indigenous

• In a unique model for Latin America, a council of Lickanantay people in northern Chile created an environmental unit made up of hydrogeologists, engineers and environmental monitors from the territory’s communities to monitor the territory.
• Their study with a national university shows that the La Brava lagoon, located on the edges of the Atacama salt flat, is fed in part by the salt flat’s brine, which makes it vulnerable to mining activities established in the heart of the salt flat.
• Findings from the study were key in a lawsuit brought by the state defense council against three mining companies for irreparable damage to the Monturaqui-Negrillar-Tilopozo aquifer, the main water source for these lagoons.

The town of San Pedro de Atacama in northern Chile’s Antoremovedasta region is surrounded by natural wonders such as volcanoes, colorful lagoons, geysers, salt flats, gigantic dunes and rock formations. Its main road, Caracoles, is visited by tourists worldwide who travel on foot or by bicycle, with their faces covered with scarves to protect themselves from the high plateau’s strong, sand-blowing winds.

Less than 500 meters (1,600 feet) away, in an adobe house, is the office of the Council of Atacameño Peoples, an Indigenous association that represents 18 communities of the Lickanantay people, which means “the inhabitants of the territory” in the local language.

The Council of Atacameño Peoples (CPA) was created to preserve the territories of the Atacama communities and ensure the well-being of the people who live there. The council thus found it necessary to inspect the impacts of mining activity that occur in the area, also home to fragile ecosystems and endangered species.

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It takes a village

HALCHITA, Utah (AP) — After a five-year wait, Lorraine Black and Ricky Gillis heard the rumblings of an electrical crew reach their home on the sprawling Navajo Nation.

In five days’ time, their home would be connected to the power grid, replacing their reliance on a few solar panels and propane lanterns. No longer would the CPAP machine Gillis uses for sleep apnea or his home heart monitor transmitting information to doctors 400 miles away face interruptions due to intermittent power. It also means Black and Gillis can now use more than a few appliances — such as a fridge, a TV, and an evaporative cooling unit — at the same time.

“We’re one of the luckiest people who get to get electric,” Gillis said.

Many Navajo families still live without running water and electricity, a product of historic neglect and the struggle to get services to far-flung homes on the 27,000-square-mile (70,000-square-kilometer) Native American reservation that lies in parts of Arizona, New Mexico and Utah. Some rely on solar panels or generators, which can be patchy, and others have no electricity whatsoever.

Gillis and Black filed an application to connect their home back in 2019. But when the coronavirus pandemic started ravaging the tribe and everything besides essential services was shut down on the reservation, it further stalled the process.

Their wait highlights the persistent challenges in electrifying every Navajo home, even with recent injections of federal money for tribal infrastructure and services and as extreme heat in the Southwest intensified by climate change adds to the urgency.

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Battery storage could help solve the electricity grid’s biggest climate hurdles. For a small Indigenous community on south Vancouver Island, it could also be a move toward self-sufficiency and welcoming people home

Light pushes through the cloudy October afternoon as George Harry walks up to Malahat Nation’s community freezer on southern Vancouver Island. Behind the silver padlock is a cherished supply of sockeye salmon that “you don’t really get that often,” he says of the red-fleshed fish whose populations fluctuate.

The freezer is just one of the nation’s tools for making future use of nature’s plenty.

Another will soon sit steps away in an unremarkable grey shed the size of a small kitchen. If all goes as planned, the shed will soon house the nation’s new battery storage system, built to store electricity from the community’s growing fleet of solar panels for darker days.

The battery system will be made in the community, a 10-minute walk up a footpath.

That’s where the nation plans to build a 9,000-square-metre battery storage assembly plant in partnership with the Vancouver-based technology company Energy Plug. The plant will import ready-made lithium iron phosphate battery cells to be manufactured into storage systems designed for electricity systems in B.C. and beyond.

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Millions of bison once roamed the grasslands, until colonialism nearly wiped them out. Now, Indigenous people are bringing them back and restoring balance to their homelands

My Métis ancestors hunted and lived relationally with Buffalo, and I can envision how the prairies must have looked hundreds of years ago when millions roamed freely from Alaska’s boreal forests to the western grasslands of Mexico, across the continent from Banff to the eastern Appalachian Mountains. Then colonizers nearly wiped them out, part of a deliberate genocidal effort to starve the Indigenous nations of the plains.

Now, there are far fewer Buffalo to be seen, but Indigenous communities are working to rematriate them to the grasslands. Rematriation, a concept advanced by the late Sto:lo author Lee Maracle, is the process of restoring lands and cultures, done with deep reverence to honour not only the past and present but also the future, and rooted in Indigenous law.

The Buffalo Treaty, signed in September 2014 by eight nations, now has more than 50 signatories and includes 11 articles emphasizing co-operation, renewal and the restoration of Buffalo populations. This cross-border collaboration aims to return Buffalo to their rightful wild status, as they are currently considered “domestic” due to their historical confinement, a word that hardly suits their ancestral legacy.

Buffalo don’t care about borders, and yet, there are rigid regulations in place that stop their movement. The treaty envisions ecological corridors that will allow Buffalo to migrate and roam freely, similar to elk, bears, deer and moose. These corridors are essential for maintaining genetic diversity, supporting the vast ecosystem dynamics of the plains, preserving cultural and spiritual connections for Indigenous peoples and ensuring the long-term viability of bison populations by preventing overgrazing and disease outbreaks.

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Nearly 100 Indigenous leaders from the seven socio-cultural regions of the world have reached unanimous agreement on defining a Just Transition with respect to impacted or potentially impacted Indigenous Peoples.

Indigenous Peoples Principles and Protocols for Just Transition, the culminating document from the JUST TRANSITION: Indigenous Peoples’ Perspectives, Knowledge, and Lived Experiences Summit, which took place in Geneva, Switzerland, October 8-10, defines what the transition to “clean” or “green” energy and development must do to respect the rights and protect the wellbeing of Indigenous Peoples. The document provides 11 principles that corporate and state actors must adhere to when designing and implementing projects in the name of just, sustainable, or “green” initiatives.

“Activities that are being proposed or carried out on our lands, ice, waters and territories in the name of just transition, green economy, green/clean energy, or emissions reduction, without the obtainment of our free, prior and informed consent or which threaten our sacred places, cultural practices, Indigenous Peoples’ food sources, and ecosystems, or otherwise violate our inherent rights, are not a just transition,” states the document.

“Two years ago, we began convening Indigenous leaders from around the world to address the increasing violence, harm, and negative impacts that the so-called ‘green’ or ‘clean’ energy transition is perpetuating on our lands and to our communities – the same impacts Indigenous Peoples experience from fossil fuel extractive practices,” said Rodion Sulyandziga, who chaired the Summit coordinating committee. “The culmination was our Indigenous Just Transition Summit and this outcomes document which provides unanimous agreement about the definitions, principles, and protocols that must be foundational for Just Transition. These are the first steps for anyone – be it corporate, State, or Indigenous-led enterprise – to build a truly just, sustainable, and inclusive economy for all people of the world.”

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With keys in hand and a team of coworkers and friends carrying belongings behind her, Carma Brown stepped inside her new home.

It’s the first she’s ever owned.

After about six years on a waitlist for lease-to-own housing, her turn had come. Over the 30-year agreement, she’ll pay $600 a month, including taxes and home insurance. This allows Brown to keep her current job — and not have to work extra hours or get a second job — to afford her home.

“I’ve been wanting my own home my entire life,” Brown, 60, said. “To know this is mine now, I’m just in disbelief.”

Brown is part of a wave of new homeowners on the Cherokee Nation reservation in Tahlequah, Oklahoma, which has for years increased its investments in housing for its citizens. Since the Cherokee Nation passed the Housing, Jobs and Sustainable Communities Act in 2019, and with a $120 million boost in 2022, the tribe has built more than 360 homes and rehabbed more than 900 others.

The latest permanent expansion of the housing law signed Sept. 27 allows the Cherokee Nation to dedicate $40 million to housing development and improvements every three years in perpetuity. Some of it will build new units. Some will go to programs like the one that helped Brown get her own home. About $6 million of those funds will be set aside for expanding community centers across the reservation.

Moments before signing the extension, Principal Chief Chuck Hoskin Jr. said the legislation “is going to make a big difference in the lives of Cherokee people now and into the future.”

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https://www.npr.org/2024/10/21/g-s1-29159/indigenous-australia-senator-yells-king-charles

The Wetʼsuwetʼen are a First Nation who live on the Bulkley River and around Burns Lake, Broman Lake, and François Lake in the northwestern Central Interior of British Columbia.

They speak Witsuwitʼen, a dialect of the Babine-Witsuwitʼen language which, like its sister language Carrier, is a member of the Athabaskan family.

Their oral history, called kungax, recounts that their ancestral village, Dizkle or Dzilke, once stood upstream from the Bulkley Canyon. This cluster of cedar houses on both sides of the river is said to have been abandoned because of an omen of impending disaster. The exact location of the village has been lost. The neighbouring Gitxsan people of the Hazelton area have a similar tale, though the village in their version is named Dimlahamid (Temlahan)

The endonym Wetʼsuwetʼen means "People of the Wa Dzun Kwuh River (Bulkley River)"

The Wet’suwet’en First Nation was formerly part of the Omineca Band. However, in 1984 the Omineca Band split into the Broman Lake and Nee-Tahi-Buhn bands. The Skin Tayi band later split off from Nee-Tahi-Buhn. Today, the Skin Tyee Band, Nee Tahi Buhn Band, Wet’suwet’en First Nation, Moricetown Band and Hagwilget Band make up the Wet’suwet’en Nation.

Like most First Nations here, Wet’suwet’en never signed treaties with the Canadian or provincial governments. Nevertheless, the latter took the land and leased forested acreage to logging companies. Today just 20% of British Columbia’s old-growth forests remain.

In 2020, after decades of activist pressure, the province identified about a quarter of the remaining old growth as at high risk for logging and recommended a pause while deciding their fate. Yet today, logging has been deferred in less than half of the high-risk area.

Another conflict with the settler state has been the Coastal GasLink pipeline, which seeks to transport liquefied natural gas from northeast BC to a terminal on the coast near the town of Kitimat.

The 670-kilometre (417-mile) pipeline will cut across traditional Wet’suwet’en lands that cover 22,000sq km across northern BC.

The hereditary chiefs, who under Wet’suwet’en law claim authority over those traditional territories, said they never gave their consent for the project to move forward. They have raised concerns about the pipeline’s potential effects on the land, water, and their community.

In late July, Amnesty International took the extraordinary step in naming Dsta’hyl Canada’s first ever designated prisoner of conscience, and now demanding his immediate and unconditional release.

“The Canadian state has unjustly criminalized and confined Chief Dsta’hyl for defending the land and rights of the Wet’suwet’en people,” Amnesty International’s Ana Piquer stated in a press release. “As a result, Canada joins the shameful list of countries where prisoners of conscience remain under house arrest or behind bars.”

In October 2021, Dsta’hyl was arrested and charged with criminal contempt after confiscating and decommissioning heavy equipment utilized by Coastal GasLink to construct its LNG pipeline on unceded Wet’suwet’en territory. Dsta’hyl said he was enforcing Wet’suwet’en laws as the company did not have the free, prior and informed consent of hereditary chiefs to build the pipeline.

• Meet the hereditary chief who Amnesty International calls Canada’s first prisoner of conscience

• Wet'suwet'en Hereditary Chiefs Reject Pipelines

• Invasion

• ‘We can feel our ancestors’: one First Nation’s fight to save Canada’s old forests; The Wet’suwet’en Nation never signed treaties with the Canadian or provincial governments, yet their land was leased

• Yintah (2024)

• Criminalization of Wet’suwet’en land defenders

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• Almost 20% of the Kayapó Indigenous Territory has burned in this year’s Amazon drought, the worst ever recorded in Brazil.
• The land has for years been subjected to illegal mining, cattle ranching and burning of forests, degrading both the soil and rivers and significantly disrupting the way of life for the Mebêngôkre-Kayapó people.
• The Indigenous inhabitants now confront a growing crisis as wildfires and drought threaten their lands, particularly along the Riozinho River.
• According to ecologist Rodolfo Salm, who has worked with the Kayapó since 1996, fire has now surpassed illegal logging as the greatest danger to the region.

SÃO FÉLIX DO XINGU, Brazil — In the village of Tepdjàti, nestled deep within the Kayapó Indigenous Territory in the Brazilian Amazon, the air is thick with smoke and the landscape is parched. The village’s only water source is an artesian well with a solar-power pump. But the thick smoke from nearby wildfires has blocked out the sunlight, leaving the device without any power.

Even water from the nearby river, once a lifeline for the village, has become polluted and undrinkable. “It’s not suitable for bathing, drinking, or preparing our food,” Ngory Maradona Kayapó, a local leader, tells Mongabay. The situation is dire, with crops like bananas, yams and manioc, all vital to the Indigenous villagers’ subsistence, reduced to ash by a recent fire.

This village is just one of many across the Kayapó Indigenous Territory, in the state of Pará, that’s grappling with the devastating effects of Brazil’s worst drought on record. The Riozinho River, which once sustained them, is now dry, forcing them to rely on contaminated streams for water. The drought, coupled with rampant wildfires, has wreaked havoc on the Kayapó way of life. With low river levels, boats, the primary form of transportation, cannot be used for delivering food or medicine or for transporting patients to hospitals. “The medicine that comes from the health service is very little. Many children are suffering from vomiting, diarrhea and fever,” Ngory says.

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The Israeli offensive against northern Gaza continues for the twelfth day in a row, imposing a brutal siege on an area that houses at least 200,000 Palestinians. The offensive, which began in early October, is targeting the town and refugee camp of Jabalia, in addition to Beit Lahia and Beit Hanoun, and has featured a massive air and ground assault to destroy the infrastructure that remains in those areas.

The Israeli army ordered residents of northern Gaza to leave, indicating only one route through Salah al-Din Street that extends from Gaza’s north to the south. Most crucially, this prevents residents from fleeing to Gaza City and staying north of Wadi Gaza. Jabalia in particular has received the brunt of the Israeli attack. Eyewitness testimony shared with Mondoweiss indicates that the Israeli army’s strangulation of Jabalia has served as a siege within the larger siege of northern Gaza.

During the recent onslaught, the camp has been pounded with heavy artillery and airstrikes while Palestinian residents have also been targeted with quadcopter drones. On Thursday, October 17, an Israeli airstrike targeted the Abu Hussein boys school in Western Jabalia, where thousands of Palestinians took shelter. The strike, conducted with two air missiles, killed at least 28 Palestinians, including children, and wounded more than 50.

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linky to tweet

Muwekma Ohlone Tribe were arrested on their second day of encampment outside capitol building, after their "trail of truth" journey from San Jose, California to DC. Group camped out on the lawn outside the capitol building to protest the governments refusal to recognize the Muwekma tribe federally.

The Muwekma Ohlone Tribe is an unrecognized organization for people who identify as descendants of the Ohlone, an historic Indigenous people of California.

• Before the arrival of European colonizers, rural societies in the Amazon Basin domesticated plants and developed agricultural practices and infrastructure which provided supplies of food and fiber and improved crop yields.
• As missionaries and the expansion of trade brought pathogens into communities which lacked immunity, the number of Indigenous people across the Amazon dropped drastically in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, from an estimated 4 to 15 million people to about 400,000.
• In Brazil, a population census in the early 1990s showed an increase of Indigenous population, indicating higher birth rates and increased Indigenous self-identification. Boosting the latter across the Amazon Basin requires policies that prioritize the formalization of land rights of communities with specific ethnic heritage.

Prior to the arrival of Europeans, the Amazonian lowlands were home to several hundred ethnic groups living in tens of thousands of villages with a population estimated at between four and fifteen million inhabitants. Over millennia, these societies transformed landscapes along the main stem of the Amazon River and its major southern tributaries by developing agricultural practices that created dark earth soils, a technology that improved the physical and chemical properties of tropical soils, increased their productivity and ensured their sustainable use over centuries.

Tragically, all of these societies collapsed in the fifteenth and sixteenth and centuries, when epidemics caused by pathogens introduced during the Colombian Exchange burned through their communities. Although archaeology has yet to discover all the gruesome details, these societies were particularly susceptible to pandemics because of their relatively high population density and a trade network that promoted cultural interactions. The population is believed to have fallen to fewer than 400,000 individuals in a cataclysmic demographic collapse.

The rubber boom of the late nineteenth century led to another round of decimation, as Indigenous communities were enslaved, displaced or massacred. Most survived as ethnic entities by fleeing deeper into the forest, occupying forest landscapes along tertiary tributaries or remote valleys in the Andean foothills and Guiana highlands. Anthropologists estimate that Amazonian Brazil had a population of only about 100,000 Indigenous people in the mid-1970s.

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After the completion of a land transfer from Honeywell International on Sept. 30, the Onondaga Nation reclaimed over 1,000 acres of their historic land, which include the pristine headwaters of Onondaga Creek and a bounty of native wildlife and natural medicines.

Hill, the Tadodaho of the Onondaga Nation, remembers swimming in the creek water as a child. Nowadays, Hill said, children don’t swim in the creek, whose downstream waters are brown and murky. Those downstream waters run full with silt and other deposits from mud boils, caused by salt mining.

“You have Onondaga Creek, you have Onondaga Lake. Can’t use these places,” Hill said. “I’m an Onondaga. What’s that tell you?”

Here, however, in the land the Onondagas reacquired, dozens of headwaters remain clean, clear and cold – safe for consumption, and ideal for native brook trout to thrive.

The 1,000 acres — two separate 758-acre and 256-acre parcels — are a mere fraction of the 2.5 million acres guaranteed to the Onondagas in treaties with the US government. This title transfer, though, represents a critical milestone in the Nation’s ongoing battle to regain its ancestral lands.

The transfer of land followed a 2022 resolution from the The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and New York State Department of Environmental Conservation that came as part of a broader plan to restore Onondaga Lake. The agencies directed Honeywell International, the corporation that owned the land, to cede the title of the parcels to the Onondaga Nation.

For more than half a century, Honeywell conducted solution salt mining, a process in which water is pumped underground to dissolve salt and push the brine to the surface. Decades of mining depleted the soil, leaving massive vacuums where the salt once was.

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A year ago, Palestinians began to experience new levels of their ongoing catastrophe, the Nakba, which started 76 years ago. In response to the attack that killed roughly 1,200 Israelis and caused a major embarrassment to the Israeli army and intelligence, Israel unleashed an extermination campaign on Gaza, leveling entire residential blocks, destroying education and health institutions, eliminating the basic infrastructure needed to sustain a society, and burying entire families under the rubble.

In the West Bank, Israeli settlers set out to forcibly expel Palestinian rural communities and steal the lands of Palestinian towns and villages. The Israeli army ramped up its spree of raids on refugee camps, destroying their infrastructure, and systematically forcing inhabitants to live in a situation similar to the one lived in Gaza.

I have lived in Palestine almost all my life. The Nakba has always been part of my consciousness. Its continuity has been my reality. However, there are particular dimensions to the experience of living the Nakba that I had never known, except in the memories of those who lived in its early years. My father, who grew up in the 1950s and 1960s, always struggles to contain his tears when he describes the refugee families, expelled from West Jerusalem, Lydd, Ramleh, and their surrounding villages, and how they were still sleeping in stables and caves in our hometown in the late 1950s because all the houses were taken.

He would describe how they had lost all their possessions and were forced into underpaid labor in the fields to sustain themselves, how some of their children had bare floors for beds, and how they had gradually started to become part of the town’s social fabric. Some of them, with peasant origins, took their sick children to the church in our Christian town and, despite being Muslims, had them baptized out of simple religiosity, imploring the Virgin, the saints, and the prophet Muhammad to heal them because they couldn’t afford medical care.

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