In December 2022, Brazilian media published photos of malnourished Yanomami children which shocked the nation. The Indigenous peoples of the Amazon had long lived off of hunting, farming, and gathering food and resources from the bountiful rainforest. But the encroachment on their lands by the Brazilian state, corporations, illegal loggers, and illegal miners has now doomed them to starvation and disease.

Soon after taking office in January 2023, President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva rushed to address the crisis. He visited the Yanomami community in the northern Roraima state and declared that a “genocide” was happening against the Indigenous people, blaming it on his predecessor, Jair Bolsonaro. He vowed to take action and put an end to the suffering of the indigenous people.

Today, a year after Lula made his promise, the Yanomami are yet to see a radical change in their lives. Despite the measures the Lula government undertook, expelling thousands of illegal miners, the crisis in Roraima state has persisted. Many illegal miners have returned and the Indigenous people continue to suffer from diseases and malnutrition.

In an audio message to the press, Indigenous leader Dario Kopenawa from the Hutukara Yanomami Association (HAY) said, “We have seen many operations to root out the miners from Yanomami land and also on the humanitarian and sanitarian crisis. However, precariousness still lies in the Yanomami territory.”

Indeed, the Lula government’s efforts have not improved the situation much because the roots of the crisis go much deeper than the disastrous policies of Bolsonaro’s presidency. Addressing it would necessitate radical action.

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Once the island's only inhabitants, Indigenous Taiwanese now make up just 2.38% of Taiwan's population – and their vibrant festivals play a crucial part in preserving their culture.

I was at the Posko tribe's harvest festival celebration ("Ilisin" in Pangcah, the local language), which takes place every August in the town of Yuli in Taiwan's Hualien Province. The Posko are one of the many tribes of the Amis people, or Pangcah, as they like to be known – meaning "people" or "kinsmen". The Amis/Pangcah are the largest of Taiwan's Indigenous groups and mostly live in the counties east of Taiwan's central mountains: Hualien and Taitung and the Hengchun Peninsula.

Taiwan's Indigenous people – as opposed to the majority Chinese Han population – belong to the Austronesian group of peoples. Though they originated in Taiwan, many migrated to South East Asia, Micronesia and Polynesia from 1500 to 1000 BCE as a result of population growth. The Austronesians were great seafarers and developed sailing and navigation technologies that allowed them to travel long distances – Austronesian-speaking people today are the world's fifth-biggest language group with an estimated 400 million people.

It is thought that Indigenous peoples (formerly known as Taiwanese aborigines) have inhabited Taiwan for more than 6,000 years; in fact, before 1620, there were only Indigenous peoples on the island. However, a succession of colonial powers invaded and ruled over the following four centuries: the Dutch and Spanish (1624-1668), the mainland Chinese Qing Dynasty (1683-1895), the Japanese (1895-1945) and finally The Republic of China (1945-1987).

Today, however, Indigenous Taiwanese make up just 2.38% of the island's 23 million people. Of these, the Amis/Pangcah number roughly 200,000 and comprise 37.1% of the Indigenous population.

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January 26 marks the colonisation of Australia and the grief, heartache and pain that this has inflicted on First Nations people for generations. It is also a moment to recognise the ongoing survival of the oldest existing culture in the world today.

On January 26, 1788, Captain Arthur Phillip raised the British flag at Warrane, marking the beginning of British colonial rule on Gadigal land. This date, originally commemorated as Foundation Day, has evolved into Australia Day. However, this day also represents the start of the invasion, suffering, and dispossession for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. The true history of these lands spans over 60,000 years, far preceding colonial times.

When British settlers began colonizing Australia in 1788, between 750,000 and 1.25 Aboriginal Australians are estimated to have lived there. Soon, epidemics ravaged the island’s indigenous people, and British settlers seized Aboriginal lands.

Though some Aboriginal Australians did resist—up to 20,000 indigenous people died in violent conflict on the colony’s frontiers—most were subjugated by massacres and the impoverishment of their communities as British settlers seized their lands.

Between 1910 and 1970, government policies of assimilation led to between 10 and 33 percent of Aboriginal Australian children being forcibly removed from their homes. These “Stolen Generations” were put in adoptive families and institutions and forbidden from speaking their native languages. Their names were often changed.

For many Aboriginal and Torres Trait Islanders, January 26 is a day of mourning, symbolising the loss of their ancestors, their land, and their rights. It recalls the devastating impact of the Frontier Wars, the ongoing trauma, and the systemic injustices that continue to this day, including disproportionate rates of Black deaths in custody, health inequities, and the desecration of sacred sites. Celebrating on this day overlooks these painful realities and the resilience of First Nations peoples in the face of ongoing colonisation.

• The truth about white Australia: The genocide few talk about

• The killing times: the massacres of Aboriginal people Australia must confront

• Indigenous kids are still being removed from their families, more than ever before

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An Alaska Native museum in the state’s Kodiak Archipelago is using a nearly $100,000 federal grant to build a private online database to help unite local tribes with their ancestors.

The Alutiiq Museum—a non-profit organization whose mission is to preserve and share the culture of the Alutiiq Alaska Native tribal people— will lead the two year project, called ‘Angitapet’, meaning ‘We Are Returning Them’ in Alutiiq/Sugpiaq.

The museum has identified at least 12 institutions in the US that hold the remains of at least 168 Kodiak Alutiiq ancestors, said Amanda Lancaster, the museum’s Curator of Collections and repatriation coordinator since March 2017. Those ancestors are subject to return under a human rights law called NAGPRA, or the native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act of 1990Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act of 1990, which requires museums and universities holding Indigenous human remains and artifacts to catalog those remains and return them to their tribal nations.

Lancaster said that the number of Kodiak Alutiiq ancestors held in collections across the country is likely to go up, but the current figure comes from federal data museum staff has culled itself, and from personally reaching out to more than 70 institutions across the country.

“One of the biggest hurdles with NAGPRA is that there is no central database,” Lancaster told Native News Online. “So tribes will do all this work to possibly repatriate the ancestors, and then find out they were claimed 10 years ago.”

read more: https://nativenewsonline.net/sovereignty/alaska-musuem-is-building-a-private-database-to-repatriate-kodiak-alutiiq-ancestors

The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources will be closing the Upper Sioux Agency State Park in February as part of their work to transfer the land back to the Upper Sioux Community, a tribe that has occupied the area bordering the Minnesota River Valley for thousands of years.

The park will be closed to the public beginning February 16, as it prepares to transfer the land back to the Upper Sioux Community.

The Upper Sioux Community has had a longstanding request for the State of Minnesota to return the land that holds secret burial sites of Dakota people who died during the U.S.-Dakota War of 1862 when the U.S. government failed to fulfill treaty promises

The 1,3000-acre park of rolling hills, bent oak trees, and wild prairie flowers includes the remains of a government-run campus of employee housing, warehouses, and a manual labor school that was destroyed in the war.

read more: https://nativenewsonline.net/environment/upper-sioux-community-to-reacquire-current-state-park-land-where-ancestors-are-buried

Tribes in Oregon are once again growing and using Columbian tobacco, a variety native to the Pacific Northwest that was all but wiped out by displacement from white settlers.

As a youngster, he witnessed commercially-processed tobacco with its additives and chemicals hook and ravage people in his family and tribe. Many believed they were practicing “tradition,” while nicotine and tar spurred addiction and ruined their lungs.

But outside the Coos, Lower Umpqua and Siuslaw Indians’ plankhouse in the coastal town of Coos Bay, Ore., the former tribal vice chair reverently holds a bulbous and gnarled strain called Nicotiana quadrivalis variety multivalis. Known more simply as Columbian tobacco, Petrie says this is the kind his distant ancestors raised, protected and used – well before the arrival of white settlers.

“When I started working for the tribe, I had the opportunity to work in commercial tobacco prevention,” Petrie said. “I really set my sights on looking for bringing back the traditional tobacco and how it was used.”

That was a tall order, given that Columbian tobacco practically disappeared from the banks of the Columbia River during the 1800s. The culprits were a Scottish botanist, the fur trade and the erosion of Indigenous protocols surrounding the plant.

read more: https://www.underscore.news/reporting/how-the-recovery-of-a-stolen-plant-helped-one-tribe-re-indigenize-tobacco

• Jose Antônio Parava Ramos is a young leader of the Chiquitano people from the Portal do Encantado Indigenous land, in Mato Grosso state, west-central Brazil, bordering Bolívia.
• The Chiquitano people are an Indigenous group divided by borders, and their largest population currently lives in the neighboring Andean country.
• In Brazil, Parava’s land is the Chiquitano territory closest to completing its demarcation process; the people have waited more than a decade for this, and Portal do Encantado is just one of the many territories in the country in this situation.
• In a Mongabay interview, the Indigenous leader, who is also a health worker, sheds light on the pressures of deforestation and land conflicts on his territory and highlights the importance of demarcation to preserve his people’s identity.

“Hope is the last to die. We are apprehensive about what happened, but we will fight.” These are the words of Indigenous leader Jose Antônio Parava Ramos, a member of the Chiquitano people whose territory sits on the border of Bolivia and Brazil. He was sharing his perspective on a revived proposal to restrict the legal recognition of Indigenous territories in Brazil.

Parava, 37, from Mata Virgem village (in the Chiquitano language, Nochopro Matupama) on the Indigenous land of Portal do Encantado, spoke to Mongabay in late 2023 via video call.

In a significant setback for Indigenous land rights, his country’s original peoples witnessed what they consider the most extensive attack since the promulgation of the Brazilian Constitution more than 35 years ago: On Dec. 14, the National Congress overturned President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s previous veto, which had struck down the core of a bill that stated Indigenous peoples could claim rights to lands only if they had occupied them on the Constitution’s promulgation date: Oct. 5, 1988.

This move by lawmakers in Brazil’s National Congress challenges the Supreme Court’s prior decision declaring unconstitutional the controversial “time frame” proposition, known as marco temporal in Portuguese. Numerous Indigenous organizations denounce the thesis, asserting it overlooks centuries of forced displacement experienced by many Indigenous peoples in the country.

full article

The award-winning storyteller from the Muscogee (Creek) Nation ‘risked asking tough questions of tribal officials with no legal protection for his job’

Award-winning reporter and storyteller Gary Fife of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation died Jan. 14 in Tulsa, Oklahoma. He was 73.

A leader in Indigenous journalism, Fife produced thousands of stories for radio, television, digital and print media during a 50-plus year career, and wrote opinion pieces using the name “Emvpanayv,” or “one who tells the story.”

In 2021, Fife told ICT that at the peak of the Civil Rights movement, he was studying journalism in college.

“Watching all of the activities going on around the nation with different minority people stepping forward, I personally was wondering, where is the Native American presence in this movement? I also felt, of course, that since we have a federal relationship that no one else has, ours would be different, our presence. So I wanted to be a part of that, and I felt making a positive move for Native American people in the presentation of our information.”

Some Native-owned media at the time “was a lot of ‘rah, rah, go, go Indians. Let's go beat up on the white man’ kind of thing,” Fife said. “And through my journalistic schooling, I thought, ‘Well, wait a minute, now there's another side to this story. And even though we don't want to hear it, we've got to know what the enemy is up to, so to speak.’”

Fife said people need to know both sides of the story to effectively deal with issues, “to perhaps combat the oppression and loss of land and culture and a way to show the rest of the world that our pride was still here and that our young people are going to be making changes within themselves and the community.”

A celebration of life ceremony will be held for Gary Fife at the Muscogee (Creek) Nation Mound Building in Okmulgee, Oklahoma, on Saturday, Jan, 27 from 1 to 3 p.m. The service is open to the public and will celebrate Gary's life and contributions to Native American journalism and media activism.

read more: https://ictnews.org/news/groundbreaking-journalist-gary-fife-dead-at-73

Quakers contribute more than $92k to develop a healing center in Kake

An unused U.S. Forest Service building in Kake may soon be a healing center for the community to move forward from generations of trauma after a boarding school harmed members of the Alaska Native population.

When Joel Jackson, president of the Organized Village of Kake, saw the building on an access road between Kake and Petersburg, he said he was surprised. “A cultural healing center has been on my mind for decades,” he said. “I said to myself, ‘Hey, there’s our cultural healing center.’”

Now, with nearly $93,000 in reparations money, Jackson can insure the building and move towards renovations. Quakers with the Alaska Friends Conference and from Washington and Oregon contributed money with the goal of helping to repair the damage from colonial influence and boarding schools in Southeast Alaska at the turn of the century.

Quakers built a mission in Kake in the 1890s before the federal government handed the Quaker building over to the Presbyterian Church, which operated a boarding school there. Jackson said the legacy of forced assimilation has been hard in his community.

“I never knew anything about intergenerational trauma until I attended a few workshops when I traveled to different conferences. And then I realized how that can be passed on through the generations and how it affects our people. That made sense to what I witnessed growing up,” he said.

Jackson said he witnessed people in his community struggle with alcohol as they aged and he sees that as a result of forced assimilation among people who experienced boarding school and their children. “That was the generation that was subjected to forced assimilation, where they couldn’t speak their language or do the things that they normally do,” he said.

He said the colonial presence also disrupted transmission of the Tlingit language by supplanting it with English. “We have very few fluent Tlingit speakers anymore. Most of them are leaving us,” he said, referring to how many fluent elders have died.

“Hopefully we can get people over here that are struggling with addiction and alcohol. It’s not just going to be for our community, it’s going to be regionwide,” he said. “I want to open it at first to the rural smaller communities because a lot of times they don’t have the option of going to treatment because, you know, most centers are in the bigger cities. And there’s usually a waiting list to get in there. So yeah, I want to open that up for them.”

The reparations were announced at Kake Day, a yearly celebration of when the Southeast Alaska city incorporated in 1912 and its residents became the first Alaska Natives to have United States citizenship and have the right to vote. The reparations follow an apology the Quakers made in Juneau in 2022 to the Alaska Native community for the harms of boarding schools.

read more: https://ictnews.org/news/reparations-follow-quaker-apology-to-alaska-native-community

The arrival of 26 January each year invariably brings discussion about the many uncomfortable truths in our nation’s story, including our history of colonisation.

But what is often overlooked is that colonisation is not just a moment confined to history. As the leaders of two organisations that work to address violence against women, we see the ongoing impact of colonisation every day in the shockingly high rates of violence experienced by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women.

It is impossible to combat this violence without understanding the long-lasting impact of colonisation on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. An impact that goes beyond the massacres, introduced diseases and displacement of the past, and continues today through intergenerational trauma, gaps in life expectancy and systemic discrimination.

full article

A wide grin spread across Niesha Marshall’s face as she watched the purple go-kart zip across her computer screen. It worked. The game worked. “I was really proud of myself…I just couldn’t believe it, that I created this AI,” she said.

It was the summer of 2021 and Niesha, then 13, moved to campus just three weeks earlier knowing almost nothing about AI. She hadn’t been to school in over a year because of COVID and she just wanted to get out of the house, to see someone other than her family. But all she knew of coding was what she’d seen in movies: a geeky guy alone in the corner hacking into the government, or something like that, she recalled.

In less than a month, her view on AI and who could participate in building it radically shifted.

Niesha is one of the high school-aged students to complete the Lakota AI Code Camp — a three week summer intensive taught by four Indigenous AI experts from across the country. At Black Hills State University, about 220 miles northwest of the Rosebud Reservation, the camp trains Lakota students with little coding experience in Python, data science, machine learning, and app development in less than a month. It’s a foray into computer science for interested young people, but the camp is also about more than creating opportunities for individual students. It’s an attempt to build an Indigenous talent pool, to find and train future experts who can digitally protect and steward Indigenous culture — and keep endangered native languages alive.

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Nearly 150 people were evicted earlier this month from Camp Nenookaasi, a community-based healing camp in Minneapolis rooted in Native practices where people experiencing homelessness can find stable interim shelter.

The camp has occupied a vacant city lot in the East Phillips neighborhood of Minneapolis since August 2023, but residents began folding tents and gathering belongings after Mayor Jacob Frey scheduled the eviction and destruction of the camp on January 4.

Plans to close the camp in December were postponed. On January 2, residents of Camp Nenookaasi filed a lawsuit against Frey in an attempt to halt the eviction process, but a federal judge denied their request, allowing the city to move forward.

Insulated tents, yurts, teepees, and other shelters have been removed, as well as the camp's ceremonial fire and other sacred sites. Residents were left to face the deadly Minnesota winter weather, where temperatures have reached negative levels this past week, according to the Weather Channel.

Camp Nenookaasi (Hummingbird) has served as a crucial stepping stone to housing stability and sobriety while providing food, warmth, shelter, and cultural healing for its residents, who are mainly Indigenous. Since its inception, nearly 76 residents have been able to obtain long-term or permanent housing.

“The camp is a creation of social safety and a real meaningful community,” Camp Nenookaasi organizer Christina Crabtree, told Native News Online. “That sense of safety is what lays down the foundation for people to start to heal traumas and start seeing that they are worthy of care, housing, recovery, and healing. We have stayed together.”

American Indian/Alaska Natives experience the second highest rate of homelessness in the U.S., according to the latest Annual Homelessness Assessment Report by the National Alliance to End Homelessness. As of 2019, AI/AN people account for approximately 1.5% of North America’s population, yet they make up more than 10% of the homeless population nationally, according to the HUD report.

Nearly 80% of Native people no longer live on reservations, and little funding is directed specifically toward them. Tribal governments usually allocate the funds they do get for life on the reservation, as required by the federal government.

City officials said a number of services will be offered to displaced residents of Camp Nenookaasi, including storage, shelter, mental health resources, and health care as an incentive to leave. After unfilled promises, residents who hadn’t gotten the help they were promised simply moved to a new encampment a few blocks away according to FOX9.

Frey campaigned for mayoral office on a promise to end homelessness before being sworn into office on January 2, 2018. Frey has implemented policies and initiatives to drastically increase sweeps and evictions of homeless encampments, using authority over the Minneapolis Police Department to displace people and offer little support for evicted residents,the January 2 lawsuit.

Back in 2018, the Wall of Forgotten Natives, a homeless encampment along the highway sound barrier that separates Hiawatha Avenue from East Phillips, was shut down. Frey's office worked with local non-profits, the Red Lake Nation to transition 175 residents from the camp to temporary shelters.

In 2020, Powderhorn Park encampment was formed due to the increasing need for access to treatment and housing services. Frey opposed the encampment and residents were evicted and the camp destroyed along with personal belongings thrown into dumpsters according to the lawsuit.

Crabtree says that clearing Camp Nenookaasi will scatter unhoused people throughout the city, making it more difficult for them to meet with housing workers and receive community resources. She also notes that unhoused people are more likely to experience violence.

“There have been so many encampment evictions week after week. There are people who don’t have these residents' best interests in mind,” Crabtree said. “People are predatory who know where the camps are and when an eviction happens and residents are in that place of hopelessness, they can easily be taken advantage of. We see people even go missing after encampment evictions.”

In the meantime city council members, camp organizers, and members of the Red Lake Nation are partnering together to create a cultural healing center to help support and house people. Native News Online reached out to Red Lake Nation but did not receive a response at press time.

“There are so many different ideas about solutions, but the majority of the time these organizations that want to help are so underfunded and competing for the same resources. We need to all realize that people are suffering and as long as we stay divided, we are going to stay stuck in this cycle,” Crabtree said.

read more: https://nativenewsonline.net/currents/unhoused-relatives

Big Man, also known as Roy Cardinal, the 51 year-old Cree Metis leader of the encampment, is done talking to the police. As far as he’s concerned they went back on a promise not to raid this camp, and there’s nothing more to talk about.

“Eagle feathers up, boys,” he says to those around him as he raises his grey and white eagle feather wings to the sky.

Three police officers step towards Big Man. Then chaos. Advocates yell, campers raise their hands in surrender, clouds of snow rise from black police boots as they charge a circle of supporters trying to protect Big Man.

That’s when I found myself becoming a part of this story.

I’m filming from about 10 feet away, one of several people covering the sweep, but the only journalist inside the police line. That’s when a police officer singles me out, steps in front of my camera and instructs me to stop doing my job.

Sergeant Amber Maze, a member of the Edmonton Police Service and a former candidate for the right-wing Wildrose Party, makes a beeline for me and says I have to leave the area, and get behind the line of yellow tape they’ve set up more than 40 feet away. Too far away to film, or even really see what was happening.

I’m then grabbed and manhandled, before being cuffed by another officer and led away, paraded like a criminal in front of the TV news cameras. The cuffs were put on wrong, and I can feel a searing pain in my wrist.

I identify myself as a journalist, and state clearly that I have a right to be there. They should be well-aware that high courts in two provinces have found police use of these “exclusion zones” to thwart media coverage of their actions unlawful.

I’m then grabbed and manhandled, before being cuffed by another officer and led away, paraded like a criminal in front of the TV news cameras. The cuffs were put on wrong, and I can feel a searing pain in my wrist.

All I can think about is my five-year-old daughter, who I’m supposed to pick up from kindergarten in a couple of hours. As I’m loaded into a paddy wagon I beg the officers holding me to adjust the cuffs that are causing shooting pain.

That’s when all my resolve broke, like a dam crumbling under the weight of an irresistible force. The shock of what had just happened wore off, and the emotions hit hard.

I sob as they jerk my arms around behind me, trying to loosen the restraints. It doesn’t really help.

There’s no warmth inside that cage. Arms uncomfortably tight behind my back, hearing the screams of the invisible disarray happening down the road, I pray for comfort as hot tears roll down my cheeks.

read more: https://ricochet.media/en/4025/brandi-morin-police-raids-rock-edmonton-as-indigenous-encampment-dismantled

The Florentine Codex, written nearly 500 years ago, continues to reveal hidden secrets and share knowledge about the Indigenous peoples who experienced the fall of Tenochtitlan in the 16th century. It is widely regarded as the most reliable source on Mexica culture, the Aztec empire and the arrival of Spanish conquistadors in what is now Mexico. Previously untranslated Nahuatl texts could potentially reshape the narrative of the Spanish conquest, offering intriguing insights into historical events and perhaps prompting a reevaluation of certain episodes.

A team of 68 researchers, scientists and linguists spent seven years digitizing and translating the nearly 2,500 pages of a manuscript into modern Spanish, English and Nahuatl. Now available online, the project showcases the original Spanish and Nahuatl text, along with over 2,000 hand-painted illustrations. Funded by the Los Angeles-based Getty Research Institute in collaboration with the Laurentian Medici Library in Florence (Italy), “the Florentine Codex is considered the most important manuscript of the 16th century and a significant Indigenous encyclopedia of its time,” according to project leader and Mesoamerica expert Kim Richter.

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• In 2022, a group of Indigenous women created Rede Katahirine, a network composed of 60 filmmakers, producers and screenwriters who represent Indigenous women from nearly all of Brazil’s biomes.
• In placing Indigenous audiovisual arts in the hands of women, the network aims to use its cameras as tools to fight for the preservation of Indigenous territories and memory.
• Aside from funding new productions, Rede Katahirine organizes monthly meetings for screenings and conversations.

While the name Katahirine seems like it could be for an observatory or some ambitious outer space project, it is rather the name of the first audiovisual network created and run by Indigenous women in Brazil.

In the language of the Manchineri people native to Brazil’s state of Acre, Katahirine means “constellation.” It was chosen by the collective because it implies plurality, the gathering of voices from many territories under one platform.

Each filmmaker shining with camera in hand, together they are discovering the possibilities of filmmaking, an art that some years ago would have been impossible to practice in regions far from Brazil’s big cities.

But as mobile phones, digital cameras and audiovisual equipment become more accessible, filmmaking today is part of the lives of dozens of Indigenous women across Brazil. There are 60 members of Katahirine – Rede Audiovisual de Mulheres Indígenas working on their own productions, including fiction and documentaries, filming the reality inside their communities from the north to the south of Brazil.

For the time being, the Pantanal is the only region not filmed by a member of the network. But this could change soon, according to Mari Corrêa, filmmaker and project founder.

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The government is faced with the task of comprehensively addressing these problems in the face of the voices and concerns of Indigenous communities and other affected sectors

It was not with surprise, but with regret that I witnessed the recent wave of news about the violence taking place in Ecuador’s cities. Just three weeks ago, I returned from the country, where I had started filming my next documentary. At a global level, Ecuador is seen as a nation on the edge of a social abyss, with consequences that are spreading throughout the country. These are especially impacting the most vulnerable sectors of the countryside and the cities: the impoverished and historically discriminated against; Indigenous, Black and mountain communities; the fishing and gathering communities of the mangroves and peasants of the sierra and the coast.

The complex reality facing Ecuador today is a supposed state of “internal armed conflict,“ officially declared as such by the government to justify an internal war against criminal organizations. This is the result of a large and painful tearing of Ecuador’s social fabrics and a state dissolving into a morass of corruption. Most particularly, however, it is the result of an extractive and export model of development that has been in place for over more than fifty years and has greatly intensified over the past two decades and four governments. This model has corrupted Ecuador’s institutions, which have been captureed by special interest groups linked to extraction and exportation.

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Norwegian authorities criminally charged 20 Indigenous Saami activists and supporters on Friday for blocking access to multiple government buildings in protest over the continued operation of wind turbines in the Fosen region. The operation occupies the same land as traditional reindeer herding grounds, despite a 2021 Norwegian Supreme Court ruling calling for an end to the turbines’ operation, according to a statement from the Saami activists’ attorneys.

The statement, released by attorneys Olaf Halvorsen Rønning and Anne Marie Gulichsen with Elden Advokatfirma who are representing the activists, alleges that the activists were charged by the public prosecutor in Oslo, Norway, though the statement does not specify the nature of the charges. Local news outlet VG alleged that the group is charged with not paying fines related to the protests. Rønning and Gulichsen criticized the actions of the public prosecutor, stating:

Punishing the Sami youth and their supporters will be yet another violation of their human rights – violation of their freedom of speech and demonstration. National minorities have particularly strong protection against protests directly directed at those responsible in the Government for human rights violations the group is exposed to.

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Indigenous leaders always suspected certain countries of colluding behind closed doors to undermine their rights at the United Nations.

But now, after newly released Australian cabinet papers showed Canada led efforts to weaken the original draft declaration on the rights of Indigenous peoples at the UN, secretly crafting a state-friendly substitute with Australia in 2002 and 2003, they have some evidence to prove it.

And they're far from shocked.

"We all knew that Canada was in the back rooms trying to counter everything," said Pam Palmater, a Mi'kmaw lawyer and chair in Indigenous governance at Toronto Metropolitan University.

"Not just Canada, but Canada was a main instigator, so to have this on the record from another country just backs up everything that Indigenous peoples have been saying for decades."

Indigenous leaders completed their original draft in 1993, approved it in 1994, and aimed to finish it by 2004. But around that time, pressure from opponent states sparked negotiation of what became a diluted version that the UN general assembly adopted in 2007, said Charmaine White Face, who remembers it vividly.

"The original one was very strong," said White Face, or Zumila Wobaga, spokesperson for the 1894 Sioux Nation Treaty Council in South Dakota.

White Face wrote a book analyzing the different versions of the declaration, Indigenous Nations' Rights in the Balance. She argues the UN betrayed Indigenous nations by weakening the original draft.

"It doesn't surprise me at all," she said.

"We knew way back in 1994 that the English speaking, colonizing states were going to try. They don't want to recognize us as nations with legitimate international treaties with them."

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cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/1646784

Apparently, Charlie Kirk wants to start a campaign against the Civil Rights Act and MLK?

I think this is why we need to guard against the ultra-right.

There's the right-wing and then there's the ultra-right.

This is a new low, however, and it portents bad changes in the body politic of the United States.

It seems they even want to do away with these concessions as well, that was fought for by the working-class.

On January 2, 2024, members of the Weelaunee Solidarity Collective—an ad hoc group of US-based forest defenders and revolutionaries—presented a play about the history of the movement to Stop Cop City at the encuentro celebrating the 30th anniversary of the Zapatista uprising. The play recounts the recent history of Weelaunee Forest and the struggle to defend the vision of life it embodies against the militarized world of police and prisons represented by Cop City. The play was creative, playful, and amateur: all endearing qualities that characterize the cultural productions that Zapatistas presented throughout the gathering, at which collective participation in narrating history was valued as an end in itself.

In the following account, participants in the Weelaunee Solidarity Collective describe their experiences at the gathering and their reflections about what the ongoing Zapatista project can teach aspiring revolutionaries elsewhere around the world. We also share footage of the play they performed at the encuentro in memory of Tortuguita, who was murdered one year ago today.

• In Xingu Indigenous Park in the Brazilian Amazon, rivers and lakes are natural arteries that provide life for animals and Indigenous communities, serving as a base for eating, bathing, social interaction and refuge in times of drought.
• The waters of the Xingu, however, are threatened by monocrop plantations around the park, which dry up the springs and pollute the rivers with pesticides.
• At the same time, climate change is exacerbating the periods of drought, with some rivers drying up entirely during these times.
• In this photo essay, photographer Ricardo Teles shows the relationship that the >Indigenous peoples of the Xingu have with the waters that bathe their territory. Even before sunrise, along the beaches of the rivers and lakes of Xingu Indigenous Park in the Brazilian Amazon, a series of bonfires appear on the horizon to warm the naked bodies that have just emerged from the water. As the light brightens the day, a haze rises, diluting the movement of figures in a back-and-forth rhythm that will last all day.

In Xingu Indigenous Park, rivers and lakes are the children’s kindergarten. Groups of women carry the youngest children to various bathing sessions, initiating them into the art of being a fish from an early age. Soccer training takes place on the beach. Young and old bathe throughout the day, and it’s always a good time to meet up and exchange ideas. At dusk, fishing boats go out in search of food.

The rivers that cut through the park, such as the Xingu itself and its tributaries, are true natural arteries that sustain the lives of countless animal species, including humans. The lakes also play a crucial role: they serve as meeting points and offer opportunities for feeding, resting and social interaction. The lakes are also essential for providing water in times of drought, acting as refuges for wildlife and Indigenous people during the driest periods of the year.

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• Government documents, first published by Mongabay last year, showed that hundreds of thousands of hectares of Suriname’s primary forest might be under consideration for agriculture development.
• Indigenous communities, conservation groups and some members of parliament are concerned about deforestation of the Amazon and the fate of ancestral territories.
• Some officials have threatened investigations into the Ministry of Land Policy and Forest Management, while Indigenous groups are looking into legal action.

Possible plans to develop large-scale agriculture in Suriname have sparked backlash from Indigenous communities, conservation groups and some members of parliament, who are concerned about deforestation of the Amazon and the fate of ancestral territories.

Government documents, first published by Mongabay last year, showed that hundreds of thousands of hectares of Suriname’s primary forest might be under consideration for agriculture. Now, voices from all over the country are speaking out against it.

full article

Defence will push to stay the verdicts based on alleged RCMP rights violations as hearings continue in ‘Smithers’ next week

Three Indigenous land defenders charged more than two years ago with defying a court order have been found guilty of criminal contempt in B.C. Supreme Court.

Justice Michael Tammen, who delivered his decision Friday morning, will now consider an application by all three to stay the charges based on alleged misconduct by RCMP officers during the arrests, which occurred along the Coastal GasLink pipeline route in Wet’suwet’en territory on Nov. 19, 2021. The hearing began following the verdict.

“There can be no doubt that Sleydo’, in occupying the metal structure on Nov. 19, 2021, knew that her actions would tend to depreciate the authority of the court,” Tammen said, adding that two others arrested the same day and standing trial this week were defying the order and “reckless” in blocking access to the pipeline route.

Criminal contempt penalties can include fines or imprisonment.

Sleydo’, who also goes by Molly Wickham, is a member of the Gidimt’en Clan of the Wet’suwet’en Nation and a prominent figure in the years-long dispute over the controversial project. She was previously arrested on Jan. 7, 2019, the first of several high-profile police actions since the B.C. Supreme Court granted the injunction five years ago.

On Nov. 19, 2021, Sleydo’ and Shaylynn Sampson, who is from the Gitxsan Nation, were among eight people arrested while inside a small metal structure, or “tiny house,” located next to the Marten Forest Service Road in an area Coastal GasLink intended to use for storing pipe. Also arrested inside the structure were two journalists, one of whom, Amber Bracken, is now suing the RCMP over her arrest and detention.

Several other people, including Corey Jocko, who is Haudenosaunee, were arrested in a separate structure located on a nearby worksite where Coastal GasLink was preparing to drill under the Morice River, the court heard this week. Known in the Wet’suwet’en language as Wedzin Kwa, concerns about impacts to the waterway have been central to the nation’s opposition to the pipeline project.

read more: https://indiginews.com/news/b-c-supreme-court-convicts-three-indigenous-land-defenders-who-opposed-pipeline-in-wetsuweten

The landscape and seascape at Cherry Point, near Bellingham, Wash. is known in the Lummi language as Xwe’chi’eXen. “For thousands of years, and continuing to this day, our people have lived here, fished here, gathered plants here, raised families here, and buried loved ones here,” said Lummi Nation Chairman Anthony Hillaire.'

British Petroleum's swift purchase of about 1,100 acres of land on Cherry Point for nearly $50 million this month was met by strong opposition from the Lummi Nation, which for years has battled development on the parcels due to the land's cultural significance.

BP, a multinational oil and gas company that operates a nearby refinery, finalized an agreement with Pacific International Holdings, a subsidiary of SSA Marine, on Dec. 22. It paid nearly four times more than the Whatcom County’s assessed value of $13 million for the bundle of 21 parcels.

The land was purchased to serve as an additional buffer area for refinery operations, to increase opportunities for environmental restoration and wetlands mitigation, to gain access to Gulf Road and “to provide options for possible future projects at the refinery,” said Christina Audisho, a BP media relations manager.

read more: https://www.underscore.news/reporting/lummi-nation-opposes-bps-50m-purchase-of-cherry-point-parcels