The People's Record

Google+ demonstrates deforestation and other man-made climate disasters with satellite images
May 18, 2013

It’s one thing to talk about deforestation, disappearing habitats, and shrinking glaciers and water resources, and another thing entirely to demonstrate it with actual satellite imagery. And thanks to Landsat images and the Google Earth Engine, we’re getting a glimpse at some key locations across the planet as they are changed by the hands of man. A series of interactive timelapse GIFs that use Landsat satellite data to display massive changes to the Earth’s surface could be a potent tool for motivating individuals and organizations to take action on key issues.

Google’s Animated GIFs of Earth Over Time focuses our attention on key features of our planet, such as the Amazon rainforest, the coal beds of Wyoming, the Columbia Glacier, the Aral Sea, and the deserts of Saudi Arabia.

Today, we’re making it possible for you to go back in time and get a stunning historical perspective on the changes to the Earth’s surface over time. Working with the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), NASA and TIME, we’re releasing more than a quarter-century of images of Earth taken from space, compiled for the first time into an interactive time-lapse experience. We believe this is the most comprehensive picture of our changing planet ever made available to the public.

- Google

Some of the visualizations are kind of subtle, and need to be put into context to really hit home (such as the massive increase in irrigated areas in Saudi Arabia, which affects local water supplies, or the urban sprawl of Las Vegas, which also puts increased demands on local resources), but some of them, such as this one documenting the rapidly disappearing rainforest in the Brazilian Amazon, speak for themselves:

Explore a global timelapse of our planet, constructed from Landsat satellite imagery. The Amazon rainforest is shrinking at a rapid rate to provide land for farming and raising cattle. Each frame of the timelapse map is constructed from a year of Landsat satellite data, constituting an annual 1.7-terapixel snapshot of the Earth at 30-meter resolution.

- Google Earth Engine

These interactive time-lapse images can be manipulated by pausing or zooming in to them, as we’ve come to expect from Google Earth, and may serve as a pivot point for those who are on the fence about the effects that our booming population and its increased demand for resources has on our Big Blue Marble.

Source

You can view all of the images at Google +, and you can read a backstory at TIME.

An Indonesian court has ruled indigenous people have the right to manage forests where they live, a move which supporters said prevents the government from handing over community-run land to businesses.
May 17, 2013

Disputes between indigenous groups and companies have become increasingly tense in recent years, as soaring global demand for commodities like palm oil has seen plantations encroach on forests. In Thursday’s ruling, Constitutional Court judges said that a 1999 law should be changed so it no longer defines forest that has been inhabited by indigenous groups for generations as “state forest”, according to court documents.

“Indigenous Indonesians have the right to log their forests and cultivate the land for their personal needs, and the needs of their families,” judge Muhammad Alim said as he handed down the ruling, state news agency Antara reported.

While environmentalists welcomed the ruling, they warned it could unintentionally lead to an upsurge in disputes between authorities and communities over the classification of indigenous land. In March, seven villagers were shot in northern Sumatra, where a dispute over a forest claimed by both the community and government has been simmering since 1998.

The National People’s Indigenous Organisation filed the challenge to the 1999 law, which has let officials sell permits allowing palm oil, paper, mining and timber companies to exploit their land. The group said Friday’s ruling affected 40 million hectares (98 million acres) of forest - slightly larger than Japan, and 30 per cent of Indonesia’s forest coverage. Despite their living there, the area was legally classified as “customary forest”, a term that describes forests that have been inhabited by indigenous people for a long time.

“About 40 million indigenous people are now the rightful owners of our customary forests,” said the group’s chief Abdon Nababan.

Stepi Hakim, Indonesia director of the Clinton Climate Initiative, said the ruling would give legal grounds for indigenous communities to challenge businesses operating in their forests, but this could lead to a string of new disputes. “As soon as this policy is delivered, local governments have to be ready to mitigate conflicts,” he said.

Source

Mexico: Ground Zero in the fight against Monsanto for the future of maize
May 13, 2013

In the 2011 action-thriller “Unknown”, scientists are persecuted by the biotech industry because they plan the open release of a drought- and pest-resistant strain of maize that could help eradicate world hunger.

There are certain parallels with the situation today in Mexico, the birthplace of maize, which is at the centre of the global fight to protect the crop’s diversity from the onslaught of genetically modified varieties.

“It’s the first time in history that one of the most important harvests in the world is threatened in its centre of diversity,” Pat Mooney, the head of the Action Group on Erosion, Technology and Concentration (ETC Group), an international NGO, told IPS.

“If we let the companies win, there will be no chance to defend them in other parts. What is happening here is of key importance for the rest of the world.”

Civil society organisations are raising their guard against the possibility that the government of conservative President Enrique Peña Nieto of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) may approve commercial cultivation of transgenic maize, a move widely condemned by environmentalists and other activists, academics, and small and medium producers due to the risks it poses.

In September, the U.S. corporations Monsanto, Pioneer and Dow Agrosciences presented six applications for commercial plantations of transgenic maize on more than two million hectares in the northwestern state of Sinaloa and the northeastern state of Tamaulipas.

Moreover, in January these companies and Syngenta presented 11 applications for pilot and experimental plots to grow transgenic corn on 622 hectares in the northern states of Chihuahua, Coahuila, Durango, Sinaloa and Baja California. And Monsanto has applied for an additional plantation in an unspecified area in the north of the country.

Since 2009, the Mexican government has issued 177 permits for experimental plots of transgenic maize covering an area of 2,664 hectares, according to the latest figures provided by the authorities.

But large-scale commercial release of GM maize has not yet been authorised.

“They are going to serve up transgenic maize on every table in spite of the fact that food sovereignty depends on growing native corn,” said Evangelina Robles, a member of Red en Defensa del Maíz (Maize Defence Network) which campaigns against GM corn. “As a result, we have to demand its prohibition by the state,” she told IPS.

Mexico produces 22 million tonnes of maize a year, and imports 10 million tonnes, according to the agriculture ministry. The country purchased about two million tonnes of GM maize from South Africa over the last two years, and is set to import another 150,000 tonnes.

Three million maize farmers cultivate about eight million hectares in Mexico, two million of which are devoted to family farming. White maize is the main crop for human consumption, while yellow maize, for animal feed, is largely imported.

The National Council for the Evaluation of Social Policy (CONEVAL) estimates the country’s annual consumption of maize at 123 kg per person, compared to a world average of 16.8 kg.

The historical link with pre-Columbian indigenous cultures gives maize a strong symbolic and cultural significance throughout Mesoamerica, the area comprising southern Mexico and Central America, where it was domesticated, producing 59 landraces or native strains and 209 varieties.

In the state of Mexico, adjacent to the capital city’s Federal District, small farmers have found their native maize to be contaminated with GM maize, according to tests carried out by students at the state Autonomous Metropolitan University.

“We swapped seeds and decided to do some tests. Now we are more careful when exchanging, and over who participates in the fair, although we still have to carry out confirmation tests,” activist Sara López, of the Red Origen Volcanes (Volcanoes Origins Network), an association of small farmers that has been organising producers’ fairs since 2010, told IPS.

Environmental, scientific and small farmers’ organisations have discovered GM contamination of native maize in Chihuahua, Hidalgo, Puebla and Oaxaca.

Contamination is “a carefully and perversely planned strategy,” according to Camila Montecinos, from the Chile office of GRAIN, an international NGO that works to support small farmers and social movements in their struggles for community-controlled and biodiversity-based food systems.

Transnational food companies “chose maize, soy and canola because of their enormous potential for contamination (by wind-pollination),” said Montecinos, one of the experts participating in the preliminary hearing on transgenic contamination of native maize at the Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal, an international opinion tribunal which opened its Mexican chapter in 2012 and will conclude with a non-binding ruling in 2014.

“When contamination spreads, the companies claim that the presence of transgenic crops must be recognised and legalised,” in order to pave the way for marketing the GM seeds, to which they own the patents, she said.

Mexico’s environment minister, Juan Guerra, has said that all available scientific information will be examined before a decision is made.

But that will not be easy. The National Confederation of Campesinos (Small Farmers), one of the main internal movements in the ruling PRI, has had an agreement with Monsanto since 2007 under which the company is to “conserve” native varieties.

Meanwhile, the Peña Nieto government still has not approved regulations for the format and contents of reports on the results of releasing GM organisms, and the possible threats to the environment, biodiversity, and the health of animals, plants and fish.

“For 18 years, corporations have been unsuccessful in convincing the people that their products are good. Maize is being used as a means of political and economic control. People need maize to be alive,” the ETC Group’s Mooney said.

The transgenic seeds on the market are herbicide-resistant Roundup Ready and Bt (for the Bacillus thuringiensis gene they carry for pest resistance) versions of cotton, maize, soy and canola. While they are legally grown in Canada, the United States, Argentina, Brazil and Spain, they are banned for example in China, Russia and the majority of the EU countries.

Recent studies published in the United States show that transgenic crops do not significantly increase yield per hectare, do not reduce herbicide use, and do not increase resistance to pests, in contrast to biotech industry claims.

“We are analysing what legal action to take against the new applications (to plant GM maize),” said Robles, of the Maize Defence Network.

Navajo Nation battles uranium corporations, nuclear industry
May 10, 2013

Since European settlers first arrived on this continent, they set out to accumulate as much wealth and land as humanly possible. Their reign of terror on the indigenous populations —destructive of land, culture and entire communities—was the basis for immense fortunes that spurred the global economy and advancing capitalism.

This struggle, now over 500 years in the making, is ongoing on many fronts, including the Navajo Nation’s current battle over U.S. companies’ uranium extraction.

In early 2013, uranium companies approached the Navajo Nation in hopes they will allow them to renew mining operations on their land. These companies claim that they have developed newer and safer methods for extracting uranium, after decades of environmental destruction and abuse led the Navajo Nation to officially ban their mining.

This decades-long battle for environmental justice is part and parcel of the struggles for workers’ rights and Native self-determination, and against the forces of militarism and capitalism.

Exploitation of Navajo lands

The Navajo Nation sits on 27,425 square miles in the four corners area of the southwestern United States. The area holds a vast amount of uranium ore and thus has become a center in the struggle over nuclear energy and weaponry.

Since the end of World War II, and the onset of the so-called Cold War, the U.S. government began mining uranium domestically in order to not rely on foreign supplies. Uranium is one of the most common naturally occurring radioactive metals on the planet, and was understood as essential for the development of nuclear weapons and technology.

Due to the unique geology and consistent climate of the Southwest, mining companies saw the Navajo reservation as the most profitable site to open mining operations in the 1940s. In 1948, the United States Atomic Energy Commission declared it would be the sole purchaser of all uranium mined in the country, initiating a mining boom of private companies and contractors who knew they had a guaranteed buyer.

Of the thousands of uranium mines, 92% were located in the Colorado Plateau on which the Navajo Nation is located. Between 1944 and 1986 approximately 4 million tons of uranium ore was mined from Navajo Tribal land.

In the early days of mining, Navajo people flocked to the low-wage work given the scarcity of jobs around the reservation. The Navajo workers dealt with racist bosses and coworkers while going into the most dangerous and undesirable jobs at lesser pay. Nonetheless, after Navajo Code Talkers’ had famously contributed to U.S. forces in World War II, many Navajo workers believed they had a patriotic duty and responsibility to the United States.

Mineworkers were also lied to about the dangers of Radon poisoning.

Full article

Indigenous activists stage new protest at Amazon dam site
May 7, 2013

Some 200 indigenous activists and fishermen have been occupying the main construction site at Brazil’s controversial Belo Monte dam in the Amazon and are demanding government involvement in the negotiations. “We want to be heard. We want a close representative of President Dilma Rousseff to come and see us,” chief Valdemir Munduruku, one of the leaders of the occupation, told AFP by telephone Monday.

Five indigenous tribes are calling for legislation under which they would have to be consulted prior to any official decision affecting them with respect to the dam’s construction. “They should consult us but instead they are sending the police and soldiers. They are denying access to our lawyer,” the chief said.

A press spokeswoman for the Norte Energia consortium in charge of the dam’s construction in northern Para state confirmed the occupation Monday. “Work has stopped on the main site, where most of the turbines will be set up,” she said from Brasilia, adding that the protesters’ demands had been forwarded to federal authorities.

Six thousand workers have been idle for the past five days and Friday some 80 police arrived to protect the site. “Today we are going to leave the site to give a press conference and release a letter with our demands,” chief Munduruku said.

“You are pointing your weapons at our heads. Your soldiers and war trucks are besieging our lands. You are eliminating our fish,” said an excerpt from the letter. “What we want is simple. You must implement the law on prior consultation of indigenous people,” the letter concluded.

Protesters have accused Norte Energia of backtracking on accords signed in June after 150 indigenous people occupied the Pimental area for three weeks.

They are outraged because fishing in the area is no longer possible and there is no drinking water.

Belo Monte, which is being built at a cost of $13 billion, is expected to flood an area of 500 square kilometers (200 square miles) along the Xingu River, displacing 16,000 people, according to the government. Some NGOs have estimated that some 40,000 people would be displaced by the massive project.

Indigenous groups have made clear that the dam will harm their way of life while environmentalists (many of whom are indigenous people) warn of deforestation, greenhouse gas emissions and irreparable damage to the ecosystem.

The federal government plans to invest a total of $1.2 billion to assist the displaced by the time the dam is completed in 2019. The first turbine is set to begin operating in 2015 and the last one in 2019.

The native peoples want their lands demarcated and non-indigenous people removed from them. They also are demanding better health care and access to drinking water.

Source

Got this in my email today:

Dear friends, 

We are elders of the Maasai from Tanzania, one of Africa’s oldest tribes. The government has just announced that it plans to kick thousands of our families off our lands so that wealthy tourists can use them to shoot lions and leopards.The evictions are to begin immediately.

Last year, when word first leaked about this plan, almost one million Avaaz members rallied to our aid. Your attention and the storm it created forced the government to deny the plan, and set them back months. But the President has waited for international attention to die down, and now he’s revived his plan to take our land. We need your help again, urgently.

President Kikwete may not care about us, but he has shown he’ll respond to global media and public pressure — to all of you! We may only have hours. Please stand with us to protect our land, our people and our world’s most majestic animals, and tell everyone before it is too late. This is our last hope:

http://www.avaaz.org/en/maasai_fb_dm_3/?bNDofcb&v=23793

Our people have lived off the land in Tanzania and Kenya for centuries. Our communities respect our fellow animals and protect and preserve the delicate ecosystem. But the government has for years sought to profit by giving rich princes and kings from the Middle East access to our land to kill. In 2009, when they tried to clear our land to make way for these hunting sprees, we resisted, and hundreds of us were arrested and beaten. Last year, rich princes shot at birds in trees from helicopters. This killing goes against everything in our culture.

Now the government has announced it will clear a huge swath of our land to make way for what it claims will be a wildlife corridor, but many suspect it’s just a ruse to give a foreign hunting corporation and the rich tourists it caters to easier access to shoot at majestic animals. The government claims this new arrangement is some sort of accommodation, but its effect on our people’s way of life will be disastrous. There are thousands of us who could have our lives uprooted, losing our homes, the land on which our animals graze, or both.

President Kikwete knows this deal would be controversial with Tanzania’s tourists - a critical source of national income - and does not want a big PR disaster. If we can urgently generate even more global outrage than we did before, and get the media writing about it, we know it can make him think twice. Stand with us now to call on Kikwete to stop the sell off:

This land grab could spell the end for the Maasai in this part of Tanzania and many of our community have said they would rather die than be forced from their homes. On behalf of our people and the animals who graze in these lands, please stand with us to change the mind of our President.

With hope and determination,

— The Maasai community of Ngorongoro District

Sources: 

• The Guardian: Maasai fury as plan to lure Arabian Gulf tourists threatens their ancestral land

• allAfrica: Land Grab Could Spell ‘The End of the Maasai’

• IPP Media: Maasai villagers frustrate efforts to vacate for Ortelo 

• The Guardian: Tanzania denies plan to evict Maasai for royal hunting ground 

• The Guardian: “Tourism is a curse to us” 

• New Internationalist Magazine: “Hunted down” 

• Society for Threatened People: Briefing on the eviction of the Loliondo Maasai 

• FEMACT: Report by 16 human rights investigators & media on violence in Loliondo

• The Endorois people (also in Kenya) were removed from their sacred land in the 1970s under similar circumstances & for similar motives (the establishment of parks for colonial tourists.)

Indigenous protestors file suit in Brazil after violent eviction in Rio
April 4, 2013

More than a week after the Brazilian Police’s Shock Battalion evicted indigenous and allied protestors using tear gas, pepper spray and batons from a contested site in Rio de Janeiro near one of the country’s top sports stadiums, attorneys for the Tamoio Movement of Original Peoples (TMOP) have filed suit at the Federal Public Ministry to halt the eviction and prevent the demolition of the old museum.

On March 22, close to 200 agents of the Shock Battalion marched into the area and attacked the gathered protestors with tear gas and pepper spray, forcing the removal of the last residents of the Aldeia Maracana and arresting at least six indigenous people from the area.

The TMOP, representing the various Indigenous Peoples who have been settling around the former Indian Museum in Rio de Janeiro, filed the lawsuit and issued a press statement on Monday, April 1^st. In their statement the TMOP gave an overview of their activities in the area and their negotiations with local and federal authorities.

The conflict over the site dates back to 2006 when Indigenous Peoples began to occupy the area around the museum which had been closed and abandoned, by building huts and reclaiming the area for its historical and spiritual significance to indigenous people in Brazil. The former Indian Museum sits on property next to the Maracana Stadium, one of the sites for the upcoming 2014 World Cup soccer games.

Since the occupation, the TMOP asserted that indigenous activists have developed programs for use in local schools and universities for the purpose of “…deconstructing the distorted history of our peoples in the majority of textbooks…” as well as start to build a small community dedicated to preserving indigenous history and culture. The community members of the TMOP are from the Pataxo, Tukano, Guarani, Puri, Apurina, Tupinamba, Kaingang and Satere-Mauwe peoples and they refer to their settlement as the Maracana Village.

The press statement also noted the reaction of the Indigenous Peoples to the actions of the Shock Battalion troops.

“We want to reaffirm that we repudiate the barbaric and inhuman way that we were treated by Military Police by order of the government, disrespecting that which was established in the document of reintegration… While the military police used pepper spray, tear gas bombs, rubber bullets and sonic weapons against us, all we had to defend us were only our maracas and our songs evoking our ancestors.”

The TMOP activists also said that they were approaching various government officials, such as the Minister of Agriculture, to negotiate a way of preserving the contested area to include a possible indigenous reference center.

They also noted that, “…the property of the old Indian Museum, located in the historic center of resistance Tupinambã¡ and Tamoia against the Portuguese invasion… There were the spirits of our ancestors and it was time to return home.”

Source

First Nations community, cut off from transport & trampled on for Winnipeg’s freshwater
March 29, 2013

Health worker Linda Redsky sits at her kitchen table, remembering when she almost drowned bringing groceries back from the market. With no roads to her community in western Ontario, she had to walk across the frozen surface of Shoal Lake, a sprawling body of water just north of the Canada-United States border.

She and her husband Wyne were walking back to their home on the lakeshore when they heard loud cracks all around them. “I went completely under the ice,” she says, her voice trembling. “I remember looking up and it was like a moment of clarity. I could see the hole I’d fallen through, I could see stars in the sky and I was sinking.”

But Wyne grabbed her hand and pulled her to safety. They kept each other warm until help came, and it wasn’t the first time that the couple had rescued each other. “At times like that I hate living here,” said Redsky. “It’s beautiful in summer, but I hate those trips across the ice.”

The Redskys live in an indigenous First Nation community, known as Shoal Lake 40. Though they’re just a dozen kilometres from the Trans-Canada highway and a few hours’ drive from a major city, their community had been cut off from Canada’s transport network for 100 years.

This isolation has been part of a long-running dispute that many First Nations people believe is emblematic of their troubled relations with the Canadian state.

In 1913, the city of Winnipeg - about 180km to the west - got the Canadian government to evict the people of Shoal Lake from their lakeside village so they could build a fresh water intake for a growing urban population. Then the city dug a canal to keep the water clean. That canal turned the new Shoal Lake settlement into an island, cutting off the inhabitants from the forests, trade routes, roads and railroad lines all around them.

“We were blockaded,” said the elected chief of Shoal Lake, Erwin Redsky. “It’s manmade isolation. We’re not really remote. We can hear the traffic on the Trans-Canada [highway] and hear the trains go by.” In January, that isolation came to a temporary end with the opening of what Chief Redsky calls “Freedom Road”. Only open in winter, the road crosses a steel bridge that Chief Redsky demanded for years to end his community’s reliance on the often-dangerous ice crossing over Shoal Lake.

“To us it’s freedom, at least for now and until we build a permanent link. No more danger when the ice is thin,” he says. “People have been just driving on the road for no reason, just to see what it’s like.”

But Shoal Lake’s problems are far from over. There are few jobs and even the lake’s abundant fish and mineral-bearing rocks can’t be exploited, because of the City of Winnipeg’s insistence that no development take place near the source of its drinking water. Once-vibrant gold mines and commercial fishing have closed.

Now Winnipeg has big plans for its century-old water supply. A project to install central Canada’s largest inland port and a proposal to sell Shoal Lake Water to surrounding municipalities has given Chief Redsky an opportunity to call attention to his community’s plight. He and his fellow councillors have opposed the use of Shoal Lake water in these new schemes and have managed to get them delayed, if not stopped.

Treaties between the British colonial government and Canada’s First Nations explicitly allot water rights to aboriginal communities, and Chief Redsky intends to press that claim in the courts and international tribunals if necessary.

“Water is sacred to us, to all life, and our treaties call for the water to be shared. So why is only one community - Winnipeg - benefitting from this resource and not all of us?” the chief asks. “We’ll do what it takes to share this benefit.”

Shoal Lake people, he points out, have to drink bottled water because they have no purification plant.

The City of Winnipeg isn’t commenting on the case while the legal ramifications are studied.

What hasn’t been forthcoming, says the chief, is support from Canada’s federal government, which has constitutional jurisdiction over First Nations affairs. Chief Redsky says he’s still waiting for a substantive reply to a letter sent in January to Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

Some members of his community, he says, are tired of waiting for Ottawa or some other government to resolve their grievances. With an eye to the recent Idle No More protests and hunger strikes, they’re looking to take matters into their own hands.

“We’re at a point now in terms of our relationship with Canada. We’re at a crossroads where there’s a road to reconciliation and a road to confrontation. We prefer reconciliation, we prefer sharing our resources, consultation, as promised in our treaties,” Chief Redsky says, leaving it clear - if unsaid - that confrontation cannot be ruled out.

Source

Idle No More supports Nishiyuu Walkers
March 27, 2013

As the bears are coming out of hibernation so is the Idle No More movement in Hastings County. On Saturday, March 23 the group held its first fundraiser of the season at a residence on Hastings Street South. The group plans to continue raising awareness throughout the community of aboriginal and environmental issues of concern to the region and the planet.  

“There are so many eco-conscious people in the area,” said Idle No More Hastings County organizer Theresa Eagles.

“Friday was International Water Day, today is Seedy Saturday and tonight is Earth Hour. Earth Day is almost here. There is so much going on locally and globally at the moment, and really we are all working for the same things: a cleaner environment, better food and clean water.”

The funds raised by the garage sale was used to send members of the Idle No More Hastings County group to Ottawa on Monday, March 25 to welcome a group of Cree youth activists who have been walking from their reserve in northern Quebec all the way to Parliament Hill. “People need to know that Idle No More Hastings County is not going anywhere but it’s all about the walkers right now,” said Eagles.

The local Idle No More group has been focusing their time and energy of late on helping the walkers, who are referred to as Nishiyuu, achieve their goal by bringing awareness to their campaign. What makes the quest of the Nishiyuu even more remarkable are the ages of the organizers. Six of the original seven individuals who started the quest are under 20 years of age with the exception of their adult guide Isaac Kawapit. The original six youth are Geordie Rupert,  Travis George, Stanley George Jr.,  Johnny Abraham,  David Kawapit and Raymond Kawapit. Eagles, who has been in contact with the original seven Nishiyuu, said that as the group nears Parliament Hill their numbers have now grown to exceed 300 individuals. “They have come on such an incredible journey,” Eagles said. 

“I am honoured by them and humbled by them. These young people are walking more than 1,500 kilometres. There is one young walker who is just four years of age named David who has been walking for the final 100 kilometres. It’s truly amazing.”

Their walk began from their homes in Whapmagoostui, Que., on the coast of Hudson Bay back on Jan. 16. 

The Nishiyuu claim that their quest is driven by their desire to make the world a better place for others. 

Their goal is to protect the people, their cultural heritage, and the land. 

Throughout their journey they have stated that they are guided by their ancestral teachings of courage, honesty, humility, compassion, respect, sharing and wisdom.

Source

thinkmexican:

Shame on Brazil: Forceful Removal of Indigenous Group Stains World Cup With the Blood of 500 Years of Genocide

While nations competed to go to the 2014 World Cup in Brazil on Friday, more than Brazil’s Indigenous Peoples were clashing with police over a building they’ve used as a community center in Rio de Janeiro for almost 30 years.

With the World Cup and the Olympics around the corner, local authorities have been under pressure from FIFA and International Olympic Committee to make room for housing, parking and administrative offices.

It so happens the space in question is literally steps from the famous Maracanã Stadium and was designated to become a parking lot by the World Cup organizing committee. However, leaders of Aldeia Maracanã (Maracanã Village), the group living in the building that was formerly the National Indigenous Museum, had plans to make their presence permanent and covert the space into an Indigenous school.

The forced removal of Native Brazilians by police was characterized by Aldeia Maracanã leaders as part of “513 years of struggle.”

Brazilian authorities, World Cup and Olympic organizers need to know the world is watching. This blog and many of our readers are very upset that our brothers and sisters in Brazil were treated as foreigners on their own land and violently removed from their center.

We demand accommodations be made for the Aldeia Maracanã to return and for resources to be appropriated for the establishment of an Indigenous cultural and academic center within sight of Maracanã Stadium, so that locals and tourists are forever reminded that the country’s original inhabitants are still very much alive and present in Brazil.

Photo credit: Vanderlei Almeida, AFP

(via sinidentidades)

Venezuelan indigenous Yukpa leader Sabino Romero assassinated
March 6, 2013 

Indigenous Yupka chief and land rights activist Sabino Romero has been assassinated in an act which has generated public repudiation from social movements and the Venezuelan government alike. A high profile investigation into the killing has been launched.

Romero was a chief of the indigenous Yupka people of the Sierra de Perijá in western Venezuela. He was assassinated on Sunday night as he made his way to vote in an indigenous election, in circumstances which are still unknown.

Romero was a leader in the struggle for ancestral Yupka lands in the Sierra de Perijá, lands held by cattle ranchers, but many of which have been formally granted to the Yupka by the Chavez government.

Last November, Romero travelled to Caracas with some 60 Yupka to demand that the government act against violence on the part of cattle ranchers who were refusing to give up their lands, as well as to protest against government inaction and public media silence over the conflict.

Several Yupka have already been killed in the land rights dispute, including Romero’s own father, and activists say that local judicial impunity has prevented the murderers from being brought to justice.

The Venezuelan government today condemned Romero’s assassination as a “terrible act”, and announced that a high-profile investigation into the killing had already been launched. The government, in a statement, said it suspects that the Yukpa chief was murdered for his role in the land rights conflict with cattle ranchers.

“We can’t get ahead of ourselves on a hypothesis about  this act, which is condemnable and must be repudiated from all points of view, but in general the just struggle for the fair distribution of land is on the table [as a possible motive],” said communication minister Ernesto Villegas.

Indigenous groups and social movements held a protest today outside the Public Attorney’s office in Caracas to demand that those responsible for Romero’s assassination be brought to justice.

Source

Despite declining attention, the Idle No More movement is here to stay
March 3, 2013

It may seem (from the images & stories covered on corporate media) like it’s winding down, but the Idle No More movement isn’t going anywhere.

Theresa Spence’s liquid diet helped bring the fight for native rights to the forefront, but when her diet ended in January, media attention slowly began to die off. Supporters are fighting to keep the movement alive.

At a recent demonstration in Kahnawake, a smaller but committed crowd rallied to get their point across.

“In order for things to continue and in order for the problems of indigenous people to remain in the news, we have to remain active,” said Idle No More supporter Michelle Werner.

Attawapiskat Chief Spence consistently attracted media attention, both praise and criticism, but when it was over, many wondered what would happen to the movement.

“I think the movement’s carrying forward because it wasn’t about Theresa Spence and it wasn’t about leadership. It’s about grassroots, grassroots native people of Canada,” said Joe Delaronde, a member of the Mohawk Council of Kahnawake.

A sentiment shared by Steve Bonspiel, the editor of Kahnawake’s community newspaper.

“It’s allowed people, the youth, people of all ages and all races and backgrounds to participate, so I think that’s where it really gains its strength. It’s not exclusionary,” said Bonspiel, the editor of The Eastern Door.

However, he feels the mainstream media spent too much time analyzing Spence’s hunger strike, creating a distraction from what Idle No More was actually about.

“It’s about native rights and it’s about our future, collectively as natives and non-natives, living together. It’s about the environment, it’s about land, it’s about water. It’s about things people should be concerned about.”

Marie-Pierre Bousquet, an anthropology professor at the University of Montreal described the movement as a “renewal of old requests.”

“It’s very important to remind people that native rights are in the constitution, so it’s not just people moaning in front of cameras or something. It’s really a question of laws and rights,” said Bosquet.

While the Idle No More movement may not have the same momentum it once did, supporters are convinced the fight is far from over.

“As these bills start rolling down the pipes and our communities start seeing how they’re affecting us, people are going to stand up again and realize the dangers that we’re actually in,” said supporter Jeremiah Johnson.

Source

A hope for indigenous solidarity in the Americas
February 20, 2013

On February 7, the United South and Eastern Tribes (USET), passed a resolution as 26 federally recognized tribes stood in peaceful solidarity and spoke out in the interest of preserving the security, traditions, culture, tribal homelands and languages of the indigenous people of Colombia. USET is an intertribal organization comprised of tribes on the east coast of the United States from the Micmacs in Maine to the Miccosukee Tribe of Florida.

There is a prophecy the South American Indian people and the North American Indians share. It is the Eagle and Condor. It speaks of a time of peace, a time when all people will respect each other and the land. The indigenous people of North America, the people of the mind, the Eagle, will come together with the indigenous people of South America, the people of heart, the Condor. When these two birds fly together in the same sky is when this time of balance and caring will come.

My name is Jay Levy, I am a Colombian Indian from South America, was adopted out as an infant, raised Jewish and now live with the Indian people in New England. Last year, I went home to Colombia as a human rights delegate to visit with indigenous leaders and communities who are caught in a war over Indian land and oil. It is a genocidal campaign financed by the U.S. and brutal tactics are carried out by the Colombian army, paramilitary, and guerrillas. Although Colombia’s 1991 constitution granted autonomy to Indigenous Peoples in their reserves, that provision is not respected, and there are continuous occupations of land by the military and irregular armed groups. My people are massacred, kidnapped, raped, brutally murdered and forcibly displaced off their territory. There are 1.4 million Indians in Colombia, 102 tribes and this year alone 54 indigenous leaders were assassinated.

While in Colombia, I was protected by the Indigenous Guard. The Indigenous Guard defends their territory and way of life through unarmed resistance against armed actors. They are true warriors. They passed on their colors to me and I now have a responsibility to be a voice for those who cannot.

The people here in the U.S. suffered the same circumstances 300 years ago as the South American Indian people still suffer today.Mitoke oyasin, All my relations, we are all related. My hope is to have international support from all the tribes in the United States. USET’s Cultural and Heritage Committee Chair Robert Thrower states, “USET has set a precedent for not only Native rights but human rights in general.”

When I was on the Indian reservations in Colombia, people didn’t think there were any Indians left in the United States. They thought they were all extinguished. Yet when I informed them differently, they cried. It gave them hope for their people, their children, that they too will survive and get through this brutal conflict and the violence they live every day.

These days are hard. The hate and ignorance has divided tribes and Native people. We are being divided and we must not allow ourselves to be conquered. Our culture is being replaced and our sovereignty is being negotiated. We have lost the respect we had for one another. Native people are losing themselves. We must hold onto our ancestors. Honor our relations. We must share and listen to our Indian neighbors. We walk a difficult path. We are Indian. Let’s let our children be proud.

Source

From Indigenous Peoples Issues and Resources Facebook Page:

On this day (February 5) in 1948 the US Congress passed legislation (25 USC 323) empowering the Secretary of the Interior to grant rights-of-way for various purposes across Native American lands.

The legislation grants for all purposes over and across any lands held in trust by the United States for individual Indians or Indian tribes, communities, bands, or nations, or any lands owned, subject to restrictions against alienation, by individual Indians or Indian tribes, communities, bands, or nations, including the lands belonging to the Pueblo Indians in New Mexico, and any other lands acquired or set aside for the use and benefit of the Indians. In some instances, the legislation gives the Secretary of the Interior power to grant rights-of-way without the permission of the tribe. The full suite of regulations promulgated by the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) under this legislation is available at 25 CFR 169.

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