Monthly Archives: October 2010
Leak Reveals Push to Win Over First Nations on Controversial Boreal Forest Pact
By Martin Lukacs. Martin is a member of the Dominion editorial collective and the Montreal Media Co-op, where this story first appeared.
TO READ THE LEAKED EMAIL: HERE
TO READ THE LEAKED DOCUMENT: HERE
Clear-cutting in the Alberta Boreal forest. Opposition to the CBFA among First Nations is mounting.
A leaked document and email obtained by the Montreal Media Co-op shows that major environmental organizations are engaging in damage control while speedily attempting to court First Nations’ support for the Canadian Boreal Forest Agreement (CBFA). The revelation comes amidst mounting opposition from aboriginal organizations, many of which are decrying the agreement as fundamentally flawed. The much-hyped pact between major forestry companies and environmental organizations claimed to suspend logging on 29 million hectares of boreal forest and caribou habitat for three years in exchange for an end to the environmentalists’ global boycott campaigns.
The email–sent at the end of a meeting with some First Nations groups last week in Prince George, British Columbia–was written by Larry Innes, Director of the Canadian Boreal Initiative, and Faisal Moola of the David Suzuki Foundation. It describes a forthcoming First Nations “Declaration on the Boreal” and a letter of understanding (LOU) that lays the groundwork for First Nations cooperation with the CBFA. Read the rest of this entry
Sinixt Nation Establishes Slhu7kin Protection Camp
From the Vancouver Media Co-Op.
On October 26th 2010, the Sinixt Nation asserted their sovereignty by initiating the Sinixt Slhu7kin (Perry Ridge) Protection Camp on their ancestral lands. The Sinixt, by declaration, have established the “Sinixt Slhu7kin – Perry Ridge Wilderness Preserve to protect the rich bio-diversity on Perry Ridge and the collective domestic watershed interests of the Perry Ridge community.”
Sinixt Nation members, local residents, and supporters are gathered at the beginning of the Perry Ridge Forest Service road near the town of Slocan, BC. The camp has halted all commercial logging in the area.
After a complete refusal to consult with the Sinixt Nation, BC Timber Sales via BC Ministry of Forests and Range sold the logging rights to 4 controversial cut-blocks on Perry Ridge to Sunshine Logging LTD of Kaslo, BC. Sunshine Logging purchased the 2 year contract for approximately $330,000 after BC Timber Sales dropped the auction bidding price because no companies wanted to touch the highly contentious contract with a ten foot pole.
This isn’t the first time people have taken a stand to protect the area known as Slhu7kin to the Sinixt. In 1997 local residents, the Perry Ridge Water Users Association, and Sinixt members took both legal and direct action and successfully halted road building on the ridge. Over 300 people blocked the road demanding protection for the area.
Known as the Arrow Lakes Indian Band under the Indian Act, Canada officially declared the Sinixt extinct in 1956. This left Sinixt members living on the Colville Reservation (in the USA) or scattered among other nations in BC without recognition. Read the rest of this entry
Honduras: Indigenous Peoples Ready To Mobilize Against Hydro Dams
From Intercontinental Cry.
Representatives from several organizations and members of the Tulupanes, Pech, Miskito, Maya-Chortis, Lenca and Garifuna Peoples met from October 2-3, 2010 to discuss the current state of human rights and the environment in Honduras.
The two-day meeting was held in the Garifuna community of Sambo Creek, exactly one month after the government passed a set of news laws that conceded the use of Honduran rivers for the construction of 41 new hydroelectric dam projects. The meeting was specifically organized to articulate a response to the unilateral and ultimately illegal move.
“Many of these dams would affect indigenous communities,” notes Annie Bird, the co-director of Rights Action. But even so, the government didn’t bother to consult any of the communities or gain their consent before passing the laws.
They were obligated to do so under ILO Convention 169 and the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
In a declaration that followed the two-day meeting, representatives explained that the passage of laws was merely the latest assault in an ongoing offensive that began after the military coup of June 28, 2009.
The also pointed out that, “The effects of climate change in Honduras have been ignored by the various administrations, without taking appropriate measures to prevent the destruction of biodiversity, Honduras being identified as one of the countries in the world most affected by global warming. Our people are subjugated by the instruments from the United Nations Carbon Fund, such as the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) and the Programme of Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries (REDD), which kidnap our rivers and forests, which we’ve look after for centuries.” Read the rest of this entry
Break Word at the University of Waterloo
Tomorrow at the University of Waterloo, Environment Courtyard, Outside Environment 1 Building, from 18:00 to 21:00. Featuring some of my good friends from the KW Ummah.
Break Word will have Spoken Word/Slam Poetry performances that aim to address topics broadly related to social change and activism in an effort to increase civic participation of Muslim youth in the community. This initiative transpires out of a strong belief in the idea that effectual social change is only possible when a forum for discussion is presented. This project seeks to provide the community with that forum; a platform for dialogue where controversial subjects can be expressed through performance art in a safe space, providing Muslim youth with an alternative way of seeking self-fulfilment.
The resultant goal of this is to engender further initiatives that will deliver tangible solutions to problems spoken about through the poetry and to mark the inception of thought reflective of the presented subjects. The issues they wish to address range from politics to gender and sexuality issues, religion, social and economic activism.
Malcolm X – The Ballot or The Bullet
The Ballot or the Bullet is one of the most well known, insightful and powerful public speeches delivered African liberation activist Malcolm X. In the speech, which was delivered on April 3, 1964, at Cory Methodist Church in Cleveland, Ohio, Malcolm advised his fellow African Americans to judiciously exercise their right to vote, but he cautioned that if the government continued to prevent African Americans from attaining full equality, it might be necessary for them to take up arms.
Listen. Learn. Enjoy.
Long Ago Before Colonial Borders
From Mohawk Nation News.
During the French and Indian Wars in the 1750s, the invaders came up against the Mohawk “Keepers of the Eastern Door” who told them to go home. In order to occupy land the legal occupants had to be killed off. The colonists started a genocide campaign beginning with the Mohawks.
As a story goes, once upon a time in present day New York State, a French troop came across a lone Mohawk Warrior standing on top of a cliff waving at them. The troop commander told three of his men, “Go up and kill him’.
They climbed up. Behind the bushes a big fight broke out. The commander waited. They never returned. Eventually the Mohawk Warrior appeared on top of the mountain and waved to the troops below. Aghast, the commander ordered another 10 soldiers to, “Kill him once and for all”.
They went up. Another noisy fight ensued. None returned. Once again, the Mohawk Warrior stood on top and waved to them with a big smile.
Finally the commander ordered the rest of his troops to go up and “Finish him off”, to return and tell him what happened.
Another huge fight took place with lots of yelling and screaming. This time one badly wounded man came down the hill. “What happened?” asked the commander.
The soldier said, “That Warrior wasn’t alone. He had a Mohawk woman behind him!” and then passed out. The Mohawk Warrior stood at the top of the cliff and waved at them to leave. Read the rest of this entry
White Nation Privilege and the Ability to be Arrested
This will be short, but it is something that has been bothering me for a while now, and I have to get off of my chest.
I’ve been having conversations lately with several other Kitchener-Waterloo radicals and leftists over the last couple of weeks about privilege – specifically white nation privilege* – within the KW activist scene and how it informs, or rather fails to inform, the thought and practice of a number of more well known local characters. In our scene, which is mostly defined by the university town nature of the city, many of these more well known local activists come from backgrounds that are marked by great material privilege. By this I mean they are mostly middle to upper class, white, men. There of course women and “people of colour”** but they do not share the limelight to anywhere near the same extent as the white leadership.
I also want to make it clear that I am not aiming this at all people who got arrested at the G8/G20, as many, perhaps even most, are people who struggle every day through oppression: indigenous people, people of colour and (im)migrants. I applaud those people and the bravery that it took for them to risk what they did and stand up against imperialism, settler colonialism and capitalism. This article/rant takes aim rather at a particular layer within the KW radical activist scene that took part in the G8/G20 events. Read the rest of this entry
Ecuador’s Challenge: Rafael Correa and the Indigenous Movements
Written by Benjamin Dangl. This appeared on Upside Down World and was originally posted on Toward Freedom.
Sections of this article are adapted excerpts from Benjamin Dangl’s new book, Dancing with Dynamite: Social Movements and States in Latin America, (AK Press, October 2010). For more information visit www.DancingwithDynamite.com
Dangl is also the author of The Price of Fire: Resource Wars and Social Movements in Bolivia (AK Press, 2007), the editor of TowardFreedom.com, a progressive perspective on world events, and UpsideDownWorld.org, a website on activism and politics in Latin America. Email Bendangl(at)gmail(dot)com
The recent right-wing coup attempt in Ecuador shed light on the rupture between President Rafael Correa and the country’s indigenous movements. This rocky relationship demonstrates the challenges of protesting against a leftist leader without empowering the right.
When Correa took office in January of 2007, he moved forward on campaign promises including creating an assembly to rewrite the country’s constitution, using oil wealth for national development, and confronting US imperialism. However, once the electoral confetti stopped falling, Correa began to betray the indigenous movements’ trust on many fronts, pushing for neoliberal policies, criminalizing protests against his administration and blocking indigenous movements’ input in the development of extractive industries and the re-writing of the constitution.
Indigenous movements protested a right wing coup attempt on September 30th while criticizing the negative policies of Correa, a president widely considered a member of Latin America’s new left who is working to implement modern democratic socialism. How did it come to this? The history of the dance between Correa and the indigenous movements offers insight into the current political crisis in the country. Read the rest of this entry
Indigenous Women Sterilised Against Their Will in Peru Seek Justice, Again
Written by Ángel Páez. From IPS via Upside Down World.
Poor, rural, Quechua-speaking women in the Peruvian province of Anta who were victims of a forced sterilisation programme between 1996 and 2000 have filed a new lawsuit in their continuing struggle for justice.
In May 2009, Jaime Schwartz, the public prosecutor investigating the case against four former health ministers of the Alberto Fujimori administration (1990-2000), decided to shelve the investigation. He said the case involved alleged crimes against the victims’ life, body and health, and manslaughter, and that the statute of limitations had expired.
But the plaintiffs in the case had brought accusations of genocide and torture, which as crimes against humanity have no statute of limitation. The attorney-general’s office upheld Schwartz’s decision, overruling the complaint lodged against it by the victims and the human rights organisations providing them with legal advice.
Now the Women’s Association of Forced Sterilisation Victims of Anta, a mountainous province in the southern department of Cuzco, has decided to combat impunity with a new strategy: it is presenting a new lawsuit against those responsible for family planning policy in the last four years of the Fujimori regime.
The Association’s approximately 100 members are rural women whose testimonies have revealed the hidden side of the National Programme for Reproductive Health and Family Planning, imposed by coercion and deceit under the guise of an anti-poverty plan.
Sabina Huillca, 41, told IPS: “I remember perfectly the day they sterilised me against my will, because what they did to me made me suffer ever since. It was August 24, 1996,” she said, trying to keep her voice calm.
She is one of the witnesses who will testify before the justice authorities against those who devised and implemented the programme. Read the rest of this entry
Navajo Water Rights Talking Points
Navajo elder drinking contaminated water/Photo Forgotten People
1. The Navajo Nation Council should vote No on the proposed Northeastern Arizona Indian Water Rights Agreement, Legislation 0422-10 until the Navajo Nation government installed in early 2011 can take up the settlement negotiations from an honest and fully informed perspective and a quantitative analysis is done of present and future needs for domestic use, large-scale agricultural projects and livestock.
2. There is not only no use of our Treaties in the 400 pages of the proposed Arizona Water Settlement, there is actually no mention whatsoever of either of our Treaties in the proposed settlement agreement.
3. The Navajo Nation is a federally recognized Indian Tribe, having two Treaties with the United States, dated 1849 and 1868 and is the only one of the 22 Arizona Indian Tribes that has a Treaty with the United States but the treaties are not mentioned in the Settlement.
4. The Settlement does not recognize the purposes of the Navajo Indian Reservation, as identified in the 1849 and 1868 Treaties as a “permanent home” specifically for agricultural purposes, with the 1849 Treaty referring to Navajos receiving “implements,” which means farm implements, and the 1868 Treaty referring to “cultivating the soil,” “seeds and agricultural implements,” “farming and mechanical pursuits,” and “sheep, goats, and cattle,” and also encouraging us to “settle permanently” on our Reservation. Read the rest of this entry
Abahlali baseMjondolo of the Western Cape Responds to the South African Communist Party
Abahlali baseMjondolo (Zulu: Shack Dwellers), or AbM, is a shack-dwellers’ movement in South Africa. They are also known as the red shirts. The movement grew out of a road blockade organized from the Kennedy Road shack settlement in the city of Durban in early 2005 and now also operates in the cities of Pietermaritzburg and in Cape Town. It is the largest shack dweller’s organization in South Africa. It campaigns to improve the living conditions of poor people and to democratize South African society from below. The movement refuses party politics and boycotts elections. It’s key demand is that the social value of urban land should take priority over its commercial value and it campaigs for the public expropriation of large privately owned landholdings. The key organising strategy is to try “to recreate Commons” from below by trying to create a series of linked communes.
Here they are responding to accusations levelled by the South African Communist Party that the tactics of roadblocks is “anarchy and reactionary.” But it is also more than that. Lately the African National Congress and its old apartheid-era allies in the SACP have done much to stifle and put down actions by the working class and most impoverished in South Africa that are independent of the ANC lead post-apartheid regime. This can be seen in the ANC’s reaction to the recent Congress of South African Trade Unions lead strike, as well as the demonization of the AbM, the Landless People’s Movement, Western Cape Anti-Eviction Campaign and other autonomous movements of the working class. So here AbM also makes front and centre their right to be independent of the government and its allies, and refuse to endorse the ANC in the upcoming elections. Read the rest of this entry
Dudley George Memorial Unveiled at Ipperwash
From the CBC.
Members of First Nations from across Ontario have gathered to remember native protester Dudley George, who was shot and killed by police during a standoff at the former Ipperwash Provincial Park.
About 200 people, many from the Kettle and Stony Point First Nation, were at the site near Sarnia, Ont., Friday morning to unveil a monument to George, created by his brother, Pierre.
Chief Liz Cloud told CBC News the gathering was an opportunity to not only pay tribute to George, but also to all those who took part in the protest 15 years ago.
Memorial March Planned for Saturday
George was shot and killed by an Ontario Provincial Police officer in September 1995 when a group of about 30 native protesters, with George as one of the leaders, built a barricade at Ipperwash Provincial Park to enforce the First Nation’s claim to the land.
The unveiling of the memorial is part of a weekend gathering commemorating the 15th anniversary of that event.
Sections of Highway 21 near the former Ipperwash park will be closed Saturday morning, as a march is planned for 9 a.m. along the highway leading to the site of the standoff. Read the rest of this entry
