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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 that has also been invaded, the Mapuche nation, a people who still remember their days of freedom, when we roamed our Wallj Mapu without borders and without wires. Like your beloved sister people, mine also knows the injustice of dispossession, the pain of genocide, the desolation of being slaves in our own land, the deportations of death, and forced relocations.

We have experienced the world's indolence, 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. I come from that place, from a lineage deeply rooted in the earthly memory of these territories, a nation-like people, courageous and full of dignity.

The Palestinian people have been in my heart for several years, since I learned that there, in the distant yet so close Middle East, a story similar to ours was unfolding: an indigenous people, the Palestinian people, invaded by a colonial state, Israel. Something so similar to ours, but only 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 kills my Palestinian sisters and brothers pierces my body. I relive the genocide with every bomb that falls on Gaza, with every murdered child. The deaths of innocent people spread across 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 profound sorrows, traversing the darkest night to dawn a new, bright, and fulfilling day.

I wonder: When will we cross the night? What has happened to the Jewish people, who also had their long and deep night? Have they perhaps remained in darkness? Or have they been kidnapped by those who rule the nights, instilling in us the worst nightmares? Perhaps the monsters of the night have taken control of the world, numbing our senses with sleeping pills laden with lies. We will have many YERPUN, dear sister. But sooner rather than later, the earthly peoples will cross the night, and the colonial military forces will have to surrender to the unity of the peoples, to the solidarity and strength of justice and brotherhood of a humanity that, in all corners of the world, will remain in the streets, convinced that as long as there is no justice for the criminals, there will be no peace.

Occupying forces have always operated by deploying a propaganda machine to silence the conscience of the people and justify their abhorrent crimes to the world. The colonial narrative begins by framing the victims as terrorists, and the terrorist states as vigilantes.

The Mapuche nation is well aware of this perverse narrative, which serves the oppressors well because racism, which underpins the doctrine of hateful democracies, is not questioned by the vast majority of the world's population.

A small portion of humanity that concentrates power is supremacist, racist, and has decided that the lives of racialized peoples do not matter. I have learned that a portion of the Jewish population is repressed by the tyranny of the genocidaires who govern the State of Israel. I know that Jewish women and men have bravely raised their voices to vociferate their rage and make it clear that they will not allow a people to continue being murdered in their name . Many of these brave people have suffered abuse, torture, and confinement at the hands of the repressive forces of the ultra-right Zionist and fascist Israeli government. This fraction of anti-Zionist Jewish sisters and brothers 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 Argentines who bravely came out 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 this hunt for Mapuche children and women wasn't massive, just a handful of conscious and supportive individuals. There will always be a wise and courageous voice that emerges to say "enough!"

These days I think of Hannah Arendt, Jewish, Zionist, and yet persecuted and hated by her own people, who refused to allow her revisionism, her critiques, and her interpellations in the face of a colonial and racist nationalism that seemed as cruel as its Nazi persecutors. She was able to see what would become of that political force that was being articulated to sustain a bloody and cruel occupation by force.

I so desire, dear Palestinian sister, that the women of the world join together in calling for a global strike against genocide, to stop the war. Perhaps it will work to stop the world , and that those who profit from war, the true beneficiaries of this massacre, may 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 the importance of sustaining LIFE above all differences. My dear Palestinian sister, I embrace your people with all my being, filled with love. I am ashamed of my limitations and helplessness 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 like to be deprived of everything, and how wonderful it is when, in the midst of distress, a helping 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 Palestine. We will win, sister Palestine.
From the southern Puelwillimapu mountain range, for territory, justice, and freedom, marici weu!!

Moira Millan- Weychafe Mapuche