indigenous

Numerous atrocities were committed by Brazilian state officials against Indigenous people during the dictatorship (1964-1985). Some of these were quite shocking and perverse, such as the administration of sugar mixed with strychnine, a rat poison. This week, coinciding with the 60th anniversary of the coup that marked the beginning of two decades of military rule, the Brazilian state issued a solemn apology for evicting them from their land, locking them up in internment camps and torturing them. The official ceremony concluded in a scene of tremendous symbolism: “I want to kneel before you. I am deeply moved. I want to apologize on behalf of Brazil. And to convey this request for apology to all your people,” said lawyer Enéa de Stutz e Almeida on behalf of the government to matriarch Djanira Krenak and Guarani-Kaiowá chief Tito Vilhalva at a ceremony held in Brasília last Tuesday.

The gesture was specifically directed at two of Brazil’s 266 Indigenous populations, the Guarani-Kaiowá and the Krenak, because years ago they went to the Amnesty Commission, a government agency chaired by Stutz, to ask for a collective apology.

“The whole process developed over the years was highly relevant and extremely important,” explains 40-year-old Shirley Krenak in a message exchange. The Indigenous people generally take the name of their people as their surname. For the natives, it was crucial for the apology to be in accordance with their uses and customs and, therefore, to be collective, not individual. “It is an important moment because we are opening a big door to [similar] actions of other Indigenous peoples,” she adds. This represents a first step that paves the way for claims by other peoples or for a hypothetical admission of responsibility for the persecution endured by the Indigenous peoples.

Brazil is immersed in the excruciating process of admitting its guilt in the darkest chapters of its collective history. Recently, the Bank of Brazil issued an apology for its complicity in slavery.

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Guatemala City, Guatemala – Jesus Tecu remembers wrapping his little brother in his arms in an attempt to protect the two-year-old from the horrors unfolding around them.

It was March 13, 1982, and their village of Rio Negro — a Maya Achi community situated along a river in central Guatemala — was under attack. Guatemala was in the midst of a grisly civil war, and army and paramilitary forces had been stalking the countryside, razing Indigenous villages to the ground.

A patrolman decided to take Tecu to be his household servant, but he did not want to bring home a toddler too. Ignoring Tecu’s desperate pleas, the patrolman grabbed the two-year-old from his arms, smashed him against rocks and threw his body into a ravine.

An estimated 107 children and 70 women died in Rio Negro that day. Tecu and 16 other children survived only because they were chosen to be servants.

Now, Tecu hopes a criminal case in Guatemala can offer a shred of accountability for atrocities thousands of Indigenous people experienced during that period.

“We have never stopped seeking justice,” said Tecu, who has spent the last 30 years as a human rights activist and advocate for community rebuilding.

On Friday, Manuel Benedicto Lucas Garcia, the former head of Guatemala’s army, is slated to stand trial for genocide. It is the latest chapter in the country’s fitful, stop-and-start efforts to achieve justice for the systematic killing of Guatemala’s Indigenous peoples.

An estimated 200,000 people were killed during the war, which stretched from 1960 to 1996. More than 80 percent were Indigenous Maya.

A United Nations-backed truth commission found that the military committed acts of genocide against five of the country’s 22 different Maya peoples between 1981 and 1983. That period overlaps with Lucas Garcia’s tenure as the chief of the general staff of the army.

For seven months between 1981 and 1982, Lucas Garcia helmed Guatemala’s forces, as part of the administration of President Romeo Lucas Garcia, his brother. He now stands accused of genocide, crimes against humanity, forced disappearances and sexual violence.

But Tecu points out that time is running out for survivors to find justice. Decades have passed since the war’s end. Alleged perpetrators like Lucas Garcia, 91, are growing old — and in many cases, dying.

“The importance of this case is that there is an intellectual author alive,” Tecu told Al Jazeera. “He needs to be held accountable for what happened with the deaths of so many children, women and men.”

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South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem has been banned from a second reservation following a vote taken during the April 2 Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe’s tribal council meeting.

Representatives from the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe were angered by Noem’s presence at the quarterly Pe’ Sla meeting uninvited and unannounced on March 29 in Rapid City. She made the appearance after making a series of allegations regarding cartel involvement, mismanagement of funds and poor education towards Native Nations in the last few weeks.

read more: https://ictnews.org/news/kristi-noem-banned-from-cheyenne-river-reservation

Brazil has issued its first-ever apology for the torture and persecution of Indigenous people during the military dictatorship, including the incarceration of victims in an infamous detention centre known as an “Indigenous concentration camp”.

The apology was made on Tuesday by an amnesty commission attached to the human rights ministry that is tasked with investigating the crimes of the 1964-85 regime.

The president of that commission, the law professor Eneá de Stutz e Almeida, knelt before the Indigenous leader Djanira Krenak as she voiced regret for the violence inflicted on the Krenak people.

“In the name of the Brazilian state I want to say sorry for all the suffering your people were put through,” said Almeida, who called the apology the first of its kind in the more than 500 years since Portuguese explorers reached what is now known as Brazil in 1500.

“In truth, I’m not saying sorry [only] for what happened during the dictatorship. I’m saying sorry for the persecution your people – as well as all other native people – have suffered over the last 524 years because of the non-Indigenous invasion of this land, which belongs to you,” Almeida told a hearing in the capital, Brasília.

Despite the scope of that declaration, Tuesday’s apologies concern two specific cases: one relating to the Krenak people from the south-eastern state of Minas Gerais and another relating to the Guarani-Kaiowá from Mato Grosso do Sul, towards Brazil’s western border with Bolivia and Paraguay. Indigenous leaders and historians say both groups were forced from their lands and brutalized by the dictatorship, which seized power after a coup d’état 60 years ago this week.

The Krenak have spent decades demanding justice for abuses committed against their people during a racist “re-education” campaign which the writer and activist Ailton Krenak said was designed to “rehabilitate” Indigenous people deemed “unfit for Brazilian life”.

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The work is unfolding as global instability and growing demand drive uranium prices higher

The largest uranium producer in the United States is ramping up work just south of Grand Canyon National Park on a long-contested project that largely has sat dormant since the 1980s.

The work is unfolding as global instability and growing demand drive uranium prices higher.

The Biden administration and dozens of other countries have pledged to triple the capacity of nuclear power worldwide in their battle against climate change, ensuring uranium will remain a key commodity for decades as the government offers incentives for developing the next generation of nuclear reactors and new policies take aim at Russia's influence over the supply chain.

But as the U.S. pursues its nuclear power potential, environmentalists and Native American leaders remain fearful of the consequences for communities near mining and milling sites in the West and are demanding better regulatory oversight.

Producers say uranium production today is different than decades ago when the country was racing to build up its nuclear arsenal. Those efforts during World War II and the Cold War left a legacy of death, disease and contamination on the Navajo Nation and in other communities across the country, making any new development of the ore a hard pill to swallow for many.

read more: https://ictnews.org/news/uranium-is-being-mined-near-the-grand-canyon-as-prices-soar

Australia’s forgotten nuclear history and its dehumanisation of Aboriginal people come together in First Nations glass artist’s fiercely intellectual work

Yhonnie Scarce grew up in the grim aftermath of nuclear weapons testing in South Australia in the 50s and 60s, not far from her birthplace of Woomera. From the tender age of ten, she heard stories from elders about a cataclysmic roar, the sky turning red and a poisonous black mist hovering over the desert, like an apparition.

Born in 1973, the Kothakha and Nukunu glass artist has spent much of her career researching the British government’s testing of nuclear weapons in Maralinga and Emu Field, which she says “lit a fire in my heart that hasn’t been extinguished”.

The blasts wreaked havoc on generations of Aboriginal people, as well as military personnel and non-Aboriginal civilians – sending radioactive clouds thousands of kilometres, causing burns, blindness, birth defects and premature death.

When the toxic plumes reached Ceduna, where Scarce’s family lived, radioactive slag rained down from the sky, singeing their skin. Their concerns about the burns were rebuffed by doctors, who spuriously claimed there was a measles outbreak. But today, according to Scarce, cancer is prevalent in the town.

“I call this a mass genocide,” Scarce says. “I don’t know if we’ll ever find out how many Aboriginal people died over that 10-year period. But I can imagine it’s thousands.”

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For the past six months, Israel has put a lot of effort into covering up its genocidal crimes in Gaza. One of the most brutal ways it does this is by routinely threatening, targeting and assassinating Palestinian journalists.

The US-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has reported that at least 90 Palestinian journalists have been killed since October 7 alongside two Israelis and three Lebanese. This is the highest death toll of journalists in any modern conflict that CPJ has monitored. Another 25 Palestinian journalists have been detained by Israeli forces, and four are missing.

Israel also bans foreign media outlets from entering Gaza, forcing them to report from Tel Aviv, Jerusalem or southern Israel. On Israeli territory, they must comply with the rules and censorship of the Israeli Military Censor, which is part of the Israeli army and requires media materials be submitted for its review prior to publication or broadcasting. On Monday, the Israeli Knesset also passed a law allowing its government to shut down news networks. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to use the legislation to ban Al Jazeera.

Killing journalists and censoring media operating in Israel are supposed to ensure that global coverage reflects Israel’s spin on events or ignores aspects of its scorched earth conduct in Gaza.

But this strategy is failing for three reasons. First, because scores of highly motivated Palestinian journalists continue to brave Israeli bombardment and fire to report on events on the ground. Second, because ordinary Palestinians also document and share on social media their coverage of events. Third, because international media increasingly question Israeli accounts of events and demand more verified facts.

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The second-largest Indigenous community in Venezuela, with about 41,000 members, the Warao are increasingly making the dangerous trek to neighbouring Brazil, fleeing famine and their own country’s economic and political crisis.

Since the early 2010s, Venezuela has experienced economic, social and humanitarian turmoil, causing many residents to leave for neighbouring countries. More than 6 million people – more than 20% of the population – have fled, one of the largest exoduses in Latin America ever.

The Warao people are no exception. About 7,000 Indigenous Venezuelans have entered Brazil since 2014, amid more than 560,000 Venezuelans, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

Far from the lush forests of north-eastern Venezuela and southern Guyana, where they once lived a traditional lifestyle, the Warao – whose name means “boat people” – now survive on one meal a day. Often, it’s a meagre portion of fish and rice. “For the rest of the day, the children’s stomachs are soothed with sugar water,” says a distraught mother.

When Venezuelan migration began, the Brazilian government built shelters and adopted legislative measures to promote the integration of Indigenous communities. The constitutional protection reserved for Indigenous Brazilians now apply to Indigenous people from all countries. The Waraos are, therefore, legal refugees in Brazil.

But most of the Warao have no permanent job in Brazil. Some men unload fishing boats and get a few fish in exchange, but most speak only a few words of Portuguese; hardly any have studied. To pay their rent, they are reduced to begging.

“At first, institutions and associations came to help us, such as ACNUR [UNHCR], but then our situation ceased to be considered an emergency,” says García. This community’s dream is to obtain land to farm in Brazil.

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• Heavy rains likely caused by El Niño began flooding Peru’s Ene River at the beginning of March, with waters reaching around 2 feet high and spreading across 5,000 hectares (12,355 acres) of land occupied by around 300 Indigenous Asháninka families.
• Families in five Asháninka communities lost their homes as well as years of work on successful and sustainable agroforestry projects for cacao, coffee and timber, among other products.
• The flood waters have only recently receded, so a long-term or even mid-term plan for recovering their agroforestry projects hasn’t been developed yet.
• The Asháninka have faced many other setbacks over the years, from drug trafficking groups to unsustainable development projects, but have often overcome them to defend their territory. This flood marks the latest setback.

Flooding caused by heavy rains in central Peru in March displaced hundreds of Indigenous families and destroyed their sustainable agroforestry projects, raising concerns about how they’ll recover and what steps need to be taken to protect against future extreme weather events.

Heavy rains likely caused by El Niño began flooding the Ene River the first week of March, with waters reaching around 2 feet high and spreading across 5,000 hectares (12,355 acres) of land occupied by around 300 Indigenous Asháninka families. The flood destroyed their crops and forced them to relocate to nearby communities.

It represents a major setback for an embattled Indigenous group that has managed to develop sustainable agroforestry projects and protect surrounding natural habitats.

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Indigenous communities in Bolivia have objected to Colombia’s plans to recover the remains of an 18th-century galleon believed to be carrying gold, silver and emeralds worth billions, calling on Spain and Unesco to step in and halt the project.

Colombia hopes to begin recovering artefacts from the wreck of the San José in the coming months but the Caranga, Chicha and Killaka peoples in Bolivia argue that the excavation would rob them of their “common and shared” heritage.

A substantial part of the treasure on board the San José is believed to have been mined by enslaved Indigenous peoples in Bolivia, so Colombia’s plans to lift the remains without consulting the slaves’ descendants would violate international law, the communities said in a letter to Unesco this week.

“Not having our consent, our participation and without taking into account how it will impact the present and future of our communities is irresponsible and contrary to justice,” they wrote.

“We do not have the right to forget, and nor do Spain or any of the American republics … have the right to erase or change our memory.”

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Indigenous Filipinos fight to protect biodiverse mountains from mining by Keith Anthony S. Fabro on 28 March 2024

• The global transition to renewable energy is driving a boom in applications to mine nickel and other critical minerals in the Victoria-Anepahan Mountains in the Philippines’ Palawan province.
• The Indigenous Tagbanua are organizing to halt these mining plans before they begin, along with downstream farmers, church and civil society groups.
• Concerns raised by the Tagbanua and other mining opponents include loss of land and livelihood, reduced supply of water for irrigation, and damage to a unique and biodiverse ecosystem.

NARRA, Philippines — At the foothills of the Victoria-Anepahan Mountains in the Philippines’ Palawan province, the Indigenous Tagbanua have lived with the rhythms of nature for generations. They rely on the lush landscape for everything they need, from food and water to nontimber products. But their forest and way of life are under threat as mining companies covet the mountains for their nickel and other mineral resources, which are highly sought after for the global transition to renewable energy.

In the southern Palawan municipality of Narra, eight mining exploration permit applications are currently listed as “under process” by the country’s mining authorities. Collectively, these applications, all of which overlap with the Victoria-Anepahan Mountains, cover 16,619 hectares (41,066 acres). Permits for another 46,847 more hectares (115,761 acres) have also been applied for in neighboring municipalities that overlap with the range.

Despite being among the Philippines’ poorest groups, the Tagbanua are standing firm against the enticing promises of “development and progress” being promoted by the mining companies.

“The Victoria-Anepahan is of utmost importance to us,” Tagbanua chieftain Ruben Basio told Mongabay in February, sitting beside their tribal hall surrounded by trees. “The Victoria-Anepahan has been cherished ever since the time of our ancestors. And until now, as descendants following in their footsteps, we remain committed to its conservation, ensuring it remains unharmed by anyone.”

The mountain range covers 164,789 hectares (407,202 acres), straddling 31 villages in Puerto Princesa, the Palawan capital, and the southern provincial municipalities of Aborlan, Narra and Quezon. Ancestral domains, land recognized under Philippine law as belonging to Indigenous peoples, make up 136,007 hectares (336,081 acres), or 83% of the entire range.

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Lawmakers in Ontario will now be able to address the province’s legislature using Indigenous languages, in a “momentous change” that belatedly recognizes the “first languages” of the region.

The Ontario government house leader, Paul Calandra, this week moved to amend a standing order that previously required lawmakers to use either English or French. Following a vote, that order now allows for an “Indigenous language spoken in Canada” to be used when addressing the speaker or chamber.

Sol Mamakwa, a member of the New Democratic party who represents the Kiiwetinoong electoral district, recalled being punished for speaking Ojibwe (Anishinaabemowin) in his youth.

“I am very honoured to be able to speak today on behalf of the people of Kiiwetinoong, on behalf of the people that were never allowed to speak their language in colonial institutions,” Mamakwa told the legislature. “These racist and colonizing policies led to language loss.”

Mamakwa is not alone in despairing over the loss of a rich linguistic history across the lands now known as Canada.

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Pacific indigenous leaders, including the Māori King, today urged the legal recognition of whales as persons with inherent rights.

Māori leaders spearheading the Hinemoana Halo Ocean Initiative joined forces with Kīngi Tuheitia Pōtatau Te Wherowhero VII and the Kaumaiti Nui Travel Tou Ariki of the Cook Islands to endorse He Whakaputanga Moana (Declaration for the Ocean). They launched their endorsement at Atupare Marae, House of Ariki Estate, Rarotonga, Cook Islands.

“The songs of our ancestor, the tohorā (whale), who have navigated these very waters for generations, grow fainter,” Kīngi Tuheitia said.

“He Whakaputanga Moana is not merely words on paper. It’s a Hinemoana Halo, a woven cloak of protection for our taonga, our treasures – the magnificent whales.”

“Ultimately, He Whakaputanga Moana is a declaration for future generations. Our mokopuna (descendants) deserve to inherit an ocean teeming with life, where the songs of whales continue to resonate across the vast expanse,” he said.

“The mauri (life force) of Te Moana-nui-a-Kiwa (the Pacific Ocean) is inseparable from the well-being of whales,” Conservation International Aotearoa (New Zealand) vice-president Mere Takoko said.

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Maybe not a megathread but still worth the read in my opinion, this effort post was brought to you by one of our amazing organizers with Eco Just Food Network, one of the more public parts of the CLN that operates in the Greater Toronto Area. Anyway this isn't about that amazing org (but there is a podcast episode coming soon c: ) instead we want to discuss an extremely influential Dakota Writer named Vine Deloria Jr who was born today. We feel discussing him and his work is a good starting point, to understanding a basic sentiment in NDN country, but also one that needs to be ruthlessly criticized through educated criticism instead of knee jerk reaction. His two biggest hot takes being 1) If Israel gets its land back we should get ours (zionist argument that legitimizes Israel, and can be said far better, but Deloria was being heavily influenced by the Mormon Zionist Hank Adams who helped play a large role in the 20 Points of the Trail of Broken Treaties. Ultimately what this means is of course the 20 Points are lackluster and demand a revolutionary update, but it should be noted that its influenced by the BPPs 10 Points) 2) The Indian New Deal brought prosperity to NDN people. In reality it was some NDN people, while many more were literally washed away by floods caused by dams built, that Vine is directly talking about and saying is good because "electricity could come to the reservation" when in many cases it still has not.

Ultimately we must remember Vine is a liberal, but that doesn't stop him from having banger quotes and relevant opinions cast decades into the future that we must update and wrestle from reaction. One of the most important things Vine set out to do, was to challenge white supremacist academia, and the false notions of history it perpetuated about Indigenous people almost always to diminish the level of "civilization" present here.

It is obscene that there are people who own homes and land in the US, that they can not work, and utilize without being forced to privatize, or forced to give it to a comprador political leader not chosen by the people and propped up by the colonial occupiers. When people have homes but freeze to death, what is a home? That's just shelter and bad shelter at that.

Despite the milquetoast liberalism, being an Indigenous person and the chair of the National Congress of American Indians, had brought Vine into contact with radical and non radical Natives alike. Colorado was well known for its radical Indigenous scene as Denver was one of the major cities used during the relocation program that coerced Indians off our land under false promises, so to steal the land. In fact that's where my grandma and my mom moved when leaving South Dakota, but you also already had a large Indigenous presence in the state historically so it lent itself to being a good geographic base. Floyd and my grandma actually used to hang out

My grandma is all the way on the right. She was his security during this photo, but it was this connection to Floyd that ultimately brought Vine in contact with the American Indian Movement, which had barely formed as Floyd and Vine met.

Their relationship would go on to inspire the Red Power movement, but it would also be what helped bring AIM into the Trail of Broken Treaties altogether. The Trail of Broken Treaties was a cross country caravan of people that went from California to Washington DC to demand changes, to stop the clear systemic murdering of Indigenous people and demand treaty rights be upheld. This culminated in the 1971 occupation of the Bureau of Indian Affairs building in Washington DC which led to incredible acts of solidarity between the Black Panthers and AIM.

It is important when we listen to Floyd's song https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vWaI9UZ-LYw we recognize the amateur anthropology often deployed my Marxists, usually rooted in the anthro work of Marx and Engels themselves. The number one argument against landback (besides that they dont know what it means) is that not every Indigenous person wants that, however what we do want is everything it entails. This pointless distinction of whether agree with the slogan or not is meaningless, if you look at the content of said slogan and the masses needs and wants in this current period.

So when you see Marxist podcast, platforming but never paying Indigenous guests, that is an amateur anthro whose motives should be severely questioned. Especially when we consider the question, what have they given back with the wealth they accumulated beyond a podcast thats business model (whether for fiscal or social capital) doesnt work when you pay for peoples time and expertise?

When talking about "Indian Experts" Vine is specifically drawing on his introduction where he explains how easy it is to be an Indian expert, and when you look at the arguments people try to waste my time with, you will often see the same thing Vine describes in the following:

So much in the vein of opposing book worship, you must oppose Indian expertise! Unless you actually live with us you do not know us, and it is not enough to visit for a week. Some visit a powwow and suddenly they understand every nuance of an American flag in NDN country, albeit I think we should stop flying them.

The irony of seeing the flag is not lost on us, and it has been a central prop in many demonstrations and used many ways, to represent are discontent. It also has a deep effect on our communities when so many people gave their lives fighting a foreign war for the first time ever in our peoples history. What is worse, was we were promised we would only be national guards. This and many other tragedies will have people laughing with pain in their eyes as they recall the generational trauma, that repeats over and over, only with new lies that prey on people who are desperate

That's what makes it easy for white organizations reformist or revolutionary, to be quickly ignored in decolonial spaces, they often have barely even done the bare minimum to participate let alone not over step their station. There is a reason why no investigation, no right to speak, is such a crucial part of being a good communist.

So often people come without an invitation, and it causes a great deal of problems, and gives people less time to plan. At any rate all these quotes came for Custer Died for Your Sins original published in 1969 and updated in 1988. We think it is time to utilize the decades of work, revolutionary experimentation, and historical development to update and harness the frameworks of this work and this is a sort of "toe dip" into the water. If you enjoyed this please find a way to support the many things we are doing via our linktr.ee/chunkalutanetwork

Currently the most important ask we have is $900 to pay back our organizer who lent us the last bit we needed to get the shipping container on time, thats under the winter drive GFM and the remaining amount will be for our own broker/trucker or for another trailer depending on how fast Direct Aid is moving with their end of things (always have a plan b). In other news our permaculture experts arrive on Pine Ridge any minute now and we will have updates from their unload and everything else happening on that end. Anyway plenty of reasons to join the patreon or liberapay, but most importantly is to pay for these amazing organizers survival, and cost of organizing. I will be foregoing my own stipend as my organizing severely reduces to focus on my newborn kid. (also yknow if you want to say congratulations and help with diaper costs $ZitkatosTinCan) Thank you all for reading and look forward to the next thing. There wouldve been more but somehow I got Covid, weakened my immune system (my entire family then got sick), at the end of covid having our baby, then my firstborn got a double ear infection from the drainage of mucus caused by COVID. So Im exhausted lol. We are also always raising money for wood so if you are donating to wood make sure to leave a note!

Since the outbreak of the war in Gaza, more than 200 cultural heritage sites have been destroyed alongside numerous archives, universities, and museums. There have been reports of the Israeli army looting historical artefacts and even displaying some of them at the Knesset.

Destroying Gaza’s heritage has far-reaching social, political, and emotional ramifications. It is a concerted attack on the existence of Palestine and its people.

Beyond producing cultural amnesia around what it means to be Palestinian, heritage destruction symbolises the negation of Palestinian history and right to land. The Israeli obliteration of Palestinian memory is intentional. It is a genocidal strategy, according to the definition laid out by the Polish-Jewish lawyer Raphael Lemkin, who coined the term “genocide” in 1944. This effort to destroy physical links between Palestinians and their heritage is aimed at erasing Palestinian presence and legitimising Israeli settler colonialism.

The Israeli destruction of archaeological sites and looting of artefacts in Gaza also raises questions about archaeology’s purported neutrality in our world. The reality is that archaeology can be deeply political.

The ability to make claims in the present based on material records of the past endows archaeology with great power. Quite literally, archaeologists provide the physical evidence required for the making of historical narratives. Archaeologists thus carry a moral obligation to inform the public of its deeply political nature.

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Israel’s Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has declared 800 hectares (1,977 acres) in the occupied West Bank as state land, in a move that will facilitate the use of the ground for settlement building.

The announcement on Friday came as United States Secretary of State Antony Blinken visited Israel for talks with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Smotrich underlined the government’s determination to press ahead with settlement building in the West Bank, despite growing international opposition.

“While there are those in Israel and in the world who seek to undermine our right to Judea and Samaria and the country in general, we promote settlement through hard work and in a strategic manner all over the country,” Smotrich said, using Biblical names for the area of the West Bank that are commonly employed in Israel.

The denomination of the land in the Jordan Valley as state land follows a similar designation of 300 hectares (740 acres) in the Maale Adumim area of the West Bank, which the Palestinians want as the core of a future independent state.

The US said last month that Israel’s expansion of settlements in the West Bank was inconsistent with international law, signalling a return to longstanding US policy that had been reversed by the previous administration of Donald Trump.

The change brought the US back into line with most of the world, which considers the settlements built on Palestinian territory Israel captured in the 1967 Middle East war to be illegal. Israel itself disputes this view, citing the Jewish people’s historical and Biblical ties to the land.

Earlier this month, UN Human Rights Chief Volker Turk said, “The establishment and continuing expansion of settlements amount to … a war crime under international law.”

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Canadian first nations people and Māori are planning collaborations on indigenous films at the Women in Film and Television (WIFT NZ) summit.

The three-day summit has brought together 30 Canadian film professionals and 60 New Zealand filmmakers to discuss future partnerships.

Māori film maker Julian Arahanga (Ngāti Raukawa,Te Ati Haunui ā Pāpārangi) said it was exciting to collaborate and discuss some of the challenges each nation faced.

“This is just the start of a collaboration with some of our iwi from Kānata (Canada) but it is an exciting time. There are some amongst us who have already made some connections and that are a bit further along before us at Awa Films. This is the first step into co-production with Canada.”

He said Māori and the first nations people connected over their shared experiences and stories.

“I’ve been working on a project on the lost children of Aotearoa and there are similar stories around the residential schools in Canada. In Australia we have the stolen generation so through the periods of colonisation it is very similar.

“I think that somehow sharing and weaving those stories together will help in the healing.”

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One hundred sixty years ago this month, the first large group of emaciated Navajos began trekking eastward from their homeland to a new reservation. It became known as the Long Walk.

Escorted by the U.S. Army, the Navajos — Diné, as they call themselves — embarked upon a nearly 400-mile forced march to Bosque Redondo, near Fort Sumner in eastern New Mexico. There they lived — and thousands died — for the next four years.

Approximately 2,400 Native men, women and children left Fort Defiance, Ariz., in early March 1864, the first large group that made the Long Walk that year. Other smaller groups had begun the trek earlier, and some arrived at Fort Sumner in December of 1863, where they joined several hundred Mescalero Apaches, their traditional enemies.

Regardless of when they made the march, all accounts agree it was a brutal trip.

“People were forced to walk twelve to fifteen miles a day. They were constantly fatigued and weakened by near starvation,” wrote Navajo scholars Nancy C. Maryboy and David Begay. “Enemies followed the convoys, snatching captives [to become slaves] almost at will. This occurred under so-called military-escort protection.

“Several other convoys which traveled later in March were hit by severe snowstorms, and hundreds of people died or disappeared along the way,” said Maryboy and Begay.

Navajo oral histories tell of pregnant women and elderly people being shot when they could not keep up on the march. Others, too weak to continue, were left to simply die along the trail. The Navajos were not allowed to stop and bury their dead.

As bad as the physical conditions were, the Navajos also suffered emotionally because they were uprooted from the land of the four sacred mountains, which marked the boundaries of the Diné homeland.

Despite the hardships, more than 10,000 Navajos eventually reached Bosque Redondo. When they were allowed to return home in 1868, an estimated 3,000 had died, either on the Long Walk or during their incarceration. Another 1,000 had escaped.

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• An Indigenous woman from the Inga community in the Condagua reservation in Putumayo, Colombia, is leading the struggle against a Canadian mining company that plans to mine the community’s sacred mountains for copper and molybdenum.
• Within Soraida Chindoy’s territory is the Doña Juana-Chimayoy páramo, where eight rivers have their source and where there are 56 lagoons. The site, where the Amazon rainforest and the Andes meet, is sacred to the Indigenous population.
• Her campaign against mining was borne of tragedy. In 2017, she and her family were among the almost 22,000 people affected by the landslide in Mocoa, when Mother Earth provided a stark warning as to why it is so important to take care of her.

On May 9, 1983, Soraida Chindoy Buesaquillo’s placenta was planted in the mountains of Putumayo, where Colombia’s Amazon rainforest meets the Andes.

Her mother, Concepción Buesaquillo, was a midwife by trade and spoke of the importance of this Indigenous Inga ritual, which, according to tradition, ensures a connection between the newborn and Mother Earth. Mother Earth will then guide the child for the rest of their life, allowing them to grow as strong and sure as a mighty tree.

The eighth of ten children, Soraida’s eyes are as black as her hair, which she wears in a ponytail that reaches her waist and down to her chumbe, the pink belt that forms part of her traditional dress. She never leaves home without taking mambe — a powder made from coca leaf and other substances used by her community for spiritual and medicinal purposes — and a necklace made with caimo (Pouteria caimito), whose seeds imitate the sound of a flowing river. She plays with the necklace when she sings in her native language to Mother Earth.

Growing up, Soraida Chindoy was taught to make good use of the land, to plant, fish, and harvest, but also to take care of it. She did so from the time she was born until she was a teenager living in the Condagua Indigenous Reserve, in the south of the country.

Today, she is 40 years old and walks the reservation’s mountains barefoot, with a dexterity unique to those who have done it their whole life. While picking cocoa from a tree, she recalls the first time she felt that her family’s peaceful life was at risk.

“It was about ten years ago that I heard about the [mining] companies for the first time. It was all rumors. They said they were bringing good projects to benefit the community, that they were coming to help us, and at first I thought it was cool because no-one was coming here and there was a lot of need,” she says.

However, doubts began to creep in: Where did the money for these projects come from? Who was behind the company? Very little was known about it, she recalls, but she knew that the mountain was being assessed because, around 2010, machines began coming up from nearby trails.

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Bajo Chiquito, Panama – For many years, residents in the remote Indigenous community of Bajo Chiquito, Panama, lived a quiet life.

No paved roads lead to the town. Only dirt paths and the Turquesa River connect Bajo Chiquito to the outside world. A dense jungle filled with parrots and howler monkeys cocoons the community.

But over the past few years, the lives of the Emberá-Wounaan people who call Bajo Chiquito home have been dramatically and perhaps irreversibly transformed.

That is because, over the last several years, Bajo Chiquito has mushroomed into a hub for one of the busiest migration routes in the Western Hemisphere.

Hundreds of thousands of people now cross from Colombia into Panama each year, using a narrow land bridge called the Darién Gap. Bajo Chiquito sits at the northern edge of its most popular trail: The Colombian border lies a mere 24km (15 miles) away.

“When I was a boy, it used to be silent here,” said Saray Alvarado, a 27-year-old local who works in a shop that recharges migrants’ phones for a fee.

The street behind him bustled with large crowds more befitting of a city. “A lot has changed,” he told Al Jazeera.

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thing_(roadside_attraction) The bodies are the literal “thing” this place is advertising, I think the bodies need to be repatriated, that an autopsy needs to be preformed, people should contact the tribal governments and chinese embassy over this. The bodies are over 100 years old so it’s unlikely that they will ever be identified but with dna testing we might be able to find a relative. It’s not even that I’m outraged over this, just disappointed.

Four or five years ago, Sidney Hill’s young son came to him with a question that Mr. Hill didn’t know how to answer.

The boy had learned that day about the millions of acres of land that his people, the Onondaga, had once called home, and the way that their homeland had been taken parcel by parcel by the State of New York, until all that was left was 11 square miles south of Syracuse.

“We lost all this land,” Mr. Hill recalled his son saying. “How can that be?”

In many ways, Mr. Hill was the best person to answer that question. As Tadodaho, the spiritual leader of the Onondaga Nation, he was responsible for protecting its legacy and guiding it into the future. He was one of a handful of elders who have worked for decades on a legal and diplomatic strategy to fight back against the historic wrongs his son now sought to understand.

Even so, it caught him off balance.

The younger generation needed to know, he said. “But it doesn’t make much sense to them.”

Mr. Hill tried to reassure his son that all that injustice was in the past.

But he knew how hard it was to accept past wrongs, particularly when their consequences so informed the present. It was why he had spent so long pushing — first Onondaga elders, then the United States justice system and, finally, an international human rights commission — for a correction to that history.

A map showing the Onondaga Nation Territory, Syracuse and Onondaga Lake in New York state.

The Onondaga claim that the United States violated a 1794 treaty, signed by George Washington, that guaranteed 2.5 million acres in central New York to them. The case, filed in 2014, is the second brought by an American Indian nation against the United States in an international human rights body; a finding is expected as soon as this year.

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1325 According to legend, Tenochtitlan is founded on this date on an island in what was then Lake Texcoco in the Valley of Mexico.

Tenochtitlán, located on an island near the western shore of Lake Texcoco in central Mexico, was the capital city and religious centre of the Aztec civilization. The traditional founding date of the city was 1345 CE and it remained the most important Aztec centre until its destruction at the hands of the Spanish led by Hernán Cortés in 1521 CE, which led to the final collapse of the Triple Alliance. At the heart of the city was a large sacred precinct dominated by the huge pyramid, known as the Temple Mayor, which honoured the gods Huitzilopochtli and Tlaloc. The site, now Mexico City, continues to be excavated and has yielded some of the greatest treasures of Aztec art such as the celebrated Sun Stone as well as art objects the Aztecs themselves collected from the other great civilizations of Mesoamerica.

Tenochtitlan was one of two Mexica āltepētl (city-states or polities) on the island, the other being Tlatelolco.

Story

The story of the founding of Tenochtitlan has survived through time thanks to several historical documents, such is the case of the Mexican Chronicle that was written by Hernando de Alvarado Tezozómoc in the sixteenth century.

As such, it can be pointed out that the emergence of Tenochtitlan began with the migration process of the Aztecs, who received that name for inhabiting the land of Aztlan, where they worshipped Huitzilopochtli, the deity that would guide them to a new place. The Aztecs were not the only nahuan tribe that undertook this migration process because, as Hernando de Alvarado Tezozómoc refers, there were seven neighborhoods, each one identified by a deity.

"Each one brought the name of its God, such as Quetzalcoatl, Xomoco, Matla, Xochiquetzal, Chichiltic, Zentutl, Piltzinteuctli, Meteutl, Tezcatlipuca, Mictlatleuctli, and Tlamacazqui, and other Gods".

The migration process took several years before reaching the Basin of Mexico, passing through various places and settlements where they settled as they were people who knew and practiced agriculture, however, they were also people dedicated to war, As Tezozómoc refers in the myth of Malinalxóchitl, when the Aztecs abandoned Malinalxóchitl, they did so by the will of Huitzilopochtli, who was in charge of bringing weapons, bows, arrows and bucklers, as his main occupation was war.

This same, led to that the Mexica could subdue the other neighborhoods that had come out of the seven caves, achieving that their deity of Huitzilopochtli was imposed before the other gods. Likewise, they gained a notable reputation in the battlefield, which allowed them to perform as warriors for other towns, as it was the case of the Tepaneca Tezozómoc's lordship who in exchange for their services allowed them to settle in a lake islet.

However, the Mexica alliance with the Tepanecas ended in 1428 with the rebellion of a group of Tenochcas led by the aforementioned Itzcóatl. The victory of the Mexica gave way to the rise and hegemony of the Mexica empire over the Basin of Mexico, which came to an end in 1521 with the fall of Mexico-Tenochtitlan in the hands of the Spanish conquerors, however, figures such as Hernando de Alvarado Tezozómoc managed to preserve the history of the Mexica.

With Tenochtitlan in ruins, the victorious Cortés first settled himself in Coyoacán on the lake shore at the southern edge of Lake Texcoco. He created the ayuntamiento or town council of the Spanish capital there, so that he could choose where the city would finally be.

For much of the colonial period, parts of Mexico City would remain very indigenous in character, with elements of these cultures surviving into modern times. Two separate parts of the capital were under indigenous rule, San Juan Tenochtitlan and Santiago Tlatelolco, with Nahua governors who were intermediaries between the indigenous population and the Spanish rulers, although the capital was designated a ciudad de españoles (Spanish city)

Between late 1521 and mid-1522, Alonso García Bravo and Bernardino Vázquez de Tapia were tasked with the layout of the new Spanish city. The Spaniards decided to keep the main north–south and east–west roads that divided the city into four and the boundaries of the city were set with an area of 180 hectares, which was divided into 100 blocks. There were eight principal canals in the Aztec city, including the one that ran on the south side of the main plaza (today Zócalo), which were renamed

Around the main plaza, which became the Plaza Mayor or Zócalo in the colonial period, Cortés took over what were the "Old Houses" of Axayacatl and the "New Houses" of Moctezuma, both grand palaces, for his own. Other conquistadors of the highest rank took positions around this square.

The Spaniards began to build houses, copying the luxury residences of Seville. Being of firmer ground and less subject to subsidize, the area east of the main plaza was built up first, with the lake's waters up against the walls of a number of these constructions. The west side grew more slowly as flooding was more of an issue, and it was farther from the city's docks that brought in needed supplies.

The Spanish may well have found "Tenochtitlan" hard to say. They did shift the accent from Nahuatl pronunciation from Tenochtítlan (with the standard emphasis on the penultimate syllable) to Tenochtitlán. and eventually adopted the city's secondary name "Mexico", the "place of the Mexica" or Aztecs. For a period, the city was called by the dual name Mexico-Tenochtitlan, but at some point, the capital of the viceroyalty's name was shortened to Mexico. The name "Tenochtilan" endured in one of the capital's two indigenous-ruled sections, known as San Juan Tenochtitlan

Reconstruction of Tenochtitlan

• The Fall of Tenochtitlan

• Tenochtitlan WHE

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A UN report in 2021 described the Indigenous peoples of Latin America as the “best guardians” of the rainforests. Now, a new documentary, We Are Guardians, tells the story of those in Brazil fighting to protect their land from deforestation.

The film, which premiered on Netflix in Latin America, is due to be screened in London on 15 March as part of the Human Rights Watch film festival. It is co-directed by the Indigenous Brazilian activist Edivan Guajajara and the environmental journalists Rob Grobman and Chelsea Greene. Leonardo DiCaprio was an executive producer.

Grobman and Greene met Guajajara in 2020 after they came across Mídia Indígena, the Indigenous news network he co-founded.

A central theme in the film is the story of an illegal logger, Valdir Duarte. Grobman says Duarte was found after a two-day journey during one of the expeditions that inspired the film.

“We went on more than eight missions with the guardians to try to find the loggers,” Grobman says. “There would be times when we could hear them close by, and we would just not be able to find them in the dense jungle, or they would run away. It was like finding a needle in a haystack.

“These loggers are often armed and hiding, and we were nervous to approach them. But when we finally found Valdir and his friend and explained what we were doing and why, they were surprisingly like, ‘Yeah, sure, please film,’” he says.

“In a way, it felt like Valdir was waiting for someone to ask him what was going on in his life – because no one had ever done that before,” Grobman says.

Greene feels it was important for them to set up a direct antagonism, the Indigenous versus the loggers, but then show the complexity of the relationship in these Amazon regions. “The industries have created a situation where illegal logging traps people inside this job,” she says.

“Valdir has no other option in his town – he didn’t get to have an education.”

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