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Dear Palestinian sister, I am writing from very distant lands, from my territory of Puelmapu, Mapuche Territory, in southern Patagonia, under the administration of the Argentine state.

I am the daughter of a nation also invaded, the Mapuche people, a people who still remember their days of freedom, when we roamed our Wallmapu without borders or barbed wire. Like your people, dear sister, mine also knows the injustice of dispossession, the pain of genocide, the desolation of being enslaved in our own land, the death deportations, the forced relocations.

We have felt the world's indifference, and even today we suffer the imposition of two colonial states, Argentina and Chile, which continue to persecute, imprison, and murder us. My family has miraculously survived concentration camps, torture, and extermination. That is where I come from, from a lineage rooted deep in the telluric memory of these lands, a courageous and dignified people.

The Palestinian people have lived in my heart for some years now, ever since I learned that there in the distant yet so close Middle East, a story similar to our own was unfolding: an indigenous people, the Palestinian people, invaded by a colonial state, Israel. Something so similar to our situation, albeit a few decades apart, since the Argentine state ended its genocidal campaign in the late 1800s, but its state was definitively established in Puelmapu in the early 1900s.

Every bullet that takes the lives of my Palestinian sisters and brothers pierces my very being. I relive the genocide with every bomb that falls on Gaza, with every child killed. The deaths of innocents are spreading throughout the Palestinian territory, at the hands of the Israeli state.

I have received from my elders a very ancient teaching in the philosophy of my Mapuche people, our kuifikimvn. They speak to me of YERPUN, traversing the night to become a person, elevating our BEING as humanity. We must overcome obstacles, pain, and deep sorrows, traversing the darkest night to awaken to a new day, bright and full.

I wonder: When will we pass through the night? What has become of the Jewish people, who also had their long and profound night? Did they remain in darkness? Or have they been kidnapped by those who rule the nights, instilling the worst nightmares? Perhaps the monsters of the night have taken control of the world, lulling our senses with sleeping pills laden with lies. We will have many YERPUNs, dear sister. But sooner rather than later, we, the earth-bound peoples, will pass through the night, and the colonial military forces will have to surrender to the unity of the peoples, to the solidarity and the strength of justice and brotherhood of a humanity that, in every corner of the world, will remain in the streets, convinced that until there is justice for the criminals, there will be no peace.

Throughout history, occupying forces have employed a propaganda machine to silence the conscience of their people and justify their abhorrent crimes to the world. The colonial narrative begins by labeling the victims as terrorists and the terrorist states as vigilantes.

The Mapuche nation knows this perverse story very well, and it works for the oppressors because racism, structuring the doctrine of hateful democracies, is not questioned by the vast majority of the world's population.

A small portion of humanity that holds power is supremacist, racist, and has decided that the lives of racialized peoples don't matter. I know that a part of the Jewish population is repressed by the tyranny of the genocidal rulers of the State of Israel. I know that Jewish women and men have bravely raised their voices to express their rage and make it clear that they will not allow a people to continue being murdered in their name . Many of these courageous people have suffered mistreatment, torture, and imprisonment at the hands of the repressive forces of the far-right, Zionist, and fascist Israeli government. This fraction of anti-Zionist Jewish brothers and sisters are persecuted for feeling and embracing their profound humanity, ashamed of the murderers who claim to represent them. I also extend my embrace to them. They remind me of the Argentinians who bravely stood up to denounce the state alongside the Mapuche people when the bullets of the Argentine Unified Command were being fired at our children, just a year ago. Of course, the condemnation of that hunt for Mapuche children and women wasn't widespread, just a handful of conscious and compassionate people. There will always be a voice that rises wisely and bravely to say "enough!"

These days I think of Hannah Arendt, Jewish, Zionist, and yet persecuted and hated by her own people, who did not allow her revisionism, her criticisms, and her challenges to a colonial and racist nationalism that was as cruel as its Nazi persecutors. She was able to see what that political force, which was being organized to sustain a bloody and cruel occupation by force, would become.

I so wish, my dear Palestinian sister, that the women of the world would unite in a call for a global strike against genocide, to stop the war, perhaps stopping the world will work , and that those who profit from war, the true beneficiaries of this massacre, know that we are determined to wrest from them our right to justice and peace.

I firmly believe in our strength, in our ability to forge consensus, in our discernment to see beyond all differences the importance of sustaining LIFE. My dear Palestinian sister, I embrace your people with all my heart, overflowing with love. I am ashamed of my limitations and powerlessness in the face of what you are going through. Believe me, I wish I could be there helping. As a Mapuche woman, I know what it is to lack everything, and how wonderful it is when, in the midst of despair, a friendly hand reaches out with the help we need.

I desire the freedom of your people as much as I dream of the freedom of my own. Weayiñ lamngen Palestina. We will prevail, sister Palestine.
From the southern mountain range of Puelwillimapu, for territory, justice, and freedom, marici weu!!

Moira Millan- Weychafe Mapuche