Tag Archives: Indigenous Peoples

Law Enforcement Crushing Pipeline Dissent in Minnesota at Water Protectors’ Blockade of Enbridge Terminal

Water protectors on Monday blocked the entrance to an Enbridge terminal in Minnesota to display ongoing opposition to the proposed Line 3 tar sands project. (Photo: ResistLine3 via Twitter)

by Andrea Germanos, staff writer, Common Dreams. Published November 25, 2019.

Police were about to saw off the leg of a tripod from which a protester was hanging, activists said.

Police in Clearbrook, Minnesota were accused of putting the “profits of oil companies before human life” after activists said law enforcement on Monday began sawing the leg of a tripod from which a tar sands protester was suspended.

An estimated 30 protesters blockaded the entrance to Enbrige’s Clearbrook Terminal in a display of ongoing opposition to the oil company’s proposed Line 3 project, which would bring tar sands from Alberta to a Wisconsin shipping hub, passing through Minnesota.

Several activists held a large banner across the road to the entrance reading “Stop Line 3. Protect the Sacred.” They stood in front of 21-year-old Sara-Beth Anderson, who was suspended from the tripod.

The ResistLine3 Twitter account shared photos and details about the action on social media, including that police began to saw one of the tripod legs, prompting Anderson to come down on her own to avoid bodily harm.

After Anderson descended, she was taken into police custody.

In a press statement ahead of the action, Anderson said she was undertaking “this risk for the unborn, for the Indigenous peoples fighting to protect their territories all over the planet, for the oceans.”

The Line 3 project has been the target of sustained criticism and protests over its threats to human rights and the environment, including jeopardizing water resources.

Critics say the pipeline project would violate tribal nations’ sovereignty and expands fossil fuel infrastructure when the climate crisis shows the need to stop investing in dirty fuels.

StopLine3 noted an additional concern in a tweet on Monday. “With projects like Line 3 come man camps that increase violence against Indigenous women. 1 in 3 native women will be sexually assaulted in their lifetime. This ongoing colonialism must end. We must #StopLine3.”

The power of protest hasn’t gone without the notice of law enforcement.  According to records obtained earlier this year by The Intercept, Minnesota police looked to the example North Dakota law enforcement set in their harsh crackdown of Standing Rock protesters to gear up for their own potential crackdown of Line 3 protesters.

“The destruction of the sacred is happening because of these terrible decisions to keep extracting, to keep harming the Earth despite what climate science has told the world’s leaders,” Anderson said in her statement.

“Anyone can take a stand against the greatest threat facing our shared world,” she added, “get involved, get involved now.”

This article originally appeared at Common Dreams. It is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License. Feel free to republish and share widely.

Indigenous Peoples, ‘Guardians of Nature’, Under Siege

Munduruku indigenous tribe members trek through their protected lands that illegal miners had destroyed in search of gold.

From Amazon rainforests to the Arctic Circle, indigenous peoples are under siege

From Amazon rainforests to the Arctic Circle, indigenous peoples are leveraging ancestral knowhow to protect habitats that have sustained them for hundreds and even thousands of years, according to a landmark UN assessment of biodiversity released Monday.

But these “guardians of nature” are under siege, warns the first major UN scientific report to fully consider indigenous knowledge and management practices.

Whether it is logging, agribusiness and cattle ranching in the tropics, or climate change warming the poles twice as fast as the global average, an unrelenting economic juggernaut fuelled by coal, oil and gas is ravaging the natural world, the grim report found.

A million of Earth’s estimated eight million species are at risk of extinction, and an area of tropical forest five times the size of England has been destroyed since 2014.

“Indigenous peoples and local communities are facing growing resource extraction, commodity production, along with mining, transport and energy infrastructure,” with dire impacts on livelihoods and health, the report concluded.

Experts estimate that there are some 300 million indigenous people living in mostly undisturbed natural areas, and another 600 million in “local communities” straddling the natural and built worlds.

At least a quarter of global lands are traditionally owned, managed or occupied by indigenous groups, the UN Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) found.

– Pushing the boundaries –

“Indigenous peoples have truly been guardians of Nature for the rest of society,” Eduardo Brondizio, co-chair of the UN report and a professor of Anthropology at Indiana University Bloomington, told AFP.

Research has shown, for example, that forests under indigenous management are more effective carbon sinks and are less prone to wildfires than many so-called “protected areas” controlled by business concessions.

“We have been guardians of our lands for millennia and have deep interaction with ecosystems where we live,” said Lakpa Nuri Sherpa, a Sherpa activist from eastern Nepal.

“Our lands are among the most biodiverse on the planet.”

But nearly three-quarters of regions worldwide under indigenous stewardship have seen a decline in most measure of biodiversity and ecosystem health, the report found.

“The pressures on them continue to be enormous,” said Brondizio.

“The global economy keeps pushing the boundaries of resource extraction” deeper into indigenous territory, he said.

“Indigenous peoples have been retreating from those economic frontiers for 500 years, but get caught every time.”

Globally, the pace of deforestation is staggering.

Last year, the tropics lost an area almost the size of England, a total of 120,000 square kilometres (46,000 square miles).

Almost a third of that area, some 36,000 km2, was pristine primary rainforest.

– Timber traffickers –

In Brazil — home to nearly half of the world’s plant and animal species — landowners fell multi-storied trees to make way for soya bean crops, rogue miners pollute rivers, and timber traffickers steal valuable species.

“It is like using the goose that lays golden eggs to make soup,” said Brondizio.

The livestock industry is a double climate threat: it destroys forests to make way for grazing land and soy crops to feed cattle, and generates huge amounts of methane, a potent greenhouse gas.

Extraction industries of all kinds have found an ardent backer in far-right President Jair Bolsonaro, who came into office in January.

“I am worried,” said Brondizio, who is Brazilian, noting the weakening of environmental protections and an increase in the vilification of indigenous peoples.

Everywhere in the tropics, local populations that push back against big business and their backers are at risk.

More than 200 environmental campaigners — half from indigenous tribes in tropical forests — were murdered in 2017, according to watchdog group Global Witness.

“Our global home is under threat, and Nature is in decline, all driven by an economic and political system that favours increasing consumption and growth over living in harmony with Nature,” said Aroha Te Pareake Mead, a member of the Ngati Awa and Ngati Porou Maori tribes in New Zealand.

From Amazon rainforests to the Arctic Circle, indigenous peoples are under siege. Waiapi people cross the Feliz river by barge in Amapa state, Brazil

Map showing forest cover since 2000, in the five most affected countries

Schoolchildren play on melting ice at Yupik Eskimo village of Napakiak on the Yukon Delta in Alaska, where climate change threatens entire communities

Progression of deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon, with total area by state.

by Marlowe Hood, Agence-France Presse posted

Idle No More protesters delay Canada Day ceremony

A dozen protesters with Idle No More Kingston faced off with police in front of City Hall to express their dismay with Canada’s record of mistreatment of Indigenous Peoples. (Meghan Balogh/The Whig-Standard/Postmedia Network)

Protesters under the banner of Idle No More Kingston blocked the Canada Day People Parade on Sunday in front of City Hall.

Approximately one dozen protesters stood in the street as the parade approached, holding signs that read “151 years of genocide,” “settler colonialism is a crime,” “Justice for Colten,” and “Tina, Jon, Colten, Jordon, Lillian. Canada kills.”

One protester wore a British flag as a cape with the words “European colonialism” written across it.

Some members of the several-hundred-strong Canada Day Civic Ceremony crowd booed the protesters as they resisted police and refused to clear the roadway.

Kingston Police asked protesters to move several times before physically pushing them down the street, using officers on foot, on bicycle and on horseback.

Protester Krista Flute, who is very active in the Idle No More Kingston movement, was arrested at the scene.

Evelyna Ekoko-Kay is one of the protesters who took part in the demonstration in front of City Hall. She and a handful of others stayed after being removed from the ceremony site and handed out pamphlets to anyone interested on the corner afterward.

Ekoko-Kay said she is not Indigenous herself but is mixed race, with one parent an immigrant and the other a colonist. She said she stands in solidarity with Indigenous people in Canada.

“I think it’s important that non-Indigenous people align ourselves with Indigenous struggle,” she said.

“Canada is a nation founded on the genocide of Indigenous people, and it’s an ongoing genocide. In this case, genocide is in the form of residential schools, in the form of the ’60s scoop when children were taken from their homes and put in foster care and separated from their culture. It’s ongoing now, and in fact today, Indigenous youth are taken at a higher rate than they were at the height of the residential school system, to the point where over 50 per cent of children in foster care are Indigenous, even though that’s only about eight per cent of the population.”

According to Ekoko-Kay, 47 per cent of boys and 50 per cent of girls in juvenile detention are Indigenous.

“Indigenous people are being killed every day, whether we’re talking about missing and murdered Indigenous women, people killed by police or white vigilantes. Their killers are consistently acquitted.”

Ekoko-Kay said she feels people need to hear the message of Indigenous people who have been marginalized, especially on Canada Day.

“When people celebrate Canada Day, whether or not they are doing it maliciously or whether or not they believe that Indigenous people deserve this, they are still helping to uphold that state and helping to celebrate it, and erase the realities of settler colonialism, which is an ongoing problem,” Ekoko-Kay said. “We wanted to create a counternarrative at this protest, this rally, because otherwise the only voices being heard are those that agree with the state and are wiling to fall in line. If that’s the case, then no one will ever know about any of these things, and that’s not acceptable. People’s lives are being taken every day. There’s no time to wait.

“If we don’t take a stand, even if we’re just a small group of people, then nothing will ever change.”

mbalogh@postmedia.com

By Meghan Balogh, The Whig-Standard

http://www.thewhig.com/2018/07/02/idle-no-more-protesters-delay-canada-day-ceremony

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Nova Scotia RCMP to Offer Eagle Feather Option for Swearing Legal Oaths

In what is being described as a first for the RCMP, the Mounties in Nova Scotia are now offering victims, witnesses and police officers the option to swear legal oaths on an eagle feather, instead of using a Bible or offering an affirmation.

The RCMP say the eagle feather will be used in the same way as a Bible or affirmation, and may also be offered as a source of comfort at local detachments.

A special smudging ceremony was held Monday at Nova Scotia RCMP Headquarters, where the province’s lieutenant governor, Arthur LeBlanc, was joined by provincial Justice Minister Mark Furey and Chief Leroy Denny, on behalf of the Assembly of First Nations.

As part of the ceremony, Indigenous elder Jane Abram of Millbrook First Nations cleansed eagle feathers through a smudging ceremony, and Keptin Donald Julien, executive director of the Confederacy of Mainland Mi’kmaq, offered a blessing.

LeBlanc said the use of eagle feathers marks a significant step toward reconciliation with Indigenous Peoples.

As the ceremony concluded, eagle feathers were distributed to detachment commanders throughout the province.

“The eagle feather is a powerful symbol and reflects the spirituality and tradition of the Mi’kmaq people,” Furey said in a statement. “I believe the use of the eagle feather is an important step forward in helping our justice system be more responsive and sensitive to Indigenous cultures.”

The Canadian Press

[SOURCE]

Brazil: Increase in Land killings as Political Crisis Threatens Amazon

The 14th ‘Free Terra’ Camp in Praça dos Ipês, Brasília, during April 24-28 2017. Over 4,000 representatives from 200 indigenous peoples from all regions of the country were present in a large demonstration of strength of the indigenous movement. Photo: NINJA Media / National Indigenous Mobilization via Flickr (CC BY-SA).

By Joe Sandler Clarke & Sam Cowie / Greenpeace Energydesk 

There has been a significant increase in the number of indigenous people and environmental activists killed over land disputes in Brazil, as human rights experts warn of a dangerous political mood in the nation.

New research shared with Energydesk by Brazilian human rights NGO Comissão Pastoral da Terra (CPT), shows that 37 people have been killed in the first six months of the year in rural land conflicts, eight more than at the same time in 2016.

The data comes as President Temer’s right-wing government has cut funding dramatically for the country’s indigenous rights agency, Funai.

CPT, which has been collecting data on rural violence since 1985, has found that so far the number of people killed in these disputes is set to exceed last year’s figures, when 61 people died.

At the end of April, violence against indigenous people in Brazil made international headlines, as 13 members of the Gamela community in Maranhão state were attacked by farmers wielding machetes in brutal land dispute.

A couple of week’s earlier, nine people were stabbed and shot over a territorial dispute in Mato Grosso state, in the Amazon.

Jeane Bellini, national coordinator of CPT told Energydesk that recent years have a significant increase in the number of people being killed in rural land conflicts.

Bellini believes the current political turmoil in Brazil, the former President Dilma Rousseff was ousted last year while sitting President Michel Temer is embroiled in a corruption scandal, has helped fuel the violence:

“Rural violence has accelerated under President Temer. Actually, it isn’t only the government. I would say that the political instability created by all of those irresponsible people in congress, as well as Temer and his government have added. I mean, they’re doing things that are completely against the needs and the rights of the people.”

Indigenous rights agency cut

Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the rights of indigenous peoples, told Energydesk that there is a close correlation between the government’s moves to cut the agency and the increase in violence. She explained:

“There is increased violence because the offices of Funai at the state levels are not functioning anymore. Funai is the only government agency trusted by Indigenous people. People look up to Funai to protect them. Now there is nobody trying to protect them.”

Tauli-Corpuz visited Brazil at the end of last year and found government agencies unable to function. She told Energydesk in December that she visited Funai regional offices which had no staff:

“We went to the office in Bahia and there was no one there. There have been huge cutbacks, and they have continued since I came back from my trip … I have a sense that the situation in the country is deteriorating.”

Months later, the UNSR said that the recommendations she made to Brazilian officials have not been addressed.

In May, a congressional committee led by a powerful farming lobby moved to replace the indigenous rights agency with a body controlled by the justice ministry – a move which campaigners believe could have terrible consequences.

Impunity

According to Bellini, a culture of impunity around rural killings in Brazil is also to blame for the worsening situation. CPT states that of the 1,800 killings the organisation has recorded since 1985, only 112 ended up in court with very few ending with conviction.

She said: “Given all the political instability in Brazil since last year, those who are looking to accumulate land, in whatever way they can, have found an opportunity to accelerate the process and apparently they feel quite convinced of impunity.”

In response to this story, Amnesty International Brazil – which uses CPT’s data in its own work – sent us the following statement.

“Amnesty International believes, that in the light of the recent attack on the Gamela community in Maranhão state, it is absolutely essential that the Brazilian government makes a strong statement committing to upholding the Constitutional obligations to demarcate and deliver Indigenous Peoples’ ancestral lands.

“Funai must be strengthened, by making available necessary financial resources, and recent appointments to the agency should be reviewed, in order to ensure that those in leadership positions in the agency have the necessary political independence to do their job.

“The Brazilian government must ensure security to human rights defenders and withdraw any initiatives to criminalize or limit their work.” 

Joe Sandler-Clarke is a UK-based journalist specialising in investigative and public interest stories. His writing has been published in the Guardian, Independent, The Sunday Times, VICE and others, and he curently works at Greenpeace UK.

Sam Cowie is a freelance journalist based in São Paulo, Brazil.

This article was originally published on Greenpeace Energydesk.

Read more: Amazon deforestation rises as government moves to weaken Indigenous protections.

Article originally published in Ecologist on Jun 7, 2017

[SOURCE]