thelastaxolotl

West Mexico is mysterious and often misunderstood. In some ways, a peripheral area and in other ways closely tied to the rest of Mesoamerica, West Mexico is a paradox. The Teuchitlán culture is the best known culture from this area and its beautiful art is a testament to its rich culture. Join us as we explore the Teuchitlán culture!

by Dan Collyns

• The Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) has suspended the certification of Maderera Canales Tahuamanu (MCT), a logging company whose concession borders Madre de Dios Territorial Reserve in the Peruvian Amazon.
• The company is accused of encroaching on the traditional territory of the Mashco Piro, an Indigenous group that lives in voluntary isolation and went viral after video captured the tribe on a beach.
• The suspension follows an incident in which at least two loggers were shot dead with arrows, one injured and several others are missing during a confrontation with the Mashco Piro.
• The FSC suspension takes effect Sept. 13 and will last eight months — a move Indigenous rights advocates say is welcome but short of the full cancelation they deem necessary to protect the isolated tribe.

The Forest Stewardship Council has suspended its certification of a controversial logging company in the Peruvian Amazon accused of encroaching on the traditional territory of the Mashco Piro, an Indigenous group that lives in voluntary isolation.

The move on Aug. 30 by the FSC, the world’s leading certifier of sustainable forestry products, followed reports indicating that at least two loggers were shot dead with arrows, one injured and several others missing following a confrontation with the Mashco Piro on Aug. 29. The incident was reported by FENAMAD, a local Indigenous federation that represents 39 communities in Peru’s Cusco and Madre de Dios regions.

The FSC has suspended for eight months its certification for Maderera Canales Tahuamanu (MCT), a logging company whose concession borders the 829,941-hectare (2.05-million-acre) Madre de Dios Territorial Reserve, home to the Mashco Piro.

It said the certification would be suspended from Sept. 13 while it investigates the case and meets with Peruvian authorities to “understand the land classification issues.” The FSC added that it had imposed the suspension in “response to concerns about the MCT’s forest management concession’s location relative to the territory of the Mashco Piro.”

full article

by Fernanda Wenzel

• River levels in parts of the Brazilian Amazon are even lower than in 2023, when the region experienced its worst drought.
• In the Munduruku Indigenous Territory, in Pará state, low river levels are forcing communities to drink water contaminated by mercury.
• Indigenous leaders call for immediate help while children suffer from diarrhea and stomachaches.

One year after being hit by its worst drought ever recorded in the Amazon, Brazil is facing it all again. According to the National Center for Natural Disaster Monitoring, CEMADEN, the country is going through its worst drought since 2015, but now, it’s widespread in almost all regions. More than a third of Brazil — an area equivalent to the size of India — is facing drought at its worst.

The situation is especially bad for Amazon rivers, which haven’t seen enough rain since 2013 and have reached historic lows. The Solimões River section in Tabatinga municipality, in the state of Amazonas, hit 94 centimeters (37 inches) below the station’s reference level. Previously, the lowest level recorded had been 86 cm (34 in) in 2010.

In the state of Mato Grosso, where rivers feed basins in the Amazon, the Pantanal wetlands and the Cerrado savanna, the Paraguay and Cuiabá rivers have also reached historic lows.

According to experts, the new crisis is fueled by the warming of the North Atlantic waters, responsible for diminishing the rains in northern Brazil and by climate change.

In the Munduruku Indigenous Territory, in Pará state, several small rivers and springs used as water sources have already dried up. As a result, people from around 10 villages are drinking water from larger rivers like the Tapajós, one of the main illegal gold mining hubs in the Amazon. As a result, the Indigenous people are consuming water polluted by mercury, a toxic substance smuggled into Brazil and used to separate precious metal from other sediments.

“The river has this dirty water, and the children can’t drink it,” João Akay Kaba, coordinator of the Pusuru Indigenous Association, told Mongabay. “Some of them drank dirty water and got health problems like diarrhea and stomachaches.”

Full article

Bees are winged insects closely related to wasps and ants, known for their roles in pollination and, in the case of the best-known bee species, the western honey bee, for producing honey. Bees are a monophyletic lineage within the superfamily Apoidea. They are currently considered a clade, called Anthophila. There are over 20,000 known species of bees in seven recognized biological families. Some species – including honey bees, bumblebees, and stingless bees – live socially in colonies while most species (>90%) – including mason bees, carpenter bees, leafcutter bees, and sweat bees – are solitary.

Bees are found on every continent except Antarctica, in every habitat on the planet that contains insect-pollinated flowering plants. The most common bees in the Northern Hemisphere are the Halictidae, or sweat bees, but they are small and often mistaken for wasps or flies. Bees range in size from tiny stingless bee species, whose workers are less than 2 millimetres (0.08 in) long, to the leafcutter bee Megachile pluto, the largest species of bee, whose females can attain a length of 39 millimetres (1.54 in).

Bees feed on nectar and pollen, the former primarily as an energy source and the latter primarily for protein and other nutrients. Most pollen is used as food for their larvae. Vertebrate predators of bees include primates and birds such as bee-eaters; insect predators include beewolves and dragonflies.

Bee pollination is important both ecologically and commercially, and the decline in wild bees has increased the value of pollination by commercially managed hives of honey bees. The analysis of 353 wild bee and hoverfly species across Britain from 1980 to 2013 found the insects have been lost from a quarter of the places they inhabited in 1980.

Human beekeeping or apiculture (meliponiculture for stingless bees) has been practised for millennia, since at least the times of Ancient Egypt and Ancient Greece. Bees have appeared in mythology and folklore, through all phases of art and literature from ancient times to the present day, although primarily focused in the Northern Hemisphere where beekeeping is far more common. In Mesoamerica, the Mayans have practiced large-scale intensive meliponiculture since pre-Columbian times

Bees may be solitary or may live in various types of communities. Eusociality appears to have originated from at least three independent origins in halictid bees. The most advanced of these are species with eusocial colonies; these are characterised by cooperative brood care and a division of labour into reproductive and non-reproductive adults, plus overlapping generations. This division of labour creates specialized groups within eusocial societies which are called castes. In some species, groups of cohabiting females may be sisters, and if there is a division of labour within the group, they are considered semisocial. The group is called eusocial if, in addition, the group consists of a mother (the queen) and her daughters (workers). When the castes are purely behavioural alternatives, with no morphological differentiation other than size, the system is considered primitively eusocial, as in many paper wasps; when the castes are morphologically discrete, the system is considered highly eusocial.

True honey bees (genus Apis, of which eight species are currently recognized) are highly eusocial, and are among the best known insects. Their colonies are established by swarms, consisting of a queen and several thousand workers. Africanized bees are a hybrid strain of A. mellifera that escaped from experiments involving crossing European and African subspecies; they are extremely defensive.

Many bumblebees are eusocial, similar to the eusocial Vespidae such as hornets in that the queen initiates a nest on her own rather than by swarming.

Most other bees, including familiar insects such as carpenter bees, leafcutter bees and mason bees are solitary in the sense that every female is fertile, and typically inhabits a nest she constructs herself. There is no division of labor so these nests lack queens and worker bees for these species. Solitary bees typically produce neither honey nor beeswax. Bees collect pollen to feed their young, and have the necessary adaptations to do this. Solitary bees are important pollinators; they gather pollen to provision their nests with food for their brood. Often it is mixed with nectar to form a paste-like consistency.

• Children of the Sun – Wild Bees

• Hornets and Honey Bees: A Coevolutionary Arms Race between Ancient Adaptations and New Invasive Threats

• Beekeeping In The Mediterranean, From Antiquity To The Present

• The Global History of Beekeeping

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A group of Indigenous women are hoping to stop the bulldozers at a former Montreal hospital which they believe could hold the truth about children still missing from a grisly half-century-old CIA experiment.

They have spent the last two years trying to delay the construction project by McGill University and the Quebec government. “They took our children and had all kinds of things done to them. They were experimenting on them,” said Kahentinetha, an 85-year-old activist from the Mohawk community of Kahnawake, southwest of Montreal, who goes by just one name.

The activists are relying on archives and testimonies that suggest the site contains unmarked graves of children formerly interned at the Royal Victoria Hospital and Allan Memorial Institute, a neighboring psychiatric hospital.

In the 1950s and 1960s, behind the austere walls of the old psychiatric institute, the US Central Intelligence Agency funded a human experiments programme called MK Ultra.

During the Cold War, the programme aimed to develop procedures and drugs to effectively brainwash people. Experiments were conducted in Britain, Canada and the United States, subjecting people — including Indigenous children in Montreal — to electroshocks, hallucinogenic drugs, and sensory deprivation. “They wanted to erase us,” said Kahentinetha.

Full article

The federal government will pay up to $202m compensation to thousands of Indigenous workers whose wages were stolen while working in the Northern Territory last century.

The payout is part of the settlement of a class action on behalf of workers and their families who were subject to commonwealth wage control legislation between 1933 and 1971.

The Western Australian government settled a similar case last year for stolen wages in that state, agreeing to pay $165m while an action against the Queensland government resulted in compensation of $190m in 2019.

The Indigenous Australians minister, Malarndirri McCarthy, said she hoped the settlement would bring closure to First Nations people who were affected by the wage control legislation.

Full article

• Land titles have proven to be the most effective way to protect Indigenous peoples’ land from deforestation, with such territories experiencing a 66% decrease in deforestation, and therefore protecting these forests for generations to come.
• Recently, 37 land titles were secured in the Peruvian Amazon in record time, between June 2023 to May 2024, via a partnership between two NGOs and the Peruvian government, using an innovative, low-cost, high-impact model to expedite the process.
• “We believe this model can be replicated in other regions of the Amazon and perhaps even beyond,” the authors of a new op-ed write.

In a defining moment for the rights of Indigenous peoples in Peru, 37 land titles were secured in the Amazon in record time, from June 2023 to May 2024. This is not only a remarkable land rights victory for the region, but it also marks a significant step towards addressing climate change, reclaiming Indigenous peoples’ sovereignty and rights, and defending territories against external threats.

Land titles have proven to be the most effective way to protect Indigenous peoples’ land from deforestation, with titled land experiencing a 66% decrease in deforestation. Legal land ownership allows Indigenous communities to hold illegal loggers and land-grabbers accountable. Additionally, these titled lands act as a buffer zone, protecting adjacent Indigenous territories from invasion. Deforestation is a global concern, but for the Indigenous communities of Peru, it is also about preserving their heritage, culture, and very existence.

The process of securing land titles ranges from slow and bureaucratic to extremely dangerous. In Peru, more than 30 Indigenous leaders have been murdered over the past two decades for seeking titles for their territories and the recognition of their ancestral lands.

Full article

New Zealand’s Maori chiefs have anointed a 27-year-old queen as their new monarch.

The choice of Nga Wai hono i te po removed was welcomed as a symbol of change for the Indigenous community.

She is the youngest child and only daughter of King Tuheitia, who died last week.

After being selected by a council of chiefs, Nga Wai was ushered to the throne by a group of men bearing ceremonial weapons who chanted, screamed and shouted in acclamation.

New Zealand’s Maori make up about 17 percent of the population or about 900,000 people.

Maori citizens are much more likely than other New Zealanders to be unemployed, live in poverty or suffer cancer, cardiovascular disease, diabetes and suicide.

The Kiingitanga, or Maori King movement, was founded in 1858 with the aim of uniting New Zealand’s tribes under a single sovereign in the face of British colonisation.

The Maori monarch is a mostly ceremonial role with no legal status but has enormous cultural significance as a symbol of Maori identity and kinship.

Queen Nga Wai is the eighth Maori monarch and the second queen.

Full article

Ants are eusocial insects of the family Formicidae and, along with the related wasps and bees, belong to the order Hymenoptera. Ants evolved from vespoid wasp ancestors in the Cretaceous period. More than 13,800 of an estimated total of 22,000 species have been classified. They are easily identified by their geniculate (elbowed) antennae and the distinctive node-like structure that forms their slender waists.

Ants form colonies that range in size from a few dozen individuals often living in small natural cavities to highly organised colonies that may occupy large territories with sizeable nest that consist of millions of individuals or into the hundreds of millions in super colonies. Typical colonies consist of various castes of sterile, wingless females, most of which are workers (ergates), as well as soldiers (dinergates) and other specialised groups. Nearly all ant colonies also have some fertile males called "drones" and one or more fertile females called "queens" (gynes). The colonies are described as superorganisms because the ants appear to operate as a unified entity, collectively working together to support the colony.

Ants have colonised almost every landmass on Earth. The only places lacking indigenous ants are Antarctica and a few remote or inhospitable islands. Ants thrive in moist tropical ecosystems and may exceed the combined biomass of wild birds and mammals. Their success in so many environments has been attributed to their social organisation and their ability to modify habitats, tap resources, and defend themselves. Their long co-evolution with other species has led to mimetic, commensal, parasitic, and mutualistic relationships.

Ant societies have division of labour, communication between individuals, and an ability to solve complex problems. These parallels with human societies have long been an inspiration and subject of study. Many human cultures make use of ants in cuisine, medication, and rites. Some species are valued in their role as biological pest control agents. Their ability to exploit resources may bring ants into conflict with humans, however, as they can damage crops and invade buildings. Some species, such as the red imported fire ant (Solenopsis invicta) of South America, are regarded as invasive species in other parts of the world, establishing themselves in areas where they have been introduced accidentally.

• Non-native ants are breaking down biogeographic boundaries and homogenizing community assemblages

• Empire of the Ants 2020 BBC Documentary

• How Ants Became the World’s Best Fungus Farmers

• How 16th Century Trade Made Fire Ants an Early Global Invader

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• 🐌☕ Zapatista Coffee

Theory:

• ❤️Foundations of Leninism
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Very real Leak from an early screening

By Zay on Teewt

The Apache Stronghold, on its way to U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, D.C., made a stop on their “Journey of Prayer”in the city of Montgomery, Alabama, the birthplace of the civil rights movement and home of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church where Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. first served as a full-time pastor.

This church and Dr. King played a central role in uniting the local community in the struggle against what King called the evils of materialism, militarism, and racism.

The Stronghold was reminded that in 2013, Apache Stronghold's Executive Director Dr. Wendsler Nosie, Sr., in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King, received the Presidential Award from the National Progressive Baptist Convention, becoming the first Native American to receive the award.

Dr. Nosie remembered how humbling it was that people in the East thought of him in the West and that these struggles for civil and human rights are connected to what this whole journey to the supreme court is all about. The struggle for freedom continues as Dr. Nosie reflected, “It’s time to use all our combined voices for civil and human rights to fight for Mother Earth, the greatest gift God has given us.” So far on this journey we are happy to see that the churches are bringing in the importance of protecting Mother Earth. We have to make the air, the water, the earth a priority because we will only be able to stop the shattering of human existence by protecting God’s greatest gift, our Mother Earth.

Full article