Dreaming Futures: Black and Indigenous Solidarity in Phoenix

The following report documents three conversations which took place last year on building Black and Indigenous solidarity in Phoenix, offered by a local coalition of some of our closest trusted partners. These convenings are part of an ongoing national movement to build such solidarity through candid discussions, increased scholarship, and a demand for more nuanced dialogue centering the Afro-Indigenous identity. While this local population certainly grapples with the same national issues of environmental injustice, land rights, and police brutality; they also have to combat the erasure of their communities’ history and culture through false dominant narratives that are rooted in the history of American westward expansion of the Southwest.

This invisibility further exacerbates the large gap between Indigenous and Black communities in building solidarity together in the fifth largest city in the United States. It’s with this goal of building bridges together that the Politics of Place Coalition was formed, with the additional objectives of creating space for deeper relationships between Black and Indigenous partners in the greater Phoenix area; sharing recommendations and offerings which come out of their work together; surfacing the tensions and positive overlaps between the struggles of these communities in Arizona; and moving institutions and other organizations throughout Phoenix toward support of Black and Indigenous methods of working.

Dreaming Futures

Black and Indigenous Solidarity in Phoenix

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