Between December 29 and January 2, 2024, the celebration of the 30th Anniversary of the Beginning of the War Against Oblivion took place in Caracol VIII “Resistance and Rebellion: A New Horizon”, in the Zapatista village of Dolores Hidalgo. The event was organized by thousands of Zapatista support bases, men, women, boys, girls, old men and women who, with faces covered by balaclavas, bandanas and masks, celebrated three decades of resistance to the capitalist system with sports, arts, music, food and popular dance. These lands, recovered after the armed uprising of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) in 1994, are concrete evidence of how Zapatismo in Chiapas has improved the living conditions of the communities based on organization, autonomy and rebellion.

A History

For much of the last century, these lands were owned. In the case of Dolores Hidalgo, an old farmer from Comitán owned thousands of hectares that he used as pastureland. At the top of a small mountain he had a large cabin where he looked over the entire landscape that he had taken from the people with a supposed title deed, as if mother earth had a price. The Tzeltal families of the jungle zone were forced to live in the mountains, where the terrain was unstable and they were denied entry to the supposed “private property” of the so-called Rancho Dolores. There, women, men and children went to work extreme exploitative days. They fed and cared for the employer’s animals, while receiving no pay for their work. The children were not allowed to go to school or play freely, but rather had to fetch water for the pigs and clean the stables. Many of the adult men did not even have money to buy clothes. They covered their bodies with a white cloth tied around their waists and a hole to put their heads through. Meanwhile, the boss even had a small plane to travel to other municipalities in Chiapas. These practices were common in different regions of southeastern Mexico where caciquismo 1 and violence were the norm.

Don Manuel recounted these scenes of the painful past as if they were an excerpt from a B. Traven book. His memory of the oppression and indignities he and his family experienced is present. After the 1994 uprising, the Rancho Dolores landowners practically fled, leaving everything behind. The families recovered these lands, founded villages and began a long process of reconstituting communal life. They organized themselves to rebuild a dignified life, to ensure the “material base” and to pass on a path of resistance to their descendants in order to put an end to the continuous domination. As Don Manuel told his story, his ten-year-old grandson, who his face covered with a red bandana, listened attentively. There is no doubt that today the life of that child is very different from the one lived by Don Manuel who, with pride, looks at the horizon and sentences: “there is no longer a boss, now we have land and we make milpa, we have beans, corn, squash and we have food all year round, because we work collectively.”

read more: https://schoolsforchiapas.org/to-bequeath-life-30-years-since-the-zapatista-uprising/

read more (Spanish): https://regeneracionradio.org/archivos/14516

A whole flock of birds will get new names in the coming year, and bird lovers of all stripes — from casual backyard watchers to serious peepers — will have a chance to help. The American Ornithological Society, the authority on North American bird names and identification, plans to rechristen species named after human beings and include public input in the process.

The society’s governing council made the decision after years of discussion on how to handle birds whose English names may have harmful or offensive historical and cultural associations. AOS President Colleen Handel said that birders should be able to study and enjoy species freely without having to hear, or use, harmful and possibly racist names. “There is power in a name, and some English bird names have associations with the past that continue to be exclusionary and harmful today,” Handel said in a statement. “We need a much more inclusive and engaging scientific process that focuses attention on the unique features and beauty of the birds themselves.”

The AOS English Bird Names Committee ultimately decided to revise all eponymous names, not just those linked to violent histories.

“We do expect the names to reflect aspects of the bird’s appearance, distribution, habitat or behavior — essentially names that describe the bird itself,” Jordan Rutter, co-founder of Bird Names for Birds, said. She hopes that the public’s involvement will spark creativity in the renaming process. “These are perspectives we haven’t had before and should allow for memorable and captivating new names.”

For example, in recent informal public polls to rename the Say’s phoebe, a small long-tailed flycatcher whose feathers shift in color from gray above to burnt orange on its belly, bird lovers came up with such evocative monikers as the mesa phoebe, cinnamon phoebe and sunset phoebe.

Avid birder Steven Hampton, an enrolled citizen of the Cherokee Nation and a retired deputy administrator at the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, worked on the AOS renaming committee. He finds great beauty in the process.

“Birds evoke. Birds can fly. They evoke freedom and independence, and our dreams and our ambitions because they can fly. And that's universal, I think, in every culture across the political spectrum. And so that's something that we hope can be built on.”

read more: https://www.hcn.org/articles/birds-re-name-that-bird-nows-your-chance

link: https://bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2024/01/klee-benally-challenges-genocide-denier.html

When federal agencies responded positively in 2023 to citizen pleas to prevent a “modern gold rush” in the fabled Black Hills, it was a milestone for a decades-long grassroots movement defending the region’s habitat from looming mega-mining. Tribal and nonprofit organizations celebrated with a December appreciation dinner after mounting a successful public pressure campaign to protect water.

The USDA Forest Service in March proposed a halt to mining claims and exploration on more than 20,500 acres under public jurisdiction. It was a response to a barrage of comments on gold prospecting applications. The tract is about 10 percent of the Rapid Creek drainage upstream from South Dakota’s second-largest urban area, Rapid City. If the BLM agrees, this important water source will be off-limits to new mining development for at least 20 years.

“Getting to the Forest Service’s proposal took five or six years of hard, focused work involving a broad alliance,” Black Hills Clean Water Alliance Executive Director Lilias Jarding told Buffalo’s Fire. “Longer than that, if you consider that the alliance had been under construction since the 1970s."

The Forest Service proposal was a departure from the government’s standard operating procedure of granting permits for any mineral exploitation using the premise of the 1872 General Mining Act.

Land managers from both federal agencies held a 90-day comment period and an April 26 hearing in Rapid City on the proposal they call a mineral claims withdrawal. The resounding turnout demonstrated public awareness was at a crest in the wake of a campaign to fend off the “modern gold rush.”

read more: https://ictnews.org/news/tribes-organizers-unite-against-modern-gold-rush

• Mongabay Latam traveled along 38 kilometers (24 miles) of Peru’s Cenepa River, near the border with Ecuador, where illegal mining dredges run around the clock in search of gold, hemming in seven Indigenous Awajún communities.
• The constant mining activity and presence of the miners has brought violence, crime and sexual exploitation to the Awajún communities and wrought widespread environmental destruction that shows no signs of slowing.
• Police and environmental defense leaders conducted raids in early October, but the lack of permanent enforcement in this part of the Amazon has allowed the dredging rafts to returned and once again churn up the river basin.

Drenched up to his thighs, while crouching at the end of our small boat as it cuts through a dizzying collection of waves, our boat captain lifts his hands and shouted a warning: “No more photos — they’re watching us.” Along the left bank of the Cenepa River in the Peruvian Amazon, motors roar from underneath plastic roofs on dredging rafts. Enormous suction tubes penetrate the riverbed from these rafts. There are at least eight dredges that groups of between 15 and 20 illegal miners are using to extract gold, day and night, from the shores of the Indigenous community of Pagki, here in the Peruvian department of Amazonas.

We’re almost halfway down the 38 kilometers (24 miles) of the river that shares a name with the jurisdiction that it passes through, El Cenepa, to the border with Ecuador. It’s not the stretch with the most dredges in the entire river basin, but it is the most dangerous. “Don’t even try to look at them; we just have to pass through very quickly,” the captain instructs us.

The greenish shade of the river changes to an intense ochre color on the side where the dredging rafts are rattling away. With his body half underwater, a man appears to hurriedly direct the operation of one of the dredges. He swims, waves his arms and signals his approval to another man at the base of a handmade ramp installed on the eroded riverbanks of Pagki.

All the material that’s sucked from the bottom of the river will end up in a structure like this, where rocks and mud are deposited onto a carpet before being processed to extract specks of gold. To gather the gold and separate it from the mud, the illegal miners use large amounts of mercury, a heavy metal that now contaminates the Cenepa River. This endless contamination has given the river a swamp-like appearance in several places. This process is repeated at all the points along the shore where the rafts are found.

full article

• After centuries of persecution and dispossession, Indigenous communities say they recognize the plight of Palestinians
• In Brazil, Colombia and Mexico, Indigenous groups have joined protests and written letters to condemn Israel’s war in Gaza

SAO PAULO: Demonstrations have taken place in several of Latin America’s biggest cities against Israel’s ongoing military operation in Gaza since the war broke out in the Palestinian enclave in October.

Indigenous peoples have been among the protesters, with many of them issuing public letters in support of the Palestinian people.

In Bogota, Palestinian organizations and Colombians have staged a number of demonstrations that have included Embera Indigenous activists.

Inhabitants of the Choco region in northern Colombia and adjacent areas since time immemorial, the Embera have been displaced by the armed conflict between left-wing guerrillas, right-wing paramilitary groups and the army.

They have called on the government to ensure a safe territory for them in their region.

full article

In 16 Central and South American countries analyzed in a report by the Rights and Resources Initiative, the area allocated to Indigenous and Afro-descendant communities increased by 52 million acres in five years

Latin America has been a pioneering region in terms of recognizing the territorial rights of Afro-descendant and Indigenous communities. However, in recent years, it has been falling behind. This is stated in a report — Who Owns the World’s Land? — published on June 15 by the Rights and Resource Initiative (RRI). The international NGO examined 73 countries, which together cover 85% of the earth’s surface, to see what percentage of territory belongs to Indigenous and Afro-descendent communities: or, at least, what amount of territory has officially been designated to them.

Globally, between 2015 and 2020 — the period that the report evaluated — the total area of land controlled by these groups increased by 254 million acres. However, in Latin America, barely 52 million acres were added. Specifically, across the region, the lands designated to Indigenous or Afro communities (that is, they have use of them, but don’t own them), increased by nearly 10 million acres, from 3% in 2015 to 3.2% in 2020. Meanwhile, the lands that these communities officially own grew by 42 million acres, from 16.7% to 17.6% of overall territory.

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The Zapatista Army of National Liberation is celebrating the anniversary of the armed uprising that shook the Mexican status quo. From 12 days of war in 1994 to the failed negotiations with the government, from broken promises to building autonomy, the most iconic anti-globalization guerrilla movement has survived three decades

The seams burst into the air. It was a murmur hidden for years. Centuries of rage, deep in the Lacandon Jungle, in the mountains, the villages, the cornfields. An open secret, cooked over slow fire. The dispossessed, without a decent roof over their heads; without land, without work, without healthcare, without food, without education, without freedom, without rights, without peace, without justice. Nobody expected the uprising, because nobody wanted to listen to them. “Them” being the ones who always died quietly, without a fuss.

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On the Sioux Valley Dakota Nation west of Brandon, Man., schoolchildren are throwing pumpkins into a bison pen, a ceremony and sign of respect to an animal that has deep spiritual significance for Indigenous culture and identity.

Community leaders are also educating a new generation about how the bison, known in these parts as buffalo, has important implications for the future of the Prairies – rehabilitating natural grasslands and conserving water in a time of climate change.

"The significance of the buffalo goes back hundreds of years. These animals have saved our lives," said Anthony Tacan, a band councillor whose family is the keeper of this herd.

"They provided food and weapons out of the bones, tools, the hides for clothing, the teepees. It did everything for us. So going forward, we decided it's our turn to give back. It's our turn to look after them."

full article

• The Pathways Alliance for Change and Transformation (PACT), a coalition of Indigenous, community and nonprofit organizations, published a paper in September 2023 calling for a moratorium on the forest carbon trade out of concern for the rights of Indigenous peoples and local communities.
• PACT says a pause in selling carbon credits is needed until protections for the land rights of these communities are laid out “explicitly, proactively, and comprehensively.” In December at the U.N. climate conference in Dubai, carbon markets experienced a setback after negotiators failed to agree on texts to articles in the 2015 Paris climate agreement meant to guide the carbon trade.
• Mina Setra remembers a time before oil palm plantations changed the landscape of her childhood home. Setra, an Indigenous Dayak Pompakng, grew up when forests surrounded her village in the Indonesian province of West Kalimantan on the island of Borneo. Setra and her brother would spend their days canoeing on a nearby river, she says.

“But now, it’s all gone. Dried out,” Setra says. Witnessing the changes over the course of her lifetime has guided her work as an activist and with AMAN, Indonesia’s biggest Indigenous alliance, where she now serves as deputy to the secretary-general on culture.

While palm oil production remains a linchpin of Indonesia’s economy, outsiders and the Indonesian government have increasingly focused on another commodity: carbon — particularly the carbon in communities that have managed to hold on to their forests for generations. That’s concerning because, as Setra sees it, the trade of carbon credits, typically used by companies and individuals to offset their emissions, often fails to consider the connection that Indigenous peoples have to their forests.

“Indigenous spirituality has not really been taken into account in the discussions on carbon markets. Not at all. Zero,” Setra tells Mongabay.

In September, Setra and several colleagues from a group of Indigenous, community and nonprofit organizations that comprise the Pathways Alliance for Change and Transformation (PACT) published a paper calling for a moratorium on the forest carbon trade. The group wants to pause both voluntary and government-required compliance carbon markets until protections for the land rights of Indigenous peoples, as well as local communities that often face similar challenges, are laid out “explicitly, proactively, and comprehensively.”

full article

A controversial law curtailing Indigenous rights in Brazil has come into force, marking a victory for the powerful agribusiness caucus in congress.

The new legislation upholds the so-called “time marker” theory (marco temporal), which establishes that Indigenous peoples can only lay claim to land they physically occupied as of October 1988, when the current constitution was promulgated.

Critics say this fails to acknowledge that many Indigenous groups had been displaced from their ancestral lands before that date, notably during Brazil’s 1964-1985 military dictatorship, and will invalidate scores of legitimate claims for Indigenous land demarcation.

Brazil’s supreme court vindicated such claims when it ruled that the time marker thesis was unconstitutional in a 9-2 vote in September. But less than a week later the senate voted to enshrine the theory into law.

President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva went on to veto several parts of the bill, but the conservative-dominated congress overrode his veto by a wide margin earlier in December.

The final law was published in the official gazette on Thursday.

“The promulgation is an attack on Indigenous communities and the environment. The law will have a negative impact on the conservation of forests, the fight against climate change, and the future of generations to come,” the Indigenous congresswoman Célia Xakriabá wrote on X (formerly Twitter).

Dubbed “the Indigenous genocide law” by the Climate Observatory environmental watchdog, the new legislation opens the door to activities such as road-building, mining, dam construction and agricultural projects on Indigenous lands – protected territories which serve as an important safeguard against deforestation.

Three of Lula’s vetoes were maintained by congress as a result of a political deal struck between the government and the opposition: the final law does not authorise contact with isolated groups, nor does it permit the use of genetically modified crops on Indigenous territories or give the government permission to reclaim land from groups whose cultural traits are deemed to have changed.

Activists warn that the law nonetheless represents a clear attack on Indigenous rights and exposes Native Brazilians to the risk of further violence.

Indigenous organisations and leftist political parties have said they are preparing to challenge the law in the supreme court.

The minister for Indigenous peoples, Sônia Guajajara, told the Folha de S Paulo newspaper her office would also appeal to the country’s top court to block legislation which “goes completely against the climate agreements that Brazil has been building internationally … and puts the rights and protection of Indigenous peoples and territories at risk”.

Speaking in a government broadcast last week, Guajajara said she remained optimistic: “The supreme court has already declared [the thesis] unconstitutional, it is hardly going to go back on its own decision. So there is still hope.”

• Danilo Villafañe, an Arhuaco Indigenous leader renowned for his efforts to protect the “Heart of the World” in Colombia’s Sierra Nevada, died on Christmas Day while trying to rescue two women who were drowning. He was 49.
• According to reports, Villafañe drowned while attempting to two young women who were caught in rough seas near the mouth of the Palomino River.
• Villafañe, who served as the governor of the Arhuaco, originally gained prominence for his work to protect the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta from deforestation and colonization.

Danilo Villafañe, a respected Arhuaco Indigenous leader known for his dedication to protecting the ‘Heart of the World’ in the Sierra Nevada of Colombia, died on Christmas Day at the age of 49. He was attempting to rescue two young women from drowning, who were struggling in the turbulent waters near the Palomino River mouth. 15-year-old Erika Izquierdo Chaparro also lost her life in the incident.

full article

Thousands of illegal miners are resisting government attempts to evict them from Brazil’s largest Indigenous territory, the renowned activist and shaman Davi Kopenawa has said, nearly a year after operations to displace them began.

President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva made expelling an estimated 20,000 illegal gold and tin ore miners from the Yanomami Indigenous territory one of his top tasks after taking power last January.

Lula visited the region to denounce what he called a premeditated “genocide” committed by the government of his far-right predecessor, Jair Bolsonaro, and ordered an offensive to force miners from the Portugal-sized Amazon enclave.

“Illegal mining on Yanomami land is finished,” a special forces commander for the environmental agency Ibama told the Guardian when it joined his airborne troops on the frontline of that fight.

Those perilous missions have yielded fruit. By July, Brazil’s top federal police chief for the Amazon claimed 90% of the miners had been uprooted, leaving perhaps 1,500 to 2,000 behind. But Kopenawa, who has spent four decades campaigning against the destruction of Yanomami lands, believes many are returning after eviction operations were scaled back.

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Pat Ningewance, an assistant professor at the University of Manitoba, has been teaching her language, Ojibwe, for 40 years. But for her students, it’s not easy to learn.

“There’s always a block there for them,” she says. “The non-native students in my classroom, they don’t seem to have that problem. They can pronounce the words — to them, it’s a subject, you know, they don’t have any emotional baggage.”

That “block” was the subject of a recent summit at the university, where speakers from multiple nations came together to discuss the difficulty of both learning and teaching their languages. Ningewance says generations of inherited trauma or shame, caused by racism and residential schools, make it difficult for Indigenous learners to get the words out.

full article

• Water bodies across the Brazilian state of Roraima have shrunk in area by half over the past 20 years, according to research from the mapping collective MapBiomas.
• Today, locals are facing even drier times amid a severe drought in the Amazon, which has led to record-low levels of water in the rainforest’s main rivers.
• Since 1985, Roraima’s agricultural area has grown by more than 1,100%, with experts pointing to crops as one of the state’s main drivers of water loss.

MORCEGO, Brazil — During the rainy season, the sunlight that passes through the leaves of the mirixi and jenipapo trees paints golden patterns in the blue-green water of the creek that runs through the Morcego Indigenous community.

“This is where my younger brother learned how to swim as a kid,” Leirejane Nagelo, the tuxaua, or chief, of the community, tells Mongabay. Back then, the creek’s level was high enough. Nowadays, however, if her 25-year-old brother, Daniel Nagelo, were to step into the water, it would barely reach his waist — even during the wet season here in the Amazon.

Morcego Creek, named after the community, runs behind Leirejane’s house, where she lives with her husband and six children, all under the age of 16. It’s concealed beneath the shade of bushes on a 100-meter (330-foot) walk under mango trees and over a tall grass field.

Morcego is one of the three communities located inside the Serra da Moça Indigenous Territory, in the Brazilian state of Roraima, and its creek is the only natural water source in the 11,417-hectare (28,212-acre) territory. Officially protected by presidential decree in 1991, Serra da Moça is home to nearly 750 people, according to a 2022 census.

Like most Indigenous lands in the state, Serra da Moça had its boundaries demarcated in what’s known as an island format. Rather than being composed of a large, contiguous swath of territory, it’s small and encompasses only a few communities, separated from one another and surrounded by monoculture plantations.

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On this day in 1837, Africans and Native Americans who had formed Florida's Seminole Nation decisively defeated an invading U.S. force more than twice their size, led by slaveowner and future U.S. president Zachary Taylor.

Since the founding of the U.S., escaped African slaves had settled in modern-day Florida. At the same time, Seminoles suffering under Creek rule in Alabama and Georgia were fleeing south to seek independence. There, the two groups formed an alliance, sharing cultivation techniques and putting up armed resistance against colonization and slaver forces.

The U.S. repeatedly invaded territory controlled by this alliance, and, on Christmas Day in 1837, 380 to 480 Seminole fighters gathered on the northeast corner of Florida's Lake Okeechobee ready to halt the armies of Colonel Zachary Taylor, a Louisiana slaveholder and future U.S. president.

Seminole riflemen waited for the soldiers in trees, firing on them from above. The battle was a decisive defeat for U.S. forces, however Taylor falsely claimed a victory when returning to Fort Gardner.

Dec. 26, 1835: Second Seminole War, Largest Uprising of the Enslaved

Christmas day freedom fighters: hidden history of the Seminole anticolonial struggle - William Katz

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• On the lands of the Cocopah Tribe in the U.S. state of Arizona, declining water levels on the Colorado River have paved the way for invasive plants to take over a riverside once full of native trees.
• Native vegetation along the river not only provides habitat for wildlife but also has shaped Cocopah culture by providing resources to build homes, art and other items.
• This year, the Cocopah Tribe’s Environment Protection Office cut the ribbon on a project to restore land along the river to what it looked like decades ago, complete with a walking trail.
• For 2024, the tribe plans to use $5.5 million in grant funding to restore habitat and plant native trees along an even longer stretch of the river, helping to preserve Cocopah culture for generations to come.

In the southwesternmost corner of Arizona, the Colorado River weaves in between Mexico and the lands of the Native American Cocopah Tribe.

Many spots along the river’s shore are lined with dense thickets of invasive reeds called phragmites that surpass 3 meters (9.8 feet) in height. With rigid, green stems and feathery heads standing high, it’s difficult to see across to the other side of the waterway. However, a 3-hectare (7-acre) stretch on the North Cocopah Reservation is nearly free of the reeds.

Instead, it’s surrounded by a mix of cottonwoods (Populus), willows (Salix) and mesquites (Prosopis). Those are trees that Joe Rodriquez, a member of the Cocopah Tribe and the manager of the Cocpaph Museum and Cultural Center, remembers seeing along the river, growing up in the 1970s.

Rodriquez recalls playing with his friends barefoot in the sand during summers and running underneath large mesquite trees for shade.

“We picked the closest tree to run to because the ground was so hot. That’s when we grew up. We ran, we swam, we climbed trees,” he said.

On Earth Day last April, the tribe’s Environmental Protection Office cut the ribbon on its two-year project to clear invasive reeds and plant more than 1,000 native trees — restoring the riverside to what it looked like decades ago. After opening remarks, tribal members explored the restoration site complete with a 1.6 kilometer (1-mile) walking trail, a labyrinth and rocks to sit on and reflect.

The name of the trail, “Final Keepers of the River,” is a fitting one, says Environmental Protection Office director Jen Alspach, who’s not a member of the tribe. As the last Native American tribe on the Colorado River before it flows into Mexico after passing through seven states the Cocopah serve as the river’s caretakers.

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• The promise of an Indigenous university persuaded leaders from the Upper Solimões Indigenous lands, in the Brazilian Amazonas state, to sign carbon contracts with Colombian companies.
• FUNAI, the Indigenous affairs agency, denied authorization for projects in Indigenous lands and advised against signing contracts; the process did not include prior consultation as provided for in ILO Convention 169, of which Brazil is a signatory.
• Indigenous people have not been aware of FUNAI’s guidelines and say they believe there will be classes at the university next year.
• FUNAI and Brazil’s Ministry of Education are not aware of a university project funded with money from carbon credits and say that contracts could be considered null and void.

The promise of an exclusive university for the Indigenous peoples of the Upper Solimões region, in Brazil’s Amazonas state, persuaded leaders from at least six territories to sign pre-contracts with Colombian companies to generate carbon credits. However, the company has not complied with guidelines of the National Foundation for Indigenous Peoples (FUNAI) and recommendations of the Federal Prosecution Service (MPF).

The project presented by José Antonio Pérez Manrique from Colombia, who crossed the border into Brazilian Indigenous lands, involves funding a higher education unit with money from sales of carbon credits. The university’s project led the communities to sign a pre-contract with Colombian company Concepto Carbono to develop the initiative, which three other allied Colombian companies — Carbo Sostenible, Terra Commodities and Yauto — later started planning. However, the creation of the university and the development of carbon credit projects in the area have not been authorized by Brazilian authorities so far. This process, in which the four companies and Pérez Manrique himself were involved, led Indigenous leaders to sign documents with potentially abusive clauses and to move forward with projects that do not comply with the duty of prior consultation provided for in international conventions on Indigenous rights.

In August 2022, FUNAI denied authorization for representatives of Colombian companies Carbo Sostenible, Terra Commodities and Yauto to enter the Upper Solimões territories. The agency also advised Indigenous communities against signing agreements since the carbon market was not regulated in Brazil. Three months later, on Nov. 6, 2022, at least six “exclusivity letters” were signed with Concepto Carbono, authorizing the company to implement a carbon sequestration project in the forest areas of the Riozinho, Biá River, Estrela da Paz, Macarrão, Espírito Santo and Acapuri de Cima Indigenous lands. The agreement — some sort of pre-contract where the parties already have their duties — included areas that had not even been officially approved as Indigenous lands by the federal government.

FUNAI said it was not aware of such “exclusivity letters” signed by Indigenous leaders but states that “all contracts risk being annulled, given technical and legal questions regarding feasibility, required procedures and compliance with socio-environmental safeguards, including the right to free, prior and informed consultation [FPIC].”

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WINDOW ROCK – During an hour-long meeting in the president’s office last Friday, a group of young Diné adults urged President Buu Nygren to support a permanent ceasefire of Israel’s bombardment of Gaza. The group from the K’é Info Shop, a mutual aid organization that grew with its emergency assistance during the Covid pandemic in the Navajo Nation, also urged Nygren to shut down the Raytheon Diné Facility near Farmington, New Mexico.

The K’é Info Shop representatives implored Nygren to “uphold the non-violent call by Palestinians to boycott, divest and sanction companies that contribute to Israeli occupation and the genocide of Indigenous Palestinians.

“The most meaningful way to fulfill this pledge is to implement a plan to close the Navajo-owned Raytheon facility, end all deals with weapons manufacturers, and work with Navajo community leaders to create a plan for a just transition for Navajo workers who will lose employment when the facility closes.”

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On the first day of autumn, evening temperatures near Window Rock, Arizona, were brisk. Beneath the late September sky, a traditional round hogan in this remote corner of the Navajo Nation was enveloped in darkness. Ten tribal members gathered inside.

After a dinner of mutton and fry bread, the group settled in a circle around a wood stove radiating with burning juniper, preparing to ingest what the Diné (Navajo) call azeé – the medicine.

Most people know azeé as peyote: a small, button-like cactus famed for its powerful psychoactive and healing properties. The cactus is extremely rare in the United States – it grows wild in only one part of Texas – and has been integral to traditional Indigenous American practices for thousands of years.

The goal of this ceremony was to guide Diné college students on their spiritual path. One young man struggling with alcohol abuse was especially in need of the medicine.

“When this is over, you will feel like a washrag with all the gunk wrung out of it,” the man’s grandmother told him.

Tonight, the ritual would be no different from what it was a century ago. There would be peyote songs and drumming. Margie Whitney-Silva, a certified spiritual leader known as a roadman, would supply the peyote in the form of a tea brewed from the cactus, carried in a large pickle jar. Eagle-feather fans and gourd rattles would be used as the jar was passed around.

During the 19th and first half of the 20th centuries, Indigenous Americans risked being thrown in jail for participating in such ceremonies because peyote was illegal under US law. Today, it is just the opposite. Peyote and mescaline – the hallucinogenic substance found inside the cactus – have become a darling of the psychedelic renaissance.

Peyote, mescaline and other hallucinogenics such as LSD, MDMA, ayahuasca and magic mushrooms are being touted for their capacity to revolutionise the treatment of PTSD, addiction and other health problems. In recent years, progressive politicians, doctors, community groups and Silicon Valley investors alike have thrown their weight behind decriminalization bills in dozens of US states and cities.

Their goal to spread the benefits of psychedelics may be well-intentioned, but for Indigenous Americans, the boom has a dark side that rarely comes up in venture capital pitches. Many Diné tribal members are describing this moment as a “peyote crisis” that threatens to appropriate and commodify their sacred way of life.

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Today we launch the official feed for the Chunka Luta Podcast https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/chunka-luta-network/episodes/Ep-1-New-Directions-e2d11rb/a-aaneqt5 that is replacing the former Bands of Turtle Island pod. BOTI was started to tell the story of AIM, then I got paid to tell that story so why would I keep posting it free if Im posting it free down the line and actually well produced? The last few episodes on the feed will be that story completing a circle I started at 19, and we will start this circle with that same story; the story of Wounded Knee 1973. While documenting this story, somehow I ended up forming an International collective of Decolonial Marxists (MLs to be more correct, as to mean the scientists of Liberation) we have plenty in the pipeline for this podcast so I highly recommend following it and staying up-to-date. You can find all the links at our linktr.ee/chunkalutanetwork and find the patreon where you can gain access to content earlier than others, or the liberpay which yknow I can email the content or something early? Idk trying to figure out a work around but they dont take cuts so are urging people support there. On the linktr.ee is also a GFM to help our comrade Juche Gang, or Leaping Larry on Twitch, we already raised 3k before launching the GFM but he still needs help recovering from several storms. Supporting us monthly helps us help Indigenous families like Larry's easier, and enables professional organizing of very successful project so far; so who knows what the future will hold.

The elevator pitch is this: For only 1800 a month we would have 2 full time organizers (paid a stipend of 500 USD/month) and a transcriptionist paid at 2 USD/raw transcription audio minute to the extent their groceries and rent are paid, usually 360-400 USD, and they are always willing to help with admin tasks which has been invaluable behind the scenes this year. The last 400 is for our Media Teams needs, that is $35/month in web hosting, $35/month for a proposed newsletter and zine email thing, $105 for streamyard including taxes (im bad at math though), $100 a month for a constant stream of high quality b-roll, $20 for a Newspapers.com+ subscription, VPN, and a social media tool to allow easy cross posting for $50 a month, and another $100 for the 1 podcast a month promise we are aiming for, and all extra will be just done by me as time frees up and more of the organization is taken off my shoulders. All extra fund then gained after that go directly into organizing fundraising as they have been since restarting the patreon, and this disclaimer is a public accounting of our plans for the money and our current goals. By enable 2 full time organizers you allow another person to pursue the level of organizing capabilities as I have shown is possible over this last year. I will be taking on a second job to supplement the 1100 still needed, but I really hope people recognize how much we have accomplished as a network in a year.

The podcast covers the project briefly, and of course we plan to explain more in a episode coming out next year about everything we accomplished from the 2022 Winter Fundraiser to this current one you can also find at the linktr.ee (the Uhaul part is already paid for so now we are raising for a car, and then a storage container, and then more land to bring into trust and help an elder build a house) theres a lot of moving pieces, and so I am hoping this year in review episode will help explain things better; until then, here I will try to not mess up formatting normally Nikolai helps.

For those unaware the org and year began as I arrived home in the uhaul I raised in response to a devastating blizzard that swept the continent, literally arriving in time to celebrate New Years as we brought my son up to bed. Since then the org has grown to include over a hundred direct organizers, over a thousand associated organizers, and more sympathizers then I care to actually count as I know the number will only grow. In total we estimate around 70k to have been raised and will be hiring an accountant to handle everything that will be posted to the website for public view, bearing in mind the anonymity of individuals and censure of doxxing information. From providing the funds for a traditional ceremony, moving a house for the headsmen of the nation as well as the logs for another home, and are designing a community center we will begin actual construction of next year from which we will build a buffalo prairie to provide food FREELY to the people, and to give them away for ceremony. We will also be building food forests and community gardens to address the food insecurity, and developing a textile mill to process the 40 acres of self seeding hemp already on the land. A lot is happening beyond that but lets wait til things are more presentable before counting our chickens. However til then expect lots of photos and videos, also sorry the website is taking so long we will have update photos soon! Lastly we have a library on our linktr.ee even including the required reading for our organizers and cadre. I look forward to showing you just what we are and that we have a road to follow, thats wide enough for us all to walk to the next world together. We need only build the bridge there, and we have to do it together. As Ngugi Wa'Thiongo says "decolonization is colonizer and colonized..." we must work together to become human again, and it is by landback by which we can reclaim our humanity and dignity

Every winter, northwest of Mexico City, the branches of the Oyamel fir trees ignite in orange, colored by the wings of monarch butterflies that have made the epic journey south from Canada and the United States.

The forest is home to the Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve, created by presidential decree in 1986 and designated as a Unesco World Heritage site in 2008. The reserve shelters nearly 90 percent of the region’s over-wintering monarch butterfly population.

Despite the fact that the Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve is internationally protected, decades of degradation of the forest have posed an existential threat to this fragile ecosystem. Over the past four decades, the number of winter roosting sites for the butterflies in the reserve has fallen by over 50 percent, driven in part by illegal logging.

After researchers found that 10 percent of total canopy cover had been lost between 2001 and 2012, the Mexican government ramped up enforcement of laws prohibiting logging. Government raids on illegal sawmills in the reserve sharply reduced logging. Yet according to an analysis by the World Wildlife Fund, the rate of forest degradation in the reserve tripled in 2022.

To protect these forests — one of the few remaining wintering refuges for migrating monarchs — the local Mazahua Indigenous community in Crescencio Morales has established its own security force.

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The Line 5 oil pipeline that snakes through Wisconsin and Michigan won a key permit this month: pending federal studies and approvals, Canada-based Enbridge Energy will build a new section of pipeline and tunnel underneath the Great Lakes despite widespread Indigenous opposition. You may not have heard of Line 5, but over the next few years, the controversy surrounding the 645-mile pipeline is expected to intensify.

The 70-year-old pipeline stretches from Superior, Wisconsin, through Michigan to Sarnia, Ontario, transporting up to 540,000 gallons of oil and natural gas liquids per day. It’s part of a network of more than 3,000 miles of pipelines that the company operates throughout the U.S. and Canada, including the Line 3 pipeline in Minnesota where hundreds of opponents were arrested or cited in 2021 for protesting construction, including citizens and members of the Red Lake Band of Chippewa Indians and White Earth Band of Ojibwe.

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Aboriginal residents of Shepparton have established thriving sport, education and cultural centres to support young people and their community.

Shepparton, Australia – Brad Boon gestures towards the towering mural, one of many that dot the small rural town of Shepparton in Australia’s southeastern state of Victoria.

The faces of Indigenous heroes William Cooper and Sir Douglas Nicholls stare defiantly across the smattering of shops under the glare of the midday Australian sun. Despite the onslaught of British colonisation and discrimination, Sir Douglas became the first Aboriginal person to be knighted and was made the governor of South Australia; he was also a talented Australian Rules football player.

Cooper, meanwhile, long campaigned for Aboriginal rights and is also recognised for protesting against the Nazi regime, seeing correlations between Indigenous peoples’ treatment in Australia and that of the Jewish people under Nazi Germany.

Both Cooper and Nicholls came from the Indigenous Yorta Yorta nation – the traditional area surrounding Shepparton. That their faces – along with other Indigenous heroes – are emblazoned on the walls around the town are testament not only to the Yorta Yorta peoples’ survival and resistance to brutal colonisation but also to their enduring legacy.

Despite their long history of resistance and activism, however, the Yorta Yorta people are still fighting for their rights in 2023.

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• Ecuador’s Constitutional Court struck down a controversial decree that tried to reform how environmental consultations for large-scale infrastructure projects are carried out with communities.
• Environmental and Indigenous groups had filed a motion with the court, calling the decree unconstitutional, and the court agreed, saying consultation processes can only be regulated through an organic law issued by the National Assembly, not through an executive decree.
• However, in a rare move, the court also deferred its ruling, allowing the decree to remain in place until after the National Assembly creates the needed laws.
• Lawyers say the ruling doesn’t clear up the confusion, and the multiple interpretations of the Constitution, that lie at the heart of Ecuador’s consultation processes.

On Nov. 17, Ecuador’s highest court ruled in favor of Indigenous and local communities by rejecting a controversial decree that promised to shape how environmental consultations are carried out.

Decree 754 was signed in May by then-president Guillermo Lasso, less than two weeks after he dissolved the country’s parliament, the National Assembly. The regulation was a means to facilitate the consultation process necessary to grant environmental licenses for large-scale infrastructure projects, but it quickly became controversial and caused conflicts in communities where the government tried to apply the environmental consultation for large-scale mining projects, only to be met with resistance from local farmers.

Indigenous and environmental organizations filed a motion with the Constitutional Court, arguing the regulation and the way it was approved, through a presidential decree, violated the Constitution. Last month, the court struck down the decree, saying consultation processes can only be regulated through legislation passed by the National Assembly, not through executive decree.

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