Free Lingít Aaní!

Today is Free Nations Day.

Free Nations Day is an opportunity to reclaim the idea that nations are voluntary groupings of free individuals, not externally imposed political borders or states. Both geographic localities and identities that transcend space are legitimate entities with the right to decide their own ways of life.

Courtesy of Tlingit Readers Inc.; produced by the late Andrew Hope III

Lingít Aaní, or the Tlingit Nation if you will, is a tribal nation captive by and split between two externally imposed states and their borders: the US and Canada. Hundreds, if not thousands of cultural groups, linguistic groups, tribes, and other nations join us in this common experience: captivity and division in our own lands. We are the captive nations of the world.

Lately Kurdistan, Catalonia and Scotland have been making the news in their struggle for freedom. Let the world also know that the Tlingit people are a nation, too, divided and surrounded by political borders that were not our making. Let the world know of the hundreds of tribes and tribal Nations in North America that suffer a similar fate. Happy Free Nations Day, and decolonize Lingít Aaní!