We seek to live in a way that honors the
seven generations before us and provides
for the seven generations that will come
after us.
WHAT WE WANT &
WHAT WE BELIEVE
— WHAT WE BELIEVE —
I. We are Indigenous People—We are
Indigenous from Aztlán to Borikén to
Anishinaabewaki!
Turtle Island has been the subject of
five centuries of continuous genocide,
ecocide, land theft, slavery, oppression and
exploitation. As Indigenous People we are
the descendants of the survivors of this
brutal process; of those who never ceased
resisting the invasion of this continent.
Countless millions—named and unnamed
—gave their lives so that we can be here
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today. We are the heirs to their struggle.
Different conditions, including
different imperialist powers who have at
one time or another attempted to exert
our power over us, and uneven & unequal
development, has led to the development
of new identities and new labels by which
our peoples have come to define
ourselves. While many of our pre-contact
nations and political formations continue to
exist—such as the Anishinaabe,
Kwakwaka’wakw, Nēhilawē, Očhéthi
Šakówiŋ, Rotinonshón:ni, Wabanaki and
others—new nations have emerged
through processes of admixture,
amalgamation, detribalization and
proletarianization, including the Xicano,
Michif, Boricua and Genízaro. All of us,
whether our nations formed pre- or post-
contact are now held as Internal Colonies
of the settler empire. We are all indigenous
to this land.
Many of us have also come to call
ourselves by all manner of term: Indian,
Native American/Canadian, First Nations,
Aboriginal, Chicano, Latino, Hispano, Métis
etc. Many of these labels are terms given
to us by the imperialists, which attempt to
split our people by associating some of us
with this or that european nation. Thus we
reject these labels and choose Indigenous.
Indigeneity, rooted in our cultures, and our
languages unites our nations—Indian
(status and non-status), Xicano, Michif,
Genízaro and Boricua—through not only
our common history and struggle against
oppression and exploitation, but also in our
shared destiny towards land, independence
and socialism!
 We believe that this best covers the
historical, geographic, and cultural range of
our movement, and we see our individual
indigenous national identities as a
foundation of a unified continental identity
covering all of Turtle Island.
II. The Struggle Around Treaties is
Ultimately a Dead End!
The Party holds that while at times it
is necessary for Indigenous People to make
struggle around our so-called “treaty
rights” in order to resist the final stages of
genocide and the assimilation of the
remnants of our peoples into imperialist
society We also understand that at the
same time struggle around treaties and for
our treaty rights cannot be the primary
essence of our struggles. The treaties—
whether the Numbered or the Two-Row
or Guadalupe-Hidalgo—were only ever
the formalized legal method to make
official the dispossession from us of the
land and resources of this continent.
There is not a single one that was
ever entered into by the settler empire’s
constituent compartments (amerika and
kanada) in good mind. So the sidestepping
or complete bulldozing of our supposed
“treaty rights” by the settler empire to
access the natural resources on and
underneath our residual land base and
otherwise continue the genocidal assault
on our peoples is neither an unfortunate
occurrence nor an illegal occurrence.
Rather it is one that is to be fully expected
in the scope of our 500 years of relations
with western “civilization”. This is why if
We as a people are to become truly free
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We must move beyond the worldview that
focuses on treaties.
III. The United Nations and Other
Imperialist Global Bodies Cannot Act as
Vehicles for Our Liberation!
Often times combined with the
worldview rooted in struggling around our
treaties is one that sees the united nations,
and other like-minded world organizations,
as vehicles through which We can
“liberate” ourselves, often through the idea
that We can use them to force the settler
empire to obey international law and
uphold the treaties with our various
nations.
This has become particularly
apparent since the adoption by the u.n. of
the Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous
People, but it in fact goes back as far as the
1977 Conference on Indigenous Affairs.
The Party understands that the u.n. and
other such bodies are bodies created and
run by the imperialists and their
neocolonial allies.
While there are various bourgeois
nationalist and progressive anti-imperialist
governments the u.n. they are a tiny
minority. No body primarily run for and by
the imperialists and their allies can ever be
a vehicle for our liberation.
IV. Combat Cultural Nationalism!
Our cultures and traditions have
long played a powerful role in our
resistance to genocide and conquest. This
is because our traditional cultural values
are generally speaking communistic values
and hence are fundamentally at odds with
the western capitalist civilization that has
attempted to encircle and destroy us since
first contact. Because our traditions
represented powerful living counter-
examples to the expanding capitalist settler
empire it was not an uncommon
occurrence for settlers themselves to flee
their own societies and become citizens of
our nations. Even settlers who were
captured in battle often attempted to
return to Indigenous People society when,
after this or that treaty and often at the
point of a gun, they had been forcibly
repatriated to the settler empire. Hence
our cultures and traditions had to be
annihilated. This was the basis for the
genocidal residential schools run by the u.s.
and kanadian governments which sought to
“kill the Indian to save the man.” Even
today our traditional cultures play a
powerful role in inspiring and driving our
resistance movements.
However, the Party holds that We
must beware the trap of cultural
nationalism. Cultural nationalism teaches
that our traditional cultures on their own
and devoid of a revolutionary political
programme can liberate us. It tells us that if
We drum enough, dance enough, sing
enough, and smudge enough that We can
make ourselves free. This is a reactionary
path that takes us away from revolutionary
struggle and turns the battle for the
overturning of our oppressive conditions
into one that is purely about individualistic
and spiritual self-change. Only when paired
with a revolutionary analysis and
perspective do our traditional cultures
have the ability to free our people.
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V. We Are Prisoners Trapped in the Belly
of an Imperialist Beast that Exploits and
Oppresses the Entire World!
The Party understands that the
current capitalist world-system is one in
which the overwhelming majority of the
people of the world is ground down,
oppressed and exploited under the weight
of a minority of imperialist-led classes.
These imperialist-led classes are currently
the numerically dominant bloc within the
imperialist nations of the First World, while
the oppressed and exploited reside
primarily within the nations of the Third
World and Internal Colonies of the rich
countries.
The contradiction between the
masses exploited and oppressed by
imperialism and the minority of classes
which benefit from imperialism is primary
today on the world stage.
On the terrain of Occupied Turtle
Island this struggle manifests in the
inherently antagonistic contradiction
between the constituent compartments of
the settler empire and their attendant
garrison populations who physically hold
the land, and the aspirations to liberation
of the various Internal Colonies which
remain submerged and oppressed.
It is the struggle to free the
oppressed and exploited masses of the
Third World and Internal Colonies that will
bring about the demise on a global scale of
the current parasitic capitalist world-
system, industrial ecocide and all forms of
oppression.
VI. Modern Class Analysis: The Essential
Question is Parasitism!
The Party understands that because
of the “wages of imperialism” the majority
of the peoples in the imperialist nations are
net-exploiters—regardless of what class
they nominally belong to. In other words
they receive an income greater than the
value that they create. This is the result of
the heightened exploitation of the majority
of the Earth’s peoples who are located
principally in the Third World and Internal
Colonies. This combined with other
benefits—such as social democracy and
the status of Whiteness—has
embourgeoisified the working classes of
the oppressor nations.
The principal effect of this
embourgeoisification has been to deaden
the class struggle between the working and
ruling classes of the imperialist nations,
creating social peace. Though it has
reached its most mature state in the era of
capitalist-imperialism, it is not a new
process. It has undergone a prolonged
developed through several stages reaching
all the way back to the parasitic origins of
capitalism, during the process which
economist and political theorist Karl Marx
scientifically defined as the “primitive
accumulation of capital”.
Because of this the workers of the
imperialist nations are not “those who have
nothing left to lose but their chains”; rather
they are what some have labelled a “labor
aristocracy” or “worker elite”. This strata is
petty bourgeois in its outlook and goals.
Because of this, in the final analysis, these
workers, historically and currently, have
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often formed the most important bulwarks
of modern capitalism and colonialism. They
have organized against the most exploited
and oppressed sectors not only within their
own countries, but have generally acted as
agents of fascism and imperialism globally.
As the capitalist world-system
descends ever deeper into crisis it is to be
expected that struggle may again emerge
between these privileged worker elite and
the bourgeoisie, sometimes even
spectacularly so. However, these struggles
generally take the form of attempts to re-
assert imperialist social democracy and
White Supremacy. In order to genuinely
join the global revolutionary movement
they must forgo their long held privileged
status, giving up their class and national
interests and throw their lot in with the
oppressed and exploited peoples of the
world as they struggle for dignity, justice
and self-determination.
In the final analysis, We must be
clear that overall the overturning of
capitalism and imperialism globally will
mean a revolution not just against the class
interests of the bourgeoisie, but against the
privileged worker elite as well.
The Party contends that the failure
to understand the class composition within
the imperialist nations as well as the
general alignment of forces globally is the
key reason for the failure of ostensibly
revolutionary and communist forces to
organize serious opposition to capitalism
and imperialism within the imperialist
countries, currently and over the course of
the last century. A correct understanding
of the internal class composition of the
imperialist nations and an understanding of
class formations globally is essential for the
success of the modern revolutionary
project.
— WHAT WE WANT —
I. National Liberation & Proletarian
Internationalism!
The Party is rooted in a
Revolutionary Indigenist orientation. This
means that as our central demand We seek
national liberation, not only for the pre-
contact, “Indian” nations of north amerika
but also for the nations born of post-
contact admixture, amalgamation,
detribalization and proletarianization: the
Xicano, Michif, Boricua, Genízaro and
others. We also extend this demand to the
Afrikan nation in north amerika, kidnapped
from their homeland of Afrika, enslaved on
this continent, and with whom We have a
long and proud tradition of standing arm–
in–arm together with to resist genocide
and capitalist expansion at the hands of our
common oppressor in the settler empire.
The Party seeks the complete
political, economic and social
dismemberment of the settler empire and
its constituent compartments, namely the
so-called united states and kanada. The
Party further rejects models and
programmes that attempt to assimilate us
and the other Internal Colonies of the
settler empire into some kind of socialized
settler dominated state. As an extension of
that We also reject those programmes
which lend verbal and paper support for
our liberation solely as a scheme for
building supposed “class unity” with the
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working class of the oppressor nation, who
are in fact not our natural ally, but
historically and presently allies of
imperialism and colonialism.
Further, we see that our liberation is
dialectically related to the dismantling of
the oppressor nation, though by this We
do not mean some kind of genocide
against the oppressor nation, but rather
the elimination of the oppressor nation as
an entity that has been built up on a
pedestal of 500 years of conquest and
imperialist pillage. In other words the end
of the so-called “White” nation as the
White nation. We hold that this entire
process—the liberation of oppressed
nations, the elimination of the settler
empire and the dismantling of the White
nation—is not only central to the
development of a genuinely revolutionary
society on Turtle Island, but is in fact the
fundamental prerequisite.
Finally, as all true national liberation
movement of the past have also been, We
are deeply proletarian internationalist in
our outlook. The Party understands that
any genuine revolutionary project must be
internationalist in practice, and to this end
we are uncompromising in our support for
the struggles for revolutionary social and
national liberation around the world, from
Occupied Palestine to the Philippines, from
India to Kurdistan, from Oceania to Afrika.
With this revolutionary internationalist
orientation, We believe that the national
liberation struggles of the Internal Colonies
of the imperialist countries must be
understood as a detachment of the wider
global struggle against the current parasitic
capitalist world-system, industrial ecocide
and all forms of oppression.
II. Towards a Pan-Indigenous Movement—
No to Micro-Nationalisms!
While The Party appreciates,
respects and holds dear the diversity found
within our indigenous nations—our
cultures, our languages, our spiritual
traditions etc.—here on Turtle Island, we
do not believe that the movement for our
liberation is best served by splitting along
lines of various competing micro-
nationalisms, or single-nation nationalisms.
Thus we reject individual Anishinaabe or
Kanien’kehá:ka or Kwakwaka’wakw or
Lenni-Lenape nationalism etc. as too
narrow for the purposes of our struggle.
This is not to say that we do believe
that we cannot still be Anishinaabe or
Kanien’kehá:ka or Kwakwaka’wakw or
Lenni-Lenape, or that the diversity of our
nations should not be preserved. Rather
We hold that only together, united as
Indigenous People (indigenous people), can
We truly begin to struggle for our
collective liberation. This is not a simplistic
belief that there is a single, overarching
Indigenous People “nation” but rather that
the concept of Indigenous People
represents our common history of
resistance to 500 years of genocide,
ecocide and colonization at the hands of
the settler empire. It also represents our
common aspirations for liberation.
We also believe that there is fertile
ground to build a common pan-indigenous
movement that unites under the concept
of Indigenous People all indigenous peoples
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on this continent including those nations
who, by force of colonial policies and
practices that sought to detribalize and
proletarianize indigenous people, as well as
general processes of admixture and
amalgamation have become detached from
our traditional pre-contact nations and
political formations. The new nations that
grew from this social development—the
Michif, Xicanos, Genízaros and Boricua—
are no less indigenous than the “First
Nations” officially recognized by the
constituent compartments of the settler
empire. We are all indigenous and heirs to
struggle against colonial domination.
Together We can drive off the beast
who has occupied our lands and oppressed
us for centuries!
III. For the Total and Uncompromising
Liberation of Wimmin, Same Gender
Loving & Two-Spirit People!
Prior to the European assault on
Turtle Island many Indigenous People
societies included, and indeed deeply
honored, people whose gender expression
and/or sexual orientation fell outside the
traditional euro-christian sex-gender binary.
In modern times these people are often
labelled in the mainstream gay, lesbian or
trans, but none of these european-rooted
terms truly capture the total complexity of
what was practiced within our nations, nor
do they have a meaningful reference point
within our cultures. Additionally settler
society has heaped insulting terms onto
these members of our societies such
“berdache”. Our collective nations have
had many words for these peoples, but
today We use the modern, but culturally-
rooted, terms “two-spirit” and “same
gender loving” to describe those within our
nations who fall outside the euro-christian
sex-gender binary.
Additionally, many Indigenous People
societies were far more empowering for
wimmin than any period of european social
development. In many nations and
confederacies while men held superficial
official power, it was the wimmin, the
mothers, the clan mothers, the
grandmothers, who held true power.
Wimmin placed the men into their
positions, and could recall them at will if
they did not live up to expectation.
Wimmin were also those who often
decided when it was necessary to go to
war. Wimmin, like two-spirit and same
gender loving people, were also deeply
honored spiritual leaders.
As such, a fundamental aspect of the
european assault on this continent was the
destruction of our traditionally horizontal
social formations and violent
reorganization of our nations in vertical
hierarchies defined largely by imposition of
patriarchy and the consequent attempt to
completely exterminate same gender
loving and two-spirit people and destroy
the traditions of wimmin’s power.
Against this the Party demands a
world without patriarchy: a world without
rape, without the sexual exploitation of
wimmin and children, without gender
oppression and imposition. A world where
wimmin, same gender loving and two-spirit
people have total and complete control
over their bodies, their identities and their
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personal lives.
Previous revolutionary movements
and socialist experiments have more often
than not devolved into, if they were not
born deformed as, good ol’ boys clubs.
Against this the Party uncompromisingly
supports the participation and leadership
of wimmin, same gender loving and Two-
Spirit people. The Party supports, should
they self-determine it to be necessary, that
wimmin, same-gender loving and two-spirit
people have their own, parallel liberation
organs, self-defence organizations and mass
movements. Only by supporting the total
annihilation of patriarchy will our
revolution ever truly be complete!
IV. Ecological Revolution is a Necessity!
As a world—across national, class
and gender lines—We are facing a wave of
ecological devastation and mass extinction
caused by the development of industrial
capitalist society. Burning fossil fuels,
overfishing, mining, factory farming, global
warming, commodity production, the
imperialist war machine, exorbitant First
World lifestyles, exploitative international
trade and the global division of labor,
exportation of waste to the Third World,
the transformation of Internal Colonies
into geographies of national sacrifice, and
deforestation are destroying the Earth and
threaten all life upon it.
We now stand on the verge of total
ecological collapse. Today We are faced
with two options: revolution or barbarism.
Revolutionary forces must not only be
warriors of the people, but also of all of
our relations: the animals, the plants, the
lands, the seas and the skies that surround
and sustain us. The struggle to liberate the
oppressed and exploited nations of the
world must also a struggle for the future of
our planet.
The Party demands a paradigmatic
shift in how revolutionary forces view the
natural world and our relationship to it.
While believing that sane and non-
exploitative development of formerly
oppressed nations should begin after
revolution, We believe this “development”
cannot follow the tried and failed courses
followed by either capitalism or past
socialist experiments.
We call for the development of a
non-anthropocentric, humanist ecological
outlook that rejects a vision of a
domesticated or pacified natural world.
One that utterly rejects the current
oppressive and exploitative industrial
capitalist society. One that seeks to not just
defend, but actively expand wilderness.
One that restores or revitalizes our deep
relations with the soil, plants, animals, sun
and the wind. Our new society is one
based around ideas of deurbanization,
industrial decentralization, alternative and
soft-path technologies, organic agriculture
& permaculture and limits to growth where
the ultimate goal is the cultivation of
balance and harmony between human
society and nature.
Finally, while We are not anti-
technology, We question the uncritical
factory worship and techno-fetishism that
has been the view of many past and
current revolutionary movements, as well
as the unquestioned reliance on
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industrialism and the development of the
productive forces over the power of the
people to make change.
V. For Genuine Allies—For Class & Nation
Traitors!
The Party wants genuine allies from
among the ranks the oppressor nations of
the world. The Party wants those who
traitors to their nation and their class—
individual members of exploiter classes
who choose to side with the world’s
oppressed and exploited masses.
The Party wants them to commit
class and national suicide, to abandon the
creature comforts of the parasitic path laid
before them over the last 500 years and to
instead enthusiastically join hands with the
oppressed and exploited and walk down
the road of struggle and revolution. The
Party wants those who are willing to
eschew norms to organize and work for
revolution; who forsake their own class for
a better future for humanity at large.
VI. We Need a Revolutionary
Organization!
As Indigenous revolutionaries We
believe that to free our people from
ongoing genocide and oppression We must
involve every progressive element of our
communities in the struggle for self-
determination. Only with a well-organized,
mobilized, and politicized people, will We
develop the power necessary to achieve
liberation. A critical aspect of this point is
the need to channel our people’s energy
and resources into a disciplined
revolutionary party.
 In political struggle, individualism is a
bourgeois and egotistical trait. We must
raise these shortcomings and
contradictions to those who profess being
active in political work without
accountability to an organization. Central
to this point is the combating of liberalism,
which in our movement presents itself as
unprincipled and opportunistic struggle.
Liberalism stems from selfishness, and
places personal interests above the
interests of the collective movement. The
Party upholds the importance of engaging
in constructive criticism and self-criticism,
IN THE SPIRIT OF CRAZY HORSE!
IN THE SPIRIT OF LOUIS RIEL!
FREE THE LAND—BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY!
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as a way of identifying our weaknesses and
shortcomings. We must adhere to the
principle of collective decision-making in
our daily work.
To this end we urge all indigenous
people to join the Indigenous People’s
Liberation Party, an organization united
under principles of democratic centralism
and the goal of liberation as the only way
to build a movement that is accountable to
our peoples and capable of leading our
struggle. Achieving organizational, practical,
and ideological unity is of paramount
importance!