Idle No More in Egypt

Patricia Stein @PygmySioux is a Lakota from North Dakota who is living in Cairo, Egypt. On December 21, 2012, as part of the Idle No More (#IdleNoMore) movement, she went with her Egyptian friend Ahmed عggour @Psypherize and stood in front of the Canadian Embassy in Cairo with Idle No More signs. Idle No More is a movement that began in Saskatchewan and is spreading throughout Canada, and internationally, to demand Native sovereignty and First Nations peoples’ right to their land and resources, and to protest the Conservative government’s omnibus Bill C-45, a megabill that severly weakens Canada’s environmnetal protections and changes the process for designating lands in the Indian Act, among many other measures that would negatively affect First Nations in Canada. Patricia Stein is currently on a hunger strike in solidarity with Attawapiskat Chief Theresa Spence. Chief Spence has said she is willing to die for her and her peoples’ cause and maintains she will stay on her hunger strike until Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Governor-General David Johnston meet with Native leaders to create a new relationship based on respect and aboriginals’ right to self-determination.

I spoke with Patrica Stein on December 21, 2012, before and after she went to the Canadian Embassy in Cairo, about her solidarity with Idle No More from Cairo, her experience as a Native woman in Egypt, where many people believe that indigenous people from the Americas no longer exist, and parallels with the Egyptian Revolution.