indigenous

• A reporting team has analyzed the impact of environmental crimes in 320 Indigenous reserves that are part of the Colombian Amazon biome. According to Global Forest Watch, more than 19,000 hectares (more than 47,000 acres) of tree cover were lost in 218 of these reserves in 2022.
• Illegal coca crops were also recorded in 88 reserves, with illegal mining-related impacts reported in at least 10 reserves.
• Illegal groups that exercise territorial control with weapons are threatening Indigenous governance and keeping inhabitants confined to their territories.

In June 2023, where the Caquetá River leaves Colombian territory and enters Brazil, no more than 35 kilometers (21.7 miles) from the border, Custodio Yucuna Tanimuca came across a group of soldiers stranded in the Córdoba stream, one of the most feared rapids in the tributary even for the most skilled navigators. The soldiers asked the Indigenous resident, health promoter and leader of the Yucuna ethnic group, born in the Curare Los Ingleses Reserve, to help them cross the stream on his boat. Skilled in such matters, like almost all those who grew up navigating the tempestuous waters, he took them to the other side of the river, where they continued on their way.

What Tanimuca did not know, was that the group from the army’s 26th forest brigade was after a shipment of 800 kilograms (1,764 pounds) of pressed marijuana. The well-guarded cargo, stored on a farm in the southeast of the country, was destined for Brazil, a country where the marijuana trade has increased in recent years and can be costlier than cocaine.

The price that Custodio Yucuna Tanimuca paid for his help was death. Two days later, the illegal armed group that was guarding the shipment of marijuana (one of the criminal gangs that controls the Caquetá River, through which cocaine, weapons, gold and other illegally exploited metals are moved) murdered him. According to several local sources who asked that their identities be protected, the group prevented the area’s residents from moving Tanimuca’s body and from reporting the crime. No one talks about this issue in this part of the Colombian Amazon, where inhabitants are confined unless criminal groups authorize their movements.

full article

The message was delivered to more than 70,000 revelers and millions watching live on television

RIO DE JANEIRO — Carnival dancers have taken the biggest stage in Rio de Janeiro to pay tribute to Brazil's largest Indigenous group and pressure President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva to deliver on promises to eradicate illegal mining.

Carnival has long been a platform for samba schools to protest. Percussionists had "Miners out" written across the skins of their drums as participants marched through the Sambadrome on Sunday evening, delivering their message to more than 70,000 revelers and millions watching live on television.

"The chance that's left for us is an Indigenous Brazil," they said as part of Salgueiro's samba school's tribute to the Yanomami — one year after Lula declared a public health emergency for the group in the Amazon. They suffer from malnutrition and diseases such as malaria as a consequence of illegal mining.

"Ours is a cry for help from Brazil and the world in general," said Davi Kopenawa, a Yanomami leader and shaman who advised the samba school. "My hope is that the world, upon hearing our call, will put pressure on the Brazilian government to remove all the miners, destroyers of our mother Earth, who are soiling the water and killing fish."

Kopenawa paraded with feathered armbands and headdress, plus a beaded necklace depicting a jaguar. Thirteen other Yanomami participated.

Sônia Guajajara, who leads the Ministry of Indigenous Peoples created in 2022 under Lula, congratulated Kopenawa and Salgueiro on Monday for their efforts recounting the group's long struggle, from colonization to more recent efforts to repeal Indigenous land rights.

read more: https://ictnews.org/news/parade-makes-plea-to-stop-illegal-mining-in-indigenous-lands

As of this writing, more than 27,000 people have been killed by Israel’s war on Gaza—the overwhelming majority of whom have been Palestinians. Evidenced by the sheer scale of destruction, the Israel Defense Forces’ response to Hamas’s horrific massacre of Israeli citizens on October 7, 2023, is now widely viewed as a use of disproportionate force. The death toll continues to rise, and the incessant bombardment of this wedge of Mediterranean coastline not only levels buildings and annihilates communities, it heralds an era of environmental devastation with no end in sight that will impact generations to come.

Popular opinion worldwide continues to coalesce around demands for an immediate ceasefire, and Indigenous voices have become especially prominent in support of Palestine in a spirit of kinship for its people. At the same time, calls for the dismantling of Israeli settler-colonialism, framing the country’s military actions as genocide, have been met with swift retorts from pro-Israel voices in media, politics, and academia. Many imply that Indigenous Peoples’ (and other Palestinian-aligned) perceptions and critiques against Israel are somehow unjustified, ahistorical, and even inherently antisemitic—a framing that reads as disingenuous, however, when scores of Jews in the U.S. also resist and have joined in the protest movement.

A troubling pretense has emerged in the public debate with regard to exercising what, in the United States, is a constitutionally guaranteed right to freedom of speech. Though citizens of the U.S., including those of Indigenous Nations within it, may ostensibly criticize the U.S. government with impunity, those who speak out against the State of Israel face censure, sometimes losing their jobs, for doing so. All the while outspoken antisemites from the far-right face scant interrogation over their staunch support for the Israeli government—even as their own interests may be otherwise dangerously at odds with the wellbeing of Jewish people.

Cristina Verán recently spoke with Nick Tilsen, President and CEO of the Indigenous-led advocacy and grantmaking organization NDN Collective, about his personal story—being both Oglala Lakota and Jewish—as well as organizational philosophy of support for the Palestinian people in this brutal conflict. His speech at Freedom Park, a high point of the Free Palestine/ Ceasefire March in Washington, D.C. last fall, made special note of his dual heritage, emphasizing the impact that his Jewish activist grandfather has had on his viewing this war through an Indigenous lens.

read more: https://www.culturalsurvival.org/news/pine-ridge-palestine-indigenous-solidarity-ceasefire-movement-interview-nick-tilsen

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — Authorities in a Phoenix suburb will not pursue criminal charges against a gallery owner whose racist rant last year was caught on video while Native dancers were being filmed.

Officials in Scottsdale called the confrontation last February "a nauseating example" of bigotry but said that Gilbert Ortega Jr.'s actions did not amount to a crime with a "reasonable likelihood of conviction."

Ortega, the owner of Gilbert Ortega Native American Galleries, had been facing three misdemeanor counts of disorderly conduct in connection with the confrontation in Old Town Scottsdale ahead of last year's Super Bowl game.

A message left Friday at a phone number listed for Ortega's gallery was not immediately returned.

The Scottsdale city attorney's office said Friday in a statement that it closed its investigation after reviewing evidence in the case, including cellphone and surveillance videos and police reports. The FBI also assisted in the investigation.

"The suspect's behavior was vulgar, very upsetting to all those involved, and tarnished the reputation of the Scottsdale community," the city attorney's office said. "However, the incident did not rise to the point of criminality."

A group of dancers had been performing in front of the Native Art Market on Main Street as ESPN filmed the group and had them pose by a Super Bowl sign. That's when Ortega started yelling at them, authorities said.

In the video, which gained traction last year on social media, Ortega can be seen mocking the dancers and yelling "you (expletive) Indians" at one point.

According to the city attorney's office, a Navajo speaker in the office and the FBI both concluded that comments made by Ortega to the dancers in Navajo weren't threatening and therefore did not support additional charges being filed.

In Arizona, there is no law specific to a hate crime. It can be used as an aggravating circumstance in a crime motivated by bias against a person's race, religion, ethnicity, gender and gender identity, sexual orientation or disability.

"While the legal review has concluded, it is clear that the conduct as recorded on video in this incident was a nauseating example of the bigotry that sadly can still be found in this country," the city said Friday in a statement. "Our community rejects racism and hate speech in all its forms, instead choosing to embrace and celebrate a Scottsdale that welcomes and respects all people."

link: https://ictnews.org/news/gallery-owner-wont-be-charged-in-rant-against-native-dancers

• A new funding mechanism aims to support the territorial land management visions of four Indigenous groups in the region, including the Tacana, Lecos, T’simane Mosetene and San José de Uchupiamonas Indigenous peoples, who also contributed to the creation of this fund, along with the Regional Organization of Indigenous People of La Paz (CPILAP).
• The Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) launched the new funding mechanism, in collaboration with Bolivia’s Foundation for the Development of the National System of Protected Areas (FUNDESNAP); the new mechanism will channel conservation funds to Indigenous organizations in the Madidi Landscape.
• The Madidi Landscape is one of the most biodiverse terrestrial protected areas in the world, where scientists have recorded the most plant, butterfly, bird and mammal species.
• The new fund, announced Oct. 30, has so far attracted $650,000 in initial support from the Bezos Earth Fund.

A new fund, announced Oct. 30, plans to support the territorial land management visions of four Indigenous organizations in Bolivia’s Madidi Landscape. It has so far attracted $650,000 in initial support from the Bezos Earth Fund, and more funding from several other sources is now being explored.

“We want these funds to help us move forward,” said Gonzalo Oliver Terrazas, president of the regional organization of Indigenous People of La Paz (CPILAP) and member of the Tacana community. “It will help us reaffirm our strong commitment as Indigenous peoples to advance and to carry out territorial management responsibly, for the territories and our future generations.”

According to Lilian Painter, the director of the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) in Bolivia, the money collected will enable the Tacana, Lecos, T’simane Mosetene and San José de Uchupiamonas Indigenous communities in Madidi to secure their land rights and livelihoods collectively. In addition, it will help them continue to conserve and protect portions of the Madidi Landscape that overlap with their territories from encroaching threats, such as illegal gold mining, as laid out in their territorial management plans.

full article

• In response to last year’s record-breaking heat due to El Niño and impacts from climate change, Indigenous Zenù farmers in Colombia are trying to revive the cultivation of traditional climate-resilient seeds and agroecology systems.
• One traditional farming system combines farming with fishing: locals fish during the rainy season when water levels are high, and farm during the dry season on the fertile soils left by the receding water.
• Locals and ecologists say conflicts over land with surrounding plantation owners, cattle ranchers and mines are also worsening the impacts of the climate crisis.
• To protect their land, the Zenù reserve, which is today surrounded by monoculture plantations, was in 2005 declared the first Colombian territory free from GMOs.

MONTERÍA, Colombia — “Look at the rooms in our house,” says Remberto Gil, 45, during a sweltering day last September. “During this time of the year, they are typically overflowing with freshly harvested corn to the point where we only have space to sleep in hammocks hanging over the cobs.”

An Indigenous Zenù farmer, Gil lives in the Zenù reserve of San Andrés de Sotavento, a nearly 10,000-hectare (25,000-acre) piece of land that’s home to 33,000 people in northwestern Colombia.

“Now, everything is empty,” he adds. “We lost around 90% of the first harvest due to drought, and the little corn we have now is smaller than usual. We had no rain during the last month, and now we can’t sow.”

In the Zenù reserve, issues with the weather, climate or soil are spread by word of mouth between farmers, or on La Positiva 103.0, a community agroecology radio station. And what’s been on every farmer’s mind is last year’s record-breaking heat and droughts. Both of these were charged by the twin impacts of climate change and a newly developing El Niño, a naturally occurring warmer period that last occurred here in 2016, say climate scientists.

Experts from Colombia’s Institute of Hydrology, Meteorology and Environmental Studies say the impacts of El Niño will be felt in Colombia until April 2024, adding to farmers’ concerns. Other scientists forecast June to August may be even hotter than 2023, and the next five years could be the hottest on record. On Jan. 24, President Gustavo Petro said he will declare wildfires a natural disaster, following an increase in forest fires that scientists attribute to the effects of El Niño.

full article

Historic buyout would protect nearly 420,000 acres of land the tribe considers sacred

Miles below Big Cypress National Preserve, land of elegant cypress trees festooned with air plants, there is oil.

Not a ton of it, but enough to spark a small domestic drilling industry that continues today, decades after the land became the nation’s first national preserve and the federal government bought it all up.

The environmental effects of the drilling, ranging from thousands of gallons of spilled oil to threats to the local water supply, have long prompted buyout offers from the state and federal government.

But a new plan, hatched by the Miccosukee tribe and a nonprofit, might mean the end of future prospecting and drilling on hundreds of thousands of acres of land within Big Cypress, a crucial part of Florida’s Everglades.

The deal, which has been quietly in the works for nearly two years, includes an inked agreement with the politically powerful family that holds all the rights to hunt for oil and gas within the preserve’s boundaries. And this time, the Miccosukee feel like success is in sight.

The Collier family, descendants of the land baron who owned much of the real estate in the county that bears his name, has agreed to sell much of its vast holdings of mineral rights within the preserve to the federal government — for the right price.

That would protect nearly 420,000 acres of land the Miccosukees consider sacred. It’s what sustained and protected the tribe when soldiers chased and harassed them a century ago. It’s where many make their living, and it’s the final resting place for some tribal members, including modern ones, in traditional burials.

“A lot of these areas have cultural significance for us. And the more we see that damaged, the more it hurts the tribe culturally,” said Talbert Cypress, chairman of the Miccosukee tribe. “It’s important for us to keep it as intact as possible.”

read more: https://ictnews.org/news/miccosukee-tribe-works-to-end-new-drilling-in-everglades

An analysis by the Howard Center for Investigative Journalism at Arizona State University found nine proposed lithium mines are within 10 miles of Native American reservations

OROVADA, Nev. – Myron Smart remembers stories told by his father and other tribal elders about the connection between Thacker Pass in Nevada, where a new lithium mine is under construction, and a tragic moment for the Fort McDermitt Paiute and Shoshone.

In Northern Nevada near the Oregon border, Thacker Pass was traditionally used by Smart’s ancestors to camp, hunt and gather, collect obsidian and medicine, and perform ceremonies. On Sept. 12, 1865, the 1st Nevada Cavalry raided a campsite and slaughtered at least 31 Paiutes.

“The cowboys came to kill everybody – woman, children, all the elders,” Smart said last September to a group gathered at Thacker Pass on the anniversary of the massacre. The deadly encounter was an episode in the Snake Wars, one of many skirmishes with Native Americans in the 19th century West, as white settlers came looking to mine for gold.

Now, Smart said, a new kind of mining threatens to wipe out culturally important sites related to the massacre, harming the tribes yet again. Lithium Nevada Corporation, a subsidiary of Canada-based Lithium Americas, will blast through rock and dirt in the area as the company builds a massive, open-pit lithium mine. The federal Bureau of Land Management issued a Record of Decision to greenlight the mine in January 2021. All court challenges to the decision have failed.

The Biden administration has set an ambitious goal for electric vehicles that has prompted a major push for U.S. supplies of lithium and other critical minerals. The Thacker Pass mine owners have courted support from the Energy Department, which is considering a record-breaking, billion dollar loan to the project, and from General Motors, which has pledged $650 million in capital investment, the largest ever by an automaker in battery raw materials. The mine is projected to supply enough lithium each year to produce batteries for one million GM electric vehicles.

read more: https://ictnews.org/news/tribes-face-uphill-battle-to-defend-sacred-land-against-lithium-mining

Fans of the San Francisco 49ers may feel like their team name is less racist than the “Chiefs,” but given the bloody history of the Gold Rush, they shouldn’t be so smug.

On Wednesday night, a tall white man wearing a San Francisco 49ers sweater approached me at a bar outside of downtown Santa Fe, N.M. I had my laptop open, and I was pounding away, late on another deadline.

“I agree with you,” he said. The blond-haired, blue-eyed 30-something then pointed at my laptop. I knew he wasn’t referring to my “Decolonize your mind” or “You are on stolen land” stickers. No. He eyed the one with the pseudo–Kansas City Chiefs logo with the words “Nope” emblazoned in the middle. The Kansas City Indian Center had given it to me at the last Super Bowl.

“In this day and age,” he said, “I don’t understand why Native American mascots are still a thing.”

“I agree with you,” I responded. “But the name of the 49ers isn’t doing us any favors either.”

He sat with me for a bit, and listened to my case against San Francisco’s team name, which went something like this…

During Super Bowl LVIII between the Kansas City Chiefs and the San Francisco 49ers, there will again be mawkish tomahawk chops, stereotypical “Oh, oh, oh!” Indian chants, the banging of a massive fake Indian drum with a fake Indian drumstick, and Chiefs fans painted in red-face. This is all obviously racist.

But 49ers die-hards will be sitting nearby in complete ignorance of the brutal history behind their team’s name.

It’s rarely taught in schools, but there was a genocide of Native Americans in California.

read more: https://www.thenation.com/article/society/super-bowl-49ers-kansas-city-chiefs/

archive link: https://archive.ph/pQyt0

Chile's Pacific coast, which extends for more than 6,400 kilometers, has been home to Chango, Lafkenche, Chono, Yagane, Kaweskar, Selk'nam and other Indigenous peoples since time immemorial.

Genocidal practices perpetrated by Spanish colonizers and continued by the Chilean state have taken a horrific toll on these peoples. Official accounts suggest they are part of the past; and that their lifeways, knowledge and practices have long since disappeared.

In late December, we met Natalia Guerrero in Pichilemu, a coastal town 200 kilometers southwest of Santiago. Born and raised in Pichilemu, Guerrero is a member of the Chango people. She is spokesperson for the National Council of the Chango People in the O'Higgins region of Chile’s Sixth Administrative District.

Founded in 2020, the Council was born of Chango struggles to defend the maritorio [a word combining mar —sea—and territory] and their right to self-determination as a people. "For us, the maritorio is not just the sea, but the sea and land and their complex interconnection," Guerrero said. "We are in a zone of interfaces, which is full of vital biological and ecological processes."

Council members began to engage the Chilean state politically in 2020, the same year they produced a documentary called, in English, Millennial Algae Collectors: The Return of the Ancestors of the Changos and the Sea People of Cardenal Caro.

Since the 1960s, Pichilemu has been known internationally as Chile’s "surf capital." Its streets are dotted with signs and directions in English for the benefit of foreign surfers. We walked a couple of blocks through the city with Guerrero until we reached Infiernillo beach, where we spoke while looking out at the sea.

Behind us was a ruca [house], surrounded by a seaweed garden drying in the sun. In it, a family of mareros—people who live and work at sea—were assembling suitcase-like baskets of cochayuyo. Cochayuyo is an edible seaweed abundant in the area. It is part of Chile’s traditional cuisine and a one of few exports oriented toward China that continues to be harvested and gathered according to artisanal practices.

In addition to following in the lifeways of her marera ancestors, Guerrero is a sociologist and researcher, which has complemented her own process and solidified her decolonial and Indigenous perspective.

Her knowledge and skills remain rooted in Pichilemu, despite the colonial dispossession of her great-great-grandmothers. Today, forest fires threaten the area, as do industrial logging, sea privatization and, more recently, luxury real estate developers, who have invaded the region with the support of Chile’s political oligarchy. The sense of devastation is palpable.

In this interview, which has been edited for length and clarity, we discussed the broad outlines of these paths and processes with Guerrero.

read more: https://www.ojala.mx/en/ojala-en/self-recognition-dispossession-and-the-sea-in-chile

Come game day Fridays, Kansas City turns red. Law firm office workers, elementary school students, elected leaders in city hall – everyone on both sides of the city whose borders reach into Kansas and Missouri – don NFL gear as a show of support for the hometown team.

Everyone, that is, except Gaylene Crouser.

At least that’s how it feels for the director of the Kansas City Indian Center.

“It permeates everything,” she said. “You can’t turn on the TV or the radio without hearing that stereotypical song they play to get people to do the chop.”

Come Sunday, Feb. 11 Crouser will continue her tradition of not wearing Kansas City football gear on game day when she joins protestors outside Allegiant Stadium on the Las Vegas strip. That’s where the team will be playing the San Francisco 49ers during the 58th NFL Super Bowl.

For the fourth time in the past five years, Native demonstrators and their allies will converge outside the stadium where the NFL championship game is being played to protest the Kansas City team’s name.

Rhonda LeValdo, founder of Not In Our Honor, an organization opposed to the Kansas City team’s name and associated imagery, said she and other protesters will hold up signs and chant to express their disdain for the team’s continued tolerance of racist imagery and behavior.

She said protesters also will express opposition to the San Francisco team’s name. The 49ers name refers to the gold miners who flooded California the year after gold was discovered in 1848. The ensuing gold rush brought as many as 300,000 settlers to the state and led to a massive decline of Indigenous people from California as a result of disease, relocation and massacres. From a population of 150,000 before the gold rush, just 31,000 Native people remained in the state by 1870, according to the International Indian Treaty Council.

LeValdo said it’s wrong to celebrate an event that heralded the deaths of thousands of Native people, and she said the competition between two teams with offensive names only fuels her opposition to the Kansas City team’s name.

“I was calling it the Genocide Bowl,” she said. “It’s so weird how Americans celebrate their teams with this. They’re not understanding the history or historical aspects that we as Natives understand.”

read more: https://truthout.org/articles/native-activists-will-protest-outside-stadium-on-super-bowl-sunday/

• In January, two leaders of the Indigenous Pataxó Hãhãhãi community of Bahia State in Brazil were brutally attacked by a militia calling for a ‘repossession’ of their land, as police officers allegedly watched.
• One was killed and the other badly injured in the attack, leading to calls from the community and rights advocates for police to be withdrawn from the territory and for the governor to take protective action.
• “Who is at the helm of public security forces in the southern, southwestern, and far southern regions of Bahia? Who orchestrates and steers operations of the military police in this area?” a new op-ed says in asking for a thorough investigation.
• This article is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the authors, not necessarily Mongabay.

Echoing the harrowing imagery of a Ku Klux Klan onslaught, a chilling episode unfolded on Sunday, January 21, showcasing the brutal reality of Brazil’s rural hinterland. In Bahia, two Indigenous people were thrown to the ground and surrounded by ranchers. One, a man wearing a traditional headdress; the other, a woman brandishing a maraca. The man was Chief Nailton Muniz, a prominent political leader of the Pataxó Hãhãhãi people. The woman was his sister, Maria de Fátima Muniz, known as Nega Pataxó, a shaman, vocalist and spiritual guide of her people. While Naílton sustained grave injuries, the tragedy caused the death of Nega Pataxó.

Both had been wounded by gunfire and, along with other Indigenous community members, were viciously assaulted by a ruralist mob, calling themselves “Zero Invasion.”

The spectacle of violence was orchestrated via social media. The preceding day saw the proliferation of a message, emblazoned with the movement’s insignia, across WhatsApp networks and groups. It was a rallying cry for what they termed the “repossession” of a farm, which had been occupied by Indigenous people that very day.

In light of these events, we ask the following questions; Who is at the helm of public security forces in the southern, southwestern, and far southern regions of Bahia? Who orchestrates and steers operations of the military police in this area? This situation is further complicated by the presence of armed civilian groups, evidently backed by police authority.

full article

39 international genocide scholars have written to the Indian government warning it that its plans to turn the uncontacted Shompen tribe’s island into a mega-port and city will wipe them out. It accuses the government of planning a genocide – via settler-colonial policies and practices.

read more: https://www.thecanary.co/global/2024/02/07/shompen-india-genocide/

Leonard Peltier has been unjustly imprisoned for 48 years on this day. In this letter, he reflects on the anniversary of his incarceration and calls upon all to “keep fighting.

As NDN Collective works in coalition with others on the release of Leonard Peltier, we are in close communication with our dear elder and relative Leonard. He shared this letter with NDN Collective and has given permission to share on our platforms.

From Leonard Peltier:

February 6, 2024

My life was taken 48 years ago, at 11:00 am. The sweater that my adoptive mother Ethel and her daughter Donna placed on my shoulders as I was taken in the bitter cold of Canada was a kindness that I still remember.

I could not foresee that 48 years later I would be entombed in a lockdown nightmare. I live in lockdown, for no reason other than that they can get away with it.

If I had been tried with the others, I would be a free man. They were rightly found not guilty by reason of self-defense. We were under attack. We were facing the extermination of our people.

Justice never came for those they killed. I was chosen to be the sacrifice to cover up the crimes committed on that reservation. I am not here because I committed a crime. I am here because I stood in the way of their greed and corruption.

…no one can break the spirit of a Sundancer.

James Reynolds, the State Attorney who supervised my prosecution, has admitted that they could not prove I committed any crime. He stated, “We were not able to prove that Mr. Peltier himself committed any offense on the Pine Ridge Reservation.”

Time has become so twisted with these lockdowns that night blurs into day, a miasma of time that has no sense to it. All hours are the small hours of the night. Life itself is suspended. We wait for a brief glimpse of what life looks like. We exist in cold, filthy cells, and we wait. The voices of those murdered on Pine Ridge Reservation are a constant echo in my mind.

Time has become a weapon they use to try and annihilate the essence of who I am. They have done their best to break me. They started by holding me in a lightless cell block in Canada, telling me that I was awaiting my execution, to try and force a confession.

But no one can break the spirit of a Sundancer.

I have fought for my freedom every single day of these past 48 years.

You, my people, my supporters, my family in a very real way, lift my spirit and enable me to hold fast to the beliefs they want me to denounce. You get me through these hours that last for days or years.

Keep fighting. Fight the parasitical influence of colonialism. Fight the lies, the greed, the corruption of the oppressor. Fight for the survival of our people.

The greed and corruption of the colonizers is infectious. My own Committee, which has stood behind me and been a training ground for activists for over four decades, was lost to the parasite of greed and corruption the colonizers infected us with.

The very greed and corruption that imprisons me will be the undoing of those who take too much. Power arises from truth, from the willingness to give voice to that truth, from lifting the voices of your brothers and sisters when they speak their truth. Truth is power. That is why they try to silence us, you know. You also know they are losing their ability to silence us.

I know you are out there, my relations, my friends, my supporters.

Take care, my relations. Ask the Creator to set your path before you. Live in ceremony. When I choose my actions, I watch carefully to make sure those actions come from spirit, not ego. Sometimes the greatest enemy we will face comes from within. At times I want to lose myself to rage. The rage of being unlawfully imprisoned, the rage that drifts through the air here, a haze you can almost see, that arises from men caged in conditions that would be illegal for dogs.

If I allow that rage to take me, I may never come back. That is not who I am. I know who I am. That is why I am still here – I will not lie, I will not grovel, I will not beg. I will not denounce my beliefs. I will not betray myself.

I know you are out there, my relations, my friends, my supporters. You know the meaning of Mitakuye Oyasin. You give me the courage to stay strong and face these eternal twilight hours of lockdown. I know you are fighting for me, fighting with me, fighting for an end to the oppression and tyranny that take so many of us, in so many ways.

I have heard of a new cry going out. NOT ONE MORE YEAR. It has been said that I am a common man who stood up to an uncommon enemy.

Let this be the year that America learns to live up to its own principles.

People think of me as a symbol. I suppose I am, but I am a man. A man who wants to go home to his family.

Let this be the year that common sense prevails. Let this be the year that “liberty and justice for all” are not words that ring hollow. Let this be the year that America learns to live up to its own principles.

We will prevail. Our children will know who they are and know they are cherished. All of them, not just a privileged few, while the rest go hungry and lose their connection to Mother Earth. That connection is everything.

Never, ever forget who you are. Mother Earth births us. She fires the blood that runs through our veins. She takes us back to her womb when our journey ends.

We will prevail. I can see a world that is not powered by lies, manipulation, greed. This will not happen by magic. We must come together, my brothers and sisters in solidarity, and let our truth illuminate the dark recesses of society.

It is time.

In the Spirit of Crazy Horse.

Doksha,

Leonard Peltier

link: https://resumen-english.org/2024/02/keep-fighting-leonard-peltiers-message-to-supporters-on-48-years-since-arrest/

The Oglala Sioux Tribe has banned South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem (R) from the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation after the governor gave an incendiary speech about immigration to the South Dakota legislature last Wednesday.

In the speech, Noem stated she wants to send razor wire and security personnel to Texas to stop immigration to the U.S.-Mexico border. She also stated that a gang–allegedly tied to a cartel, calling themselves the Ghost Dancers are bringing drugs onto the reservation.

The banishment came Friday in a four-page statement written by Oglala Sioux Tribe President Frank Star Comes Out.

"Due to the safety of the Oyate [people or nation], effective immediately, you are hereby banished from the homelands of the Oglala Sioux Tribe!" Tribe President Frank Star Comes Out said in a statement addressed on Friday to Noem.

read more: https://nativenewsonline.net/sovereignty/oglala-sioux-tribe-tells-south-dakota-governor-she-is-not-welcome-on-the-pine-ridge-reservation

Alina Sierra needs $6,405. In 2022, the 19-year-old Tohono O’odham student was accepted to the University of Arizona, her dream school, and excited to become the first in her family to go to college.

Her godfather used to take her to the university’s campus when she was a child, and their excursions could include a stop at the turtle pond or lunch at the student union. Her grandfather also encouraged her, saying: “You’re going to be here one day.”

“Ever since then,” said Sierra. “I wanted to go.”

Then the financial reality set in. Unable to afford housing either on or off campus, she couch-surfed her first semester. Barely able to pay for meals, she turned to the campus food pantry for hygiene products. “One week I would get soap; another week, get shampoo,” she said. Without reliable access to the internet, and with health issues and a long bus commute, her grades began to slip. She was soon on academic probation.

“I always knew it would be expensive,” said Sierra. “I just didn’t know it would be this expensive.”

She was also confused. The university, known colloquially as UArizona, expressed a lot of support for Indigenous students. It wasn’t just that the Tohono O’odham flag hung in the bookstore or that the university had a land acknowledgment reminding the community that the Tucson campus was on O’odham and Yaqui homelands. The same year she was accepted, UArizona launched a program to cover tuition and mandatory fees for undergraduates from all 22 Indigenous nations in the state. President Robert C. Robbins described the new Arizona Native Scholars Grant as a step toward fulfilling the school’s land-grant mission.

Sierra was eligible for the grant, but it didn’t cover everything. After all the application forms and paperwork, she was still left with a balance of thousands of dollars. She had no choice but to take out a loan, which she kept a secret from her family, especially her mom. “That’s the number one thing she told me: ‘Don’t get a loan,’ but I kind of had to.”

Established in 1885, almost 30 years before Arizona was a state, UArizona was one of 52 land-grant universities supported by the Morrill Act. Signed into law by President Abraham Lincoln, the act used land taken from Indigenous nations to fund a network of colleges across the fledgling United States.

By the early 20th century, grants issued under the Morrill Act had produced the modern equivalent of a half a billion dollars for land-grant institutions from the redistribution of nearly 11 million acres of Indigenous lands. While most land-grant universities ignore this colonial legacy, UArizona’s Native scholars program appeared to be an effort to exorcise it.

But the Morrill Act is only one piece of legislation that connects land expropriated from Indigenous communities to these universities.

In combination with other land-grant laws, UArizona still retains rights to nearly 687,000 acres of land — an area more than twice the size of Los Angeles. The university also has rights to another 703,000 subsurface acres, a term pertaining to oil, gas, minerals, and other resources underground. Known as trust lands, these expropriated Indigenous territories are held and managed by the state for the school’s continued benefit.

State trust lands just might be one of the best-kept public secrets in America: They exist in 21 Western and Midwestern states, totaling more than 500 million surface and subsurface acres. Those two categories, surface and subsurface, have to be kept separate because they don’t always overlap. What few have bothered to ask is just how many of those acres are funding higher education.

The parcels themselves are scattered and rural, typically uninhabited and seldom marked. Most appear undeveloped and blend in seamlessly with surrounding landscapes. That is, when they don’t have something like logging underway or a frack pad in sight.

read more: https://www.hcn.org/articles/stolen-indigenous-land-is-the-foundation-of-the-land-grant-university-system-climate-change-is-its-legacy/

Self-governance is an idea that’s been advanced by indigenous peoples in countries around the world – including in Aotearoa.

At Waitangi this week, Te Pāti Māori co-leader Rawiri Waititi called for the establishment of a Māori parliament in Aotearoa. Despite having Māori seats and MPs, it is no secret that New Zealand’s existing parliament is a Pākehā space, not an indigenous one. Which makes sense: our parliament, like most others in the Commonwealth, is based on the United Kingdom’s Westminster model. So how would a Māori parliament be different, and are there other indigenous parliaments worldwide?

Have we ever had a Māori parliament before?

Rawiri Waititi isn’t the first Māori leader to call for an indigenous parliament. Since He Whakaputanga o te Rangatiratanga o Nu Tireni was signed in 1835, tangata whenua have thought up institutions mirroring Western parliaments. But the phrase “Māori parliament” is predominantly associated with the 1892-1902 pan-tribal “Kotahitanga” movement, which aimed to promote Māori interests, like stopping land theft. Although some Pākehā politicians attended its sessions, Wellington never officially recognised the legitimacy of this movement. Te Kotahitanga had two bodies: an upper house (Te Whare Ariki) and lower house (Te Whare o Raro). While modern Aotearoa only has one parliamentary body, it is not unusual for nations to have two, including the US (Congress and Senate), historic New Zealand (parliament and the legislative council, abolished in 1951) and many others.

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Palestine solidarity activists have claimed their space in mainstream politics and demanded the dismantling of the Israeli settler colonial project. But this has raised a very elementary question: “What is settler colonialism?”

Some commentators were quick to dismiss this charge of settler colonialism against Israel as “just another form of anti-Semitism”. Others insinuated that “settler colonialism” is nothing but a trendy academic theory conjured up by left-wing academics and activists.

But settler colonialism isn’t just an academic fad. It’s a real political project that has scarred the past and present of Indigenous communities around the world.

A central feature of this project is that it seeks to erase the Indigenous population to make way for the establishment of a settler society. Ideologically, this erasure is seen as justified and inevitable because, for the settler, the Indigenous don’t have any distinct peoplehood or any historically rooted claim to the land they inhabit. So, when faced with the civilisational, technological and military superiority of the settler state, it is all but expected that the “barbaric” Indigenous society would simply capitulate and “go away”.

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Agreed reforms have not been prioritised and landmark agreement on Indigenous outcomes is doomed without urgent changes, Productivity Commission says

The Closing the Gap agreement on improving Indigenous outcomes will fail without fundamental changes, the Productivity Commission has warned, adding that successive governments have “failed to fully grasp” the challenges.

In a scathing report, the Productivity Commission has called for urgent changes to rescue the landmark agreement, accusing the federal government of “weak” action on key areas, not fulfilling its promises and a “disregard” for the suggestions of Indigenous communities. It says efforts to eliminate institutional racism in areas such as justice and health have “received little effort”.

“Most critically, the Agreement requires government decision-makers to accept that they do not know what is best for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people,” the Closing the Gap review states.

“Change can be confronting and difficult. But without fundamental change, the Agreement will fail and the gap will remain.”

The Labor government has so far resisted revealing its next plans in Indigenous affairs policy, after the unsuccessful referendum for an Indigenous voice last October.

The prime minister Anthony Albanese, the Indigenous Australians minister, Linda Burney, and the National Indigenous Australians Agency have repeatedly dodged questions on whether the government will advance the Makarrata commission for agreement-making with Indigenous Australians, fuelling speculation Labor may be preparing to wind back its commitment to treaty and truth processes.

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Brandi Morin was charged while reporting at encampment authorities arrived at to dismantle and could face two years in jail

A journalist in Canada who was arrested and charged while reporting on a police operation to clear an encampment for unhoused Indigenous people says she fears the charges will chill further reporting of marginalized groups.

Brandi Morin, an Indigenous journalist, was arrested on 10 January while documenting police efforts to dismantle the camp in the city of Edmonton.

Morin, an award-winning journalist who has written for a range of outlets including the Guardian, was interviewing the camp’s leader when police created a perimeter of yellow tape around the camp. As a scuffle broke out, an officer ordered her to join other reporters outside the perimeter.

Morin, at the time on assignment for Ricochet Media, said she refused to leave.

“As someone who has covered police action against Indigenous peoples, I know of the violence and brutality that our people experience. It was important for me to be there as a witness,” she said in an interview.

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OCUMICHO, Mexico -- Guided by their ancestral lunar calendar, members of Mexico’s Purepecha Indigenous group celebrated their own New Year’s Eve — a little differently than the West’s traditional New Year.

The Purepechas, who live in the western state of Michoacán, preserve the pre-Hispanic belief in the “New Fire” ceremony, a version of which was also practiced by their ancient rivals to the east, the Aztecs(Mexicas).

Because the Purepechas' lunar calendar of 18 months leaves an orphan day that belongs to no month, that day — which this year fell on Thursday — is viewed as a time for both mourning and renewal. That is when a symbolic fire is extinguished. In past generations, no fire was allowed on that day and meals were eaten cold, although the prevalence of gas and electric burners has made that obsolete.

Then at midnight, a new fire is lit and not allowed to go out until the new year.

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by Danielle Keeton-Olsen on 2 February 2024

• Indigenous residents begin submitting petitions as Sarawak officials announce three new cascading hydropower dams throughout the state.
• While Sarawak’s chief minister appears all-in for the dam in comments, other officials say plans hang on the results of upcoming feasibility studies.
• After some villages were devastated by older dams, Indigenous residents ask officials to consult them fully or simply drop the plans.

As Sarawak’s top officials plan three new hydropower dams, seemingly eager to export more electricity, some Indigenous residents of the Malaysian Bornean state are urging officials to slow down development to properly inform everyone who will be affected.

Sarawak Chief Minister Abang Johari Openg has been hinting at plans to build new dams since the end of last year, but he confirmed this month that the state plans to construct three more hydropower dams. The dams would be built in Kapit district’s Gaat River, Belaga district’s Belaga River and Baram district’s Tutoh River.

Abang Johari gave several reasons for promoting new hydropower, ranging from the expected — more power for the province — to more unconventional, notably saying that residents now use roads instead of rivers, implying they would not be negatively affected by dams, that residents asked for the dams and that cascading dams would prevent crocodile populations from increasing.

Following the announcement, more than 500 residents around the Tutoh dam site signed a petition led by the Miri-based NGO SAVE Rivers, calling for more information about the cascading dam project and an assessment of potential environmental impacts.

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Chocolate has an incredible story from the cacao tree to the chocolate that we love today. Discover chocolate’s long lost Mesoamerican history from its South American origins to its cultivation and rise in Mesoamerica.

Sources and Bibliography

In the hot midday sun on the edge of Mara Ripoi conservancy in Maasai Mara, a group of women gather under the shade of a gnarled, old Balanites aegyptiaca tree, or oloireroi in Maasai.

The women listen keenly as Everlyne Siololo outlines some key benefits of belonging to the newly formed 5,500-hectare (13,500-acre) conservancy.

“This was hardly possible a few years ago,” says Siololo, 29, during a break in the meeting. “There were times when a woman’s voice was rarely heard. In fact, some men still look down on uneducated women. They need to trust women more.”

This wildlife reserve is one of a handful where some of the key decision-makers are Maasai women, who are carving out space in a domain long dominated by men. The reserve borders Maasai Mara, Kenya’s enormous game park, which spans more than 1,500 sq km in the Great Rift Valley. Along its borders, many former Maasai cattle-grazing areas have been converted into wildlife conservancies where controlled grazing is allowed.

Two-thirds of Africa’s protected land lies outside national parks, and conservancies are one of the main models designed to protect those vital habitats. A conservancy is formed on land that is collectively owned and managed by Indigenous communities — such as the Maasai — and set aside for protection, so it will not be carved up into small farms or developments. The community earns income by partnering with wildife tourism companies, which pay rent.

Maasai societies are highly patriarchal, and governance of the conservancies has typically fallen to men. Now, however, a new generation of women are taking up leadership roles and guiding jobs, and Ripoi is one of the few conservancies in the greater Mara ecosystem where women hold administrative rights: making decisions on cattle grazing zones and financial matters, and discussing employment opportunities – including whether jobs go to women.

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• The 2022 documentary “The Territory” won an Emmy award this January, shining a light on the Uru-eu-wau-wau Indigenous people and the invasions, conflicts and threats from land grabbers in their territory in the Brazilian Amazon from 2018 to 2021.
• After years of increasing invasions and deforestation in the protected area, experts say the situation has slowly improved in the past three years, and both Indigenous and government officials in the region “feel a little safer.”
• Grassroots surveillance efforts, increased visibility of the problems, and a more effective federal crackdown against invaders have helped tackle illegal land occupiers and allowed the Indigenous populations to take their land back.
• Despite the security improvements, however, the territory still struggles against invasions and deforestation within the region, experts say.

Brazil’s Indigenous peoples have come under systemic attacks for five centuries, a crisis that worsened from 2019 to 2022 under the government of Jair Bolsonaro. These hostilities were encapsulated in the Emmy-winning documentary The Territory (O Território), which unveiled the challenges one Indigenous land and its population faced from land grabbers from 2018 to 2021.

The film, which won the award for “exceptional merit in documentary filmmaking” this January, documents an Indigenous group’s fight against conflicts and threats from invaders in the Uru-eu-wau-wau Indigenous Territory, an area covering more than 1.8 million hectares (4.4 million acres) of the Amazon Rainforest in the Brazilian state of Rondônia. The territory is home to nine Indigenous groups, including the Jupaú (also known as the Uru-eu-wau-wau), the Oro Win, the Amondawa, and the Cabixi, as well as five communities that have not had contact with non-Indigenous people.

Today, the situation in the region has improved, experts say, adding that although threats still exist, the territory has become safer and deforestation has dropped thanks to increasing visibility, local action, and a change in the federal government.

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