Indigenous people from the Parque das Tribos community mourn the death of Chief Messias of the Kokama tribe from Covid-19, in Manaus, Brazil, on May 14, 2020. MICHAEL DANTAS / AFP / Getty Images
By John Letzing
This past Wednesday, when some previously hard-hit countries were able to register daily COVID-19 infections in the single digits, the Navajo Nation – a 71,000 square-kilometer (27,000-square-mile) expanse of the western US – reported 54 new cases of what's referred to locally as "Dikos Ntsaaígíí-19."
<p>That brought the total number of reported cases in the <a href="https://www.ihs.gov/navajo/navajonation/" target="_blank">designated home</a> of the Navajo people to 5,533, as the number of known deaths reached 252. For an area with an <a href="https://www.census.gov/tribal/?st=04&aianihh=2430" target="_blank">estimated population</a> of 172,875, that translates into an infection rate more than five times that of the US <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/cases-in-us.html" target="_blank">as a whole</a>. The Navajo Nation is not an isolated example. <a href="https://time.com/5808257/indigenous-communities-coronavirus-impact/" target="_blank">Around the world</a>, COVID-19 still poses a disproportionate threat to indigenous communities even as it recedes elsewhere.</p><p>According to the <a href="https://www.un.org/development/desa/indigenouspeoples/covid-19.html" target="_blank">United Nations</a>, indigenous peoples' traditional lifestyles can create greater risks of spreading infection when they involve large gatherings to mark events like harvests, or living in multi-generational housing with elderly family members. The indigenous also <a href="https://www.un.org/development/desa/dpad/publication/un-desa-policy-brief-70-the-impact-of-covid-19-on-indigenous-peoples/" target="_blank">suffer</a> from a relatively high degree of socio-economic marginalization that makes them more vulnerable. This dynamic is not new.</p><p>The Navajo Nation <a href="https://www.navajo-nsn.gov/index.htm" target="_blank">government</a> issued a stay-at-home order as COVID-19 spread, implemented a curfew, and mandated the use of masks in public. But it has <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/05/navajo-nation-hit-hard-coronavirus-200526171504037.html" target="_blank">struggled</a> with issues including the fact that nearly a third of the homes in the area (detailed in the map below) lack running water for hand washing.</p>
<img lazy-loadable="true" src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMzM3NDY4Ni9vcmlnaW4ucG5nIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYxMDAzNDk2NX0.vVWmJG9OhDMQ0-QJQYWbzO97J96n3HTkYnrNoYN31Xo/img.png?width=980" id="ab1a9" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="4583f8be3269a8dd27b5a836a20ceaac" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" />
The Navajo Nation covers the corners of three different states. Google Maps
<p>In Brazil, an advocacy group reported last month that the COVID-19 mortality rate among indigenous people was <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2020/05/23/world/coronavirus-indigenous-death-apib-intl/index.html" target="_blank">nearly twice</a> that of the country as a whole. Prior to that, a mapping service had published an <a href="https://infoamazonia.org/en/2020/05/distantes-de-utis-e-respiradores-indigenas-da-amazonia-tentam-se-blindar-do-virus/#!/story=post-51141" target="_blank">analysis</a> showing that villages in the Amazon are on average 315 kilometers (195 miles) away from the nearest intensive care bed in the Brazilian public health system – and more than half of the villages analyzed were more than 200 kilometers (124 miles) away from any intensive care unit.</p><p>Brazil is <a href="https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)31236-8/fulltext" target="_blank">just one</a> of the countries in the World Health Organization's Americas region with significant and remote indigenous populations deemed vulnerable to the pandemic. The WHO <a href="https://cnnphilippines.com/world/2020/6/2/americas-rapid-increase-coronavirus-cases-WHO-says.html" target="_blank">said</a> the region recently accounted for half of the 10 countries in the world reporting the highest new number of cases over a 24-hour span.</p>
Growing Contribution
<img lazy-loadable="true" src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMzM3NDY5Ny9vcmlnaW4ucG5nIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY0NjM4MTgyM30.IuQTKQs1stvYYKD6vaVTrqAyoBsUG0BhDvlhxsyKwPA/img.png?width=980" id="02a05" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="2841f82b1785df5d5ed7bf64d3bb882b" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" />World Economic Forum
<p>There are exceptions, however. Some of the world's indigenous populations appear not to be overly impacted by COVID-19. In New Zealand, for example, the Māori <a href="https://www.health.govt.nz/our-work/diseases-and-conditions/covid-19-novel-coronavirus/covid-19-current-situation/covid-19-current-cases#ethnicity" target="_blank">accounted for</a> 9% of reported cases as of 4 June, but <a href="https://www.stats.govt.nz/news/new-zealands-population-reflects-growing-diversity#:~:text=The%20next%20largest%20ethnic%20group,from%2011.8%20percent%20in%202013." target="_blank">represent</a> more than 16% of the country's population. And in Canada, <a href="https://www.sac-isc.gc.ca/eng/1581964230816/1581964277298" target="_blank">government figures</a> have not indicated an unusual infection rate for indigenous people – though there are <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/indigenous/indigenous-leaders-covid19-data-testing-1.5562555" target="_blank">concerns</a> that indigenous cases in the country are being undercounted.</p><p>For more context, here are links to further reading from <a href="https://intelligence.weforum.org/" target="_blank">the World Economic Forum's Strategic Intelligence platform</a>:</p><ul><li>COVID-19 is not the only thing indigenous people in Brazil have to worry about. According to this report, indigenous lands in the country are being devastated as the outside world has been distracted by the pandemic. <em>(</em><a href="https://theconversation.com/brazils-jair-bolsonaro-is-devastating-indigenous-lands-with-the-world-distracted-138478" target="_blank"><em>The Conversation</em></a><em>)</em></li></ul><ul><li>Perhaps no community in North America has been more shaped by infectious disease than Native tribes, according to this report. <em>(</em><a href="https://www.csmonitor.com/The-Culture/2020/0430/For-Native-Americans-coronavirus-looks-heartbreakingly-familiar" target="_blank"><em>Christian Science Monitor</em></a><em>)</em></li></ul><ul><li>In Colombia, the killing of indigenous leaders increased after a coronavirus-related lockdown in March made them easier to locate in isolation, according to this report. <em>(</em><a href="https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/wps/2020/05/20/the-impact-of-colombias-covid-19-response-on-indigenous-inclusion-in-peace-processes/" target="_blank"><em>LSE</em></a><em>)</em></li></ul><ul><li>In some countries consultations with indigenous people are now being abruptly suspended in order to force through megaprojects relating to agribusiness, mining, dams and infrastructure, according to a UN independent expert. <em>(</em><a href="https://www.ecosystemmarketplace.com/articles/covid-19-impact-on-worlds-indigenous-goes-well-beyond-health-threat/" target="_blank"><em>Ecosystem Marketplace</em></a><em>)</em></li></ul><ul><li>Mining sites, deemed an essential business during the pandemic, are placing indigenous communities in Canada and several other countries at high risk of infection, according to this report. <em>(<a href="https://e360.yale.edu/digest/as-mining-continues-during-coronavirus-local-indigenous-communities-at-high-risk" target="_blank">YaleE360</a>)</em></li></ul><ul><li>The Secoya community fled by canoe to isolate themselves from the outbreak in the central wetlands of Lagarto Cocha in Ecuador, only to suffer 15 confirmed cases and two deaths among its population of 744, according to this report. <em>(</em><a href="https://www.thenewhumanitarian.org/feature/2020/05/11/coronavirus-Latin-America-Amazon-indigenous-communities" target="_blank"><em>The New Humanitarian</em></a><em>)</em></li></ul><ul><li>Well ahead of government action, indigenous federations across the Amazon launched extensive campaigns to mitigate the pandemic and its socie-economic consequences, according to this report. <em>(</em><a href="https://theconversation.com/how-indigenous-people-in-the-amazon-are-coping-with-the-coronavirus-pandemic-137041" target="_blank"><em>The Conversation</em></a><em>)</em></li></ul><p>On the <a href="https://intelligence.weforum.org/" target="_blank">Strategic Intelligence</a> platform, you can find visualizations and feeds of expert analysis related to <a href="https://intelligence.weforum.org/topics/a1G0X000006O6EHUA0?tab=publications" target="_blank">COVID-19</a>, <a href="https://intelligence.weforum.org/topics/a1Gb00000038pGiEAI?tab=publications" target="_blank">Global Health</a> and hundreds of additional topics. You'll need to register to view.</p>
<p class=""><em>Reposted with permission from <a href="https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/06/covid-19-presents-an-inordinate-threat-to-indigenous-people/" target="_blank">World Economic Forum</a>.</em></p>From Your Site Articles
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Some reservations are reporting infection rates many times higher than those observed in the general U.S. population. grandriver / Getty Images
By Lindsey Schneider, Joshua Sbicca and Stephanie Malin
The SARS-CoV-2 virus is novel, but pandemic threats to indigenous peoples are anything but new. Diseases like measles, smallpox and the Spanish flu have decimated Native American communities ever since the arrival of the first European colonizers.
<p>Now COVID-19 is having similarly devastating impacts in Indian country. Some reservations are reporting infection rates <a href="https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/how-covid-19-is-impacting-indigenous-peoples-in-the-u-s" target="_blank">many times higher</a> than those observed in the general U.S. population.</p><p>We are social scientists who study many aspects of <a href="http://environmentaljustice.colostate.edu/" target="_blank">environmental justice</a>, including <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=p3jvlSAAAAAJ&hl=en" target="_blank">the politics of food access and food sovereignty</a>, the impacts of <a href="https://www.libarts.colostate.edu/people/samalin/" target="_blank">extractive resource industries</a> like uranium and fossil fuels, and how Indigenous communities <a href="https://ethnicstudies.colostate.edu/people/schneidl/" target="_blank">navigate relationships</a> with state and federal governments to maintain their traditional practices. As we see it, Native American communities face structural and historical obstacles related to settler colonial legacies that make it hard for them to counter the pandemic, even by drawing on innovative indigenous survival strategies.</p>
<span style="display:block;position:relative;padding-top:56.25%;" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="63731ca7097bffc9347667697aea3206"><iframe lazy-loadable="true" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/_TUc0iDWzfE?rel=0" width="100%" height="auto" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" style="position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;"></iframe></span>
History Reverberates on Native Lands
<p>Native communities in North America have been disrupted and displaced for centuries. Many face long-standing food and water <a href="http://www.nativepartnership.org/site/DocServer/2017-PWNA-NPRA-Food-Insecurity-Project-Grow.pdf?docID=7106" target="_blank">inequities</a> that are further complicated by this pandemic.</p><p>On the Navajo reservation, which covers more than 27,000 square miles in Arizona, Utah and New Mexico, 76% of households already <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/235390130_High_levels_of_household_food_insecurity_on_the_Navajo_Nation" target="_blank">have trouble affording enough healthy food</a>, and the nearest grocery store is often hours away. COVID-related restrictions have further curtailed access to food supplies.</p><p>Clean water for basic sanitary measures like hand-washing is also scarce. Native Americans are <a href="http://uswateralliance.org/sites/uswateralliance.org/files/Closing%20the%20Water%20Access%20Gap%20in%20the%20United%20States_DIGITAL.pdf" target="_blank">19 times more likely</a> to lack indoor plumbing than whites in the U.S. Nearly one-third of Navajo households <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/coronavirus-hits-indian-country-hard-exposing-infrastructure-disparities-n1186976" target="_blank">lack access to running water</a>.</p><p>Many <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6915e3.htm" target="_blank">health issues</a> that can increase COVID-19 mortality rates occur at high levels among Native Americans. These <a href="http://www.ncai.org/news/articles/2020/03/18/the-national-congress-of-american-indians-calls-for-more-attention-to-covid-19-impacts-to-indian-country" target="_blank">underlying</a> and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(20)30893-X" target="_blank">preexisting</a> conditions – things like hypertension, diabetes, obesity and cardiovascular disease – are <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6913e2.htm" target="_blank">linked to diet</a> and stem from <a href="https://www.oupress.com/books/15107980/indigenous-food-sovereignty-in-the-united-sta" target="_blank">disruption and replacement</a> of Indigenous food systems.</p><img lazy-loadable="true" src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMzM3MTU0NC9vcmlnaW4ucG5nIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYyOTk2NTM0NX0.3CE9pzZY4kFQuxBt-qbXzL3k3eZ2kWECmfUQDuaXB1g/img.png?width=980" id="9280a" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="ce361030764cdb944feafe177d19b2c1" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" />
American Indians and Alaska Natives (AI/AN) experience higher rates of chronic diseases than non-Hispanic Whites. Urban Indian Health Institute; data from CDC, CC BY-ND
<p>Meanwhile, <a href="https://www.npr.org/2020/04/07/828688372/overcrowding-makes-it-hard-for-native-americans-to-socially-distance" target="_blank">housing shortages</a> on reservations and <a href="https://indiancountrytoday.com/news/homeless-vulnerable-and-no-option-for-self-isolation--DGU3-v-FEWmTxrdIH73OA" target="_blank">homelessness</a> in urban Native communities make social distancing to reduce COVID-19 transmission impossible.</p>High Exposure Rates
<p>These factors have clear health impacts. On the Navajo reservation, for instance, through May 27, 2020, <a href="https://www.navajo-nsn.gov/News%20Releases/OPVP/2020/May/FOR%20IMMEDIATE%20RELEASE%20-%201620%20recoveries_102%20new%20cases%20of%20COVID-19_and%20one%20more%20death%20reported.pdf" target="_blank">4,944 people</a> out of a population of 173,000 had tested positive for COVID-19, and 159 had died.</p><p>This infection rate per capita exceeds those in hot spots such as <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexandrasternlicht/2020/05/19/navajo-nation-has-most-coronavirus-infections-per-capita-in-us-beating-new-york-new-jersey/#11a4fac08b10" target="_blank">New York and New Jersey</a>. Importantly, however, it may also reflect a much <a href="https://www.sltrib.com/news/2020/04/19/navajo-nation-has-higher/" target="_blank">more proactive approach to testing</a> on reservations than in many other jurisdictions.</p><p>The fact that elderly people are especially vulnerable to COVID-19 could worsen the pandemic's effects in Indian Country. Elders are the <a href="https://ais.washington.edu/research/publications/spirits-our-whaling-ancestors" target="_blank">keepers of traditional knowledge, tribal languages and culture</a> – legacies whose loss already threatens the persistence of indigenous communities.</p><p>Elders also play key roles in preserving traditional plant and medicine knowledge. In the absence of COVID-19 interventions from Western medicine, many elders have been called on to perform healing practices, which increases their exposure risk.</p>Little Help From Federal and State Governments
<p>Many tribal members rely on the federal government's <a href="https://www.ihs.gov/" target="_blank">Indian Health Service</a> for health care. But <a href="https://theconversation.com/tribal-leaders-face-great-need-and-dont-have-enough-resources-to-respond-to-the-coronavirus-pandemic-134372" target="_blank">lack of capacity</a> at the agency has hampered its response. Budget shortfalls, <a href="https://indiancountrytoday.com/news/report-grossly-inaccurate-data-used-to-divvy-up-relief-funds-for-tribes-9qkkHmeXj0uhRC42mXYqCA" target="_blank">inaccurate data</a>, the challenges of providing <a href="https://indiancountrytoday.com/news/coronavirus-risk-is-compounded-by-the-rural-DC-rMTUzzE6WDGee8jbENQ" target="_blank">rural health care</a> and ongoing personnel shortages in IHS clinics are compounded by staff being <a href="https://navajotimes.com/reznews/dikos-ntsaaigii-doodaa-nation-musters-defense-against-covid-19/" target="_blank">pulled away</a> to fight the virus in large cities.</p><p>And while many states have raised frustrations with the Trump administration's unwillingness to distribute protective supplies from the <a href="https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/4/3/21206170/us-emergency-stockpile-jared-kushner-almost-empty-coronavirus-medical-supplies-ventilators" target="_blank">dwindling national stockpile</a>, IHS and tribal health care authorities <a href="https://www.azpm.org/p/home-articles-news/2020/3/17/167874-bill-calls-for-more-tribal-community-access-to-federal-stockpile-of-medical-supplies/" target="_blank">never had access</a> to the stockpile at all.</p><p>Although the federal government has begun <a href="https://www.hhs.gov/about/news/2020/05/22/hhs-announces-500-million-distribution-to-tribal-hospitals-clinics-and-urban-health-centers.html" target="_blank">distributing relief funds</a> to IHS agencies, there have been serious problems with the accompanying supplies. The Navajo Nation has received <a href="https://www.indianz.com/News/2020/05/22/propublica-former-trump-aide-provided-fa.asp" target="_blank">faulty masks</a>, and a Seattle Native health center asked for tests but <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/native-american-health-center-asked-covid-19-supplies-they-got-n1200246" target="_blank">received body bags instead</a>.</p><p>Meanwhile, federally imposed limits on tribal sovereignty have obstructed tribal governments' efforts to deal with the pandemic themselves. Federal and state governments are <a href="https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/makah-tribe-fights-coronavirus-with-self-reliance-and-extreme-isolation/" target="_blank">challenging tribes' jurisdictional authority</a> to <a href="https://www.azfamily.com/news/mayor-of-page-accused-of-racist-social-media-comment-toward-navajo-nation-president/article_e2e6efd6-8db4-11ea-a8a2-7f6976d702f6.html" target="_blank">close borders to tourists</a> who may carry the virus. South Dakota's governor has <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/may/14/sioux-coronavirus-roadblocks-south-dakota-governor" target="_blank">threatened legal action</a> against two tribes who set up checkpoints to monitor incoming traffic on their reservations.</p><iframe width="100%" height="150" scrolling="no" class="rm-shortcode twitter-embed-1263623015209725952" id="twitter-embed-1263623015209725952" lazy-loadable="true" src="/res/community/twitter_embed/?iframe_id=twitter-embed-1263623015209725952&created_ts=1590106178.0&screen_name=WestRiverEagle1&text=%23CheyenneRiverSiouxTribe+Chairman+Harold+Frazier%3A+Our+checkpoints+are+saving+lives+and+no+one%E2%80%99s+going+to+do+it+but%E2%80%A6+https%3A%2F%2Ft.co%2FbAzHmY1CN6&id=1263623015209725952&name=West+River+Eagle+Official" frameborder="0" data-rm-shortcode-id="7f93e7825d266dabf962ece41883a742"></iframe>
Environmental Injustices on Native Land
<p>Energy development and resource extraction have had <a href="https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/898-all-our-relations" target="_blank">disproportionate impacts</a> on tribes for many years. Today, many Native American leaders worry that ongoing energy production – <a href="https://www.ncsl.org/research/labor-and-employment/covid-19-essential-workers-in-the-states.aspx" target="_blank">an "essential" activity under federal guidelines</a> will bring outsiders into close contact with reservation communities, worsening COVID risks.</p><p>The owners of the Keystone XL oil pipeline have announced that they intend to continue construction, which will bring an influx of workers along the proposed route through Montana, South Dakota and Nebraska. The Rosebud Sioux Tribe in South Dakota and Fort Belknap Indian community in Montana have filed for a <a href="https://www.narf.org/keystone-xl/" target="_blank">temporary restraining order</a>, and a key permit for the pipeline was <a href="https://www.democracynow.org/2020/4/16/headlines/us_judge_revokes_crucial_permit_for_keystone_xl_pipeline" target="_blank">revoked in April 2020</a>, but work continues at the U.S.-Canada border.</p><p>Construction is accelerating on the <a href="https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/politics/border-issues/2020/03/17/border-patrol-waives-laws-border-wall-construction-southern-arizona/5063618002/" target="_blank">southern border wall</a>, which bisects the <a href="http://www.tonation-nsn.gov/" target="_blank">Tohono O'odham reservation</a> in Arizona and Mexico. The Trump administration has <a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/border-coronavirus-military-immigration/" target="_blank">increased patrols at the border</a>, despite the tribe's concern that the patrols' presence is <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/04/06/coronavirus-cbp-160-cases-covid-19-officers-agents/2958736001/" target="_blank">spreading coronavirus</a> on the reservation.</p><p>And in Bristol Bay, Alaska, a salmon fishing season that brings in thousands of temporary workers is <a href="https://indiancountrytoday.com/news/it-s-hard-when-you-love-something-xlS49l2N20KZjqumwfzZfQ" target="_blank">set to open in June</a> because the federal government has also deemed commercial fishing "<a href="https://www.cisa.gov/sites/default/files/publications/CISA-Guidance-on-Essential-Critical-Infrastructure-Workers-1-20-508c.pdf" target="_blank">essential critical infrastructure</a>." Many local Native villages depend on the fishery for income, but have nonetheless pleaded with state regulators to <a href="https://indiancountrytoday.com/news/urgent-calls-to-close-the-massive-bristol-bay-fishery-8lYsGkUeDUyCBW7FMwpSfA?fbclid=IwAR1710u4rQnriq_MgH2ueQxOFtfGiGiH8I2ZdJRCZS9f28Zl-JNkPLpnzZo" target="_blank">cancel the season</a>. The regional hospital has just four beds for possible COVID-19 patients.</p>Bold Action in Native Communities
<p>Native communities are taking decisive action to reduce the spread of COVID-19. They're imposing aggressive <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/09/us/coronavirus-navajo-nation.html" target="_blank">quarantine</a> measures like lockdowns, curfews and border closures. Communities are <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/mar/18/covidcoronavirus-native-american-lummi-nation-trailblazing-steps" target="_blank">ramping up health care capacity</a> and elder support services, and banishing nontribal members who <a href="https://rapidcityjournal.com/news/local/oglala-sioux-council-banishes-non-member-with-covid-19-from-reservation/article_60b665c3-9d1b-5d48-a576-51774e4fb41a.html" target="_blank">violate travel restrictions</a>.</p><p>Other strategies include helping hunters <a href="https://indiancountrytoday.com/news/ammo-fuel-for-hunters-to-feed-others-Ki3zK6du-ky-UogoB9-aNQ" target="_blank">provide traditional foods</a> to their communities, <a href="https://ndncollective.org/indigenizing-and-decolonizing-community-care-in-response-to-covid-19/" target="_blank">mobilizing to support tribal health care workers</a>, and <a href="https://www.ehn.org/coronavirus-native-americans-2645923635.html" target="_blank">linking the pandemic and the climate crisis</a>. Looking ahead to a post-COVID future, we believe one priority should be attending to <a href="http://www.beacon.org/As-Long-as-Grass-Grows-P1445.aspx" target="_blank">front-line environmental justice struggles</a> that center tribes' sovereignty to act on their own behalf at all times, not just during national crises.</p>From Your Site Articles
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Juukan 1 and 2 in June, 2013. Puutu Kunti Kurrama And Pinikura Aboriginal Corporation
By Samantha Hepburn
In the expansion of its iron ore mine in Western Pilbara, Rio Tinto blasted the Juukan Gorge 1 and 2 — Aboriginal rock shelters dating back 46,000 years. These sites had deep historical and cultural significance.
<p>
The shelters are the only inland site in Australia showing human occupation continuing through the last Ice Age.
</p>
<p>
<em>Reposted with permission from </em><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/rio-tinto-just-blasted-away-an-ancient-aboriginal-site-heres-why-that-was-allowed-139466" target="_blank">The Conversation</a></em><em>.</em>
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<p>The mining blast caused significant distress to the Puutu Kunti Kurrama traditional land owners. It's an <a href="https://skugal.org/blast-destroys-one-of-countrys-oldest-known-aboriginal-heritage-sites/" target="_blank">irretrievable loss</a> for future generations.</p>
<iframe width="100%" height="150" scrolling="no" class="rm-shortcode twitter-embed-1265472431772188672" id="twitter-embed-1265472431772188672" lazy-loadable="true" src="/res/community/twitter_embed/?iframe_id=twitter-embed-1265472431772188672&created_ts=1590547113.0&screen_name=ngaarda&text=Ancient+rock+shelters+destroyed+in+Pilbara+mining+blast+on+Sunday.+PKKP+Aboriginal+Corporation+devastated+at+loss+o%E2%80%A6+https%3A%2F%2Ft.co%2FVfpJUGTH1g&id=1265472431772188672&name=Ngaarda+Media+Pilbara" frameborder="0" data-rm-shortcode-id="2b97bf3b4746640cc311e88e8ea7d900"></iframe><p>Aboriginal cultural heritage is a fundamental part of Aboriginal community life and cultural identity. It has global significance, and forms an important component of the heritage of all Australians.</p><p>But the destruction of a culturally significant Aboriginal site is not an isolated incident. Rio Tinto was acting within the law.</p><p>In 2013, Rio Tinto was given ministerial consent to damage the Juukan Gorge caves. One year later, an archaeological dig unearthed incredible artefacts, such as a 4,000-year-old plait of human hair, and evidence that the site was much older than originally thought.</p><p>But state laws let Rio Tinto charge ahead nevertheless. This failure to put timely and adequate regulatory safeguards in place reveals a disregard and a disrespect for sacred Aboriginal sites.</p>
<img lazy-loadable="true" src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMzM2MjIxNS9vcmlnaW4ucG5nIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYzMDQzNjk4MX0.artQnLjdRbrMrOaOJ0amy6qSRSbDEOH0Nnr512471Lg/img.png?width=980" id="ca677" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="fdaddc06e2494a4c2dd8ae34fc0dfa1a" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" />
The destruction of a significant Aboriginal site is not an isolated incident. Puutu Kunti Kurrama And Pinikura Aboriginal Corporation
Not an Isolated Incident
<p>The history of large developments destroying Indigenous heritage sites is, tragically, long.</p><p>A $2.1 billion light rail line in Sydney, completed last year, <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/this-is-a-tragic-loss-sydney-light-rail-construction-destroyed-heritage-site-20190322-p516qk.html" target="_blank">destroyed a site</a> of considerable significance.</p><p>More than 2,400 stone artifacts were unearthed in a small excavated area. It indicated Aboriginal people had used the area between 1788 and 1830 to manufacture tools and implements from flint brought over to Australia on British ships.</p><p>Similarly, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/aug/27/the-rocks-remember-the-fight-to-protect-burrup-peninsulas-rock-art" target="_blank">ancient rock art</a> on the Burrup Peninsula in north-western Australia is under increasing threat from a gas project. The site contains more than one million rock carvings (petroglyphs) across 36,857 hectares.</p><p>This area is under the custodianship of Ngarluma people and four other traditional owners groups: the Mardudhunera, the Yaburara, the Yindjibarndi and the Wong-Goo-Tt-Oo.</p><p>But a <a href="https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Senate/Environment_and_Communications/BurrupPeninusla/Report" target="_blank">Senate inquiry</a> revealed emissions from adjacent industrial activity may significantly damage it.</p><p><span></span>The West Australian government is <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2020/jan/29/australia-lodges-world-heritage-submission-for-50000-year-old-burrup-peninsula-rock-art" target="_blank">seeking world heritage listing</a> to try to increase protection, as the regulatory frameworks at the national and state level aren't strong enough. Let's explore why.</p>What Do the Laws Say?
<p>The recently renamed federal Department of Agriculture, Water and the Environment is responsible for listing new national heritage places, and regulating development actions in these areas.</p><p>At the federal level, the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 (<a href="http://www.austlii.edu.au/cgi-bin/viewdb/au/legis/cth/consol_act/epabca1999588/" target="_blank">EPBC Act</a>) provides a legal framework for their management and protection. It is an offence to impact an area that has national heritage listing.</p><p>But many ancient Aboriginal sites have no national heritage listing. For the recently destroyed Juurkan gorge, the true archaeological significance was uncovered <em>after</em> consent had been issued and there were no provisions to reverse or amend the decision once this new information was discovered.</p><p>Where a site has no national heritage listing, and federal legislation has no application, state laws apply.</p><p>For the rock shelters in the Western Pilbara, Rio Tinto was abiding by Western Australia's <a href="http://www.austlii.edu.au/cgi-bin/viewdb/au/legis/wa/consol_act/aha1972164/" target="_blank">Aboriginal Heritage Act 1972</a> — which is now nearly 50 years old.</p><iframe width="100%" height="150" scrolling="no" class="rm-shortcode twitter-embed-1265226523167977472" id="twitter-embed-1265226523167977472" lazy-loadable="true" src="/res/community/twitter_embed/?iframe_id=twitter-embed-1265226523167977472&created_ts=1590488484.0&screen_name=Sophiemcneill&text=What+a+story+on+%23SorryDay+%40RioTinto+blows+up+one+of+country%27s+oldest+known+Aboriginal+heritage+sites.+And+the+worst%E2%80%A6+https%3A%2F%2Ft.co%2F1iU4zdGaGr&id=1265226523167977472&name=Sophie+McNeill" frameborder="0" data-rm-shortcode-id="b152f672b8b0fa6c7000ca7503bc4c2b"></iframe><p>Section 17 of that act makes it an offence to excavate, destroy, damage, conceal or in any way alter any Aboriginal site without the ministerial consent.</p><p>But, Section 18 allows an owner of the land — and this includes the holder of a mining licence — to apply to the <a href="https://www.dplh.wa.gov.au/acmc" target="_blank">Aboriginal Cultural Material Committee</a> for consent to proceed with a development action likely to breach section 17.</p><p>The committee then evaluates the importance and significance of the site, and makes a recommendation to the minister. In this case, the minister allowed Rio Tinto to proceed with the destruction of the site.</p>
No Consultation With Traditional Owners
<p>The biggest concern with this act is there's no statutory requirement ensuring traditional owners be consulted.</p><p>This means traditional owners are left out of vital decisions regarding the management and protection of their cultural heritage. And it confers authority upon a committee that, in the words of a <a href="https://www.dplh.wa.gov.au/getmedia/11dd5b41-fcf9-4216-a1ac-06ece672c087/AH-Review-Position-Comparison-for-Aboriginal-People" target="_blank">discussion paper</a>, "lacks cultural authority."</p><p>There is no statutory requirement for an Indigenous person to be on the committee, nor is there a requirement that at least one anthropologist be on the committee. Worse still, there's no right of appeal for <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2014/nov/20/traditional-owners-rally-against-changes-to-wa-aboriginal-heritage-act" target="_blank">traditional owners</a> from a committee decision.</p><p>So, while the committee must adhere to procedural fairness and ensure traditional owners are given sufficient information about decisions, this doesn't guarantee they have a right to consultation nor any right to provide feedback.</p>
Weak in Other Jurisdictions
<p>The WA Aboriginal Heritage Act 1972 is <a href="https://www.dplh.wa.gov.au/aha-review" target="_blank">under review</a>. The proposed reforms seek to abolish the committee, ensuring future decisions on Aboriginal cultural heritage give appropriate regard to the views of the traditional Aboriginal owners.</p><p><span></span>NSW is the only state with no stand-alone Aboriginal heritage legislation. However, a <a href="https://www.parliament.nsw.gov.au/researchpapers/Documents/aborigines-land-and-national-parks-in-nsw/02-97.pdf" target="_blank">similar regulatory framework</a> to WA applies in NSW under the National Parks and Wildlife Act 1974.</p><p>There, if a developer is likely to impact cultural heritage, they must apply for an Aboriginal Heritage Impact Permit. The law requires "regard" to be given to the interests of Aboriginal owners of the land, but this vague provision does not mandate consultation.</p><p>What's more, the burden of proving the significance of an Aboriginal object depends upon external statements of significance. But Aboriginal people, not others, should be responsible for determining the cultural significance of an object or area.</p><p>As in WA, the NSW regulatory framework is weak, opening up the risk for economic interests to be prioritized over damage to cultural heritage.</p>Outdated Laws
<p>The federal minister has discretion to assess whether state or territory laws are already effective.</p><p>If they decide state and territory laws are ineffective and a cultural place or object is under threat, then the federal <a href="http://www.austlii.edu.au/cgi-bin/viewdb/au/legis/cth/consol_act/aatsihpa1984549/" target="_blank">Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Heritage Protection Act 1984</a> can be used.</p><p>But this act is also weak. It was first implemented as an interim measure, intended to operate for two years. It has now been in operation for 36 years.</p><p>In fact, <a href="http://ymac.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/Extracts-from-Evatt-Review-of-the-Aboriginal-and-Torres-Strait-Islander-Heritage-Protection-Act-1984.pdf" target="_blank">a 1995 report</a> assessed the shortcomings of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Heritage Protection Act.</p><p>It recommended minimum standards be put in place. This included ensuring any assessment of Aboriginal cultural significance be made by a properly qualified body, with relevant experience.</p><p>It said the role of Aboriginal people should be appropriately recognized and statutorily endorsed. Whether an area or site had particular significance according to Aboriginal tradition should be regarded as a subjective issue, determined by an assessment of the degree of intensity of belief and feeling of Aboriginal people.</p><p><span></span>Twenty-five years later, this is yet to happen.</p>Related Articles Around the Web
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The Ebo Forest in Cameroon, Africa, is a biodiversity hotspot, home to an amazing range of wildlife, including forest elephants, gorillas, drills, chimpanzees, grey parrots and the goliath frog. San Diego Zoo Global
By Lamfu Fabrice Yengong and Sylvie Djacbou Deugoue
Biodiversity loss is a global crisis. In May last year, the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) warned that over 1,000,000 species are threatened with extinction worldwide. On May 22, the International Day of Biodiversity, it is important to recall the silent victims of our country's obsession for industrial growth at the expense of our forests.
<p>Tropical rainforests are estimated to harbor more than half of the world's plant and animal species. They are also essential for access to water, regulating temperature and preventing soil erosion. It's time to return the forests to indigenous and local communities. </p><p>In our country, Cameroon, the conservation of biodiversity, global climate goals and human rights of indigenous and local communities are all put at stake for industrial exploitation of the rainforest, driven by short-sighted thinking. Biodiversity hotspots are put at risk by industrial logging and agriculture, as trees are cut for the tropical timber market and entire forests cleared to make room for oil palm and rubber plantations. The government tries to assure conservationists that some space will be reserved for the wildlife in the forest it trashes, but even protected areas are not truly safe. </p><p>Companies, usually foreign-owned, are rapidly destroying rainforests that have existed for years. Local communities are left poorer after their traditional source of livelihood is desecrated. The only ones getting rich are a small group of beneficiaries that are close to the circles of power. </p><p>Some low-income countries that are rich in forests are resorting to quick solutions like logging and industrial agriculture. But industrial logging concessions and rubber and palm oil plantations are never the job-creating mechanism they promise to be. That has been demonstrated over and over again in forest countries around the world.</p>
<p>For example, <a href="https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/407/" target="_blank">the Dja Faunal Reserve</a>, a UNESCO world heritage site in the South of Cameroon, is home to more than 100 species of mammals, including at least 14 primates, such as the endangered western lowland gorilla, chimpanzee, and white-collared mangabey, as well as species such as the endangered forest elephant, and the African grey parrot, bongo antelope and leopard.</p><p>The Dja Faunal Reserve is adjacent to the Sudcam rubber plantation, mainly owned by rubber giant Halcyon Agri. Sudcam has cleared more than 10,000 hectares (approximately 25,000 acres) of dense tropical rainforest in the South region of Cameroon – an equivalent of 10 football pitches a day – to make way for a rubber plantation between 2011 and 2018. The rubber plantation has rattled the lives of several indigenous communities, namely the Baka, but it has also aggravated the lives of those numerous protected species in the Dja Reserve.</p><p>To indigenous and local forest dependent communities, the rainforest serves as a source of nutritious foods and traditional medicine, much of which science has yet to explore. The forest is also the foundation of their social life, from recreational to ritual practices. Furthermore, biodiversity loss itself is a direct and immediate threat to the livelihood of indigenous peoples like the Baka next to the Sudcam plantation.</p><p>Upon the arrival of rubber company Sudcam, the indigenous community has lost access to its forest and specifically to the animals and plants they rely on. As Sudcam gets richer, it leaves entire communities in impoverishment, abjectness and destitution. </p>
<p>That is the fate which the chiefs of the Banen people of the Littoral region in Cameroon are trying to avoid <a href="http://www.cameroon-info.net/article/cameroun-denonciation-le-peuple-banen-du-littoral-soppose-a-la-confiscation-de-ses-terres-371484.html" target="_blank">in their current struggle</a> against the destruction of large parts of the Ebo forest. </p><p>The <a href="https://www.globalwildlife.org/blog/ebo-forest-a-stronghold-for-cameroons-wildlife/" target="_blank">Ebo Forest</a> is a biodiversity hotspot, one of the intact forest ecosystems in the Gulf of Guinea, stretching over 2000 square kilometers (approximately 772 square miles). Ebo Forest is home to an amazing range of wildlife, including forest elephants, gorillas, drills, chimpanzees, grey parrots and the goliath frog – the largest living frog on the planet. Accordingly, it was designated over a decade ago by the Cameroon Government as a National Park. </p><p>However, on February 4, the same government of Cameroon authorized two logging concessions (<a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/1P8O3pc1JeLaAnDF1ERXvRrIAzjnw09SG/view" target="_blank">UFA07005</a> and <a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/1n2cgvavirDdYmApiTd5vLV0hQRova6Ed/view" target="_blank">UFA07006</a>) inside the area of Ebo Forest. The planned concessions are enormous – about the size of London. Again, the government of Cameroon wants to convince us that conservation can be done with chainsaws. </p><p>Biodiversity loss doesn't only mean our children would get to see some of the world's most marvelous creatures only in documentary films. The consequences are far greater and more tangible.</p>
<p>The extinction of forest elephants, for example, small relatives of African Savanna elephants, might also reduce the number of large trees that they support, trees that excel at storing carbon. In the Congo Basin forest, the disappearance of forest elephants might mean a loss of about three billion tons of carbon – equivalent to France's CO2 emissions over more than 25 years, according to a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/19/science/elephants-climate-change.html" target="_blank">New York Times article</a> on recent research published in the journal <em>Nature Geoscience.</em> </p><p>Cameroon's government has made public commitments to preserve and protect biodiversity. Positive declarations and ambitious plans may win applause and some international funding, but all eyes should be on implementation. <a href="https://www.greenpeace.org/africa/en/press/8593/we-were-told-not-to-go-into-the-forest-anymore-greenpeace-investigation-exposes-human-rights-violations-by-halcyon-agri/" target="_blank">Field investigations by Greenpeace Africa</a> and others clearly show how far we are from protecting biodiversity. </p><p>In Cameroon's government, as well as in the meeting rooms and corridors of development agencies, decision makers often hold outdated views. Too often we hear that only through rapid and massive removal of the rainforest in favor of large-scale logging and industrial agriculture plantations can the country emerge out of poverty. </p><p>Yet that model has repeatedly failed the people, as short-term high profits always remained accessible only to a small circle of beneficiaries. On the contrary, local communities who have lived in harmony with nature for many generations are likely to face poverty, abuse, hunger and alcoholism <a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-sustainable-development-ravaged-the-congo-basin/" target="_blank">wherever</a> forests are suddenly destroyed. It is becoming increasingly clear that the best solution for both human rights and the planet is for forests to be managed by local communities. They do so much better than the industrial loggers or plantation owners. </p>
<p>The Cameroonian government needs to realize that trashing forests is not the way to make the economy grow. Rapid and intensive exploitation of nature has more far-reaching consequences than short-term economic growth. To prevent the extinction of fauna and flora species, indigenous communities that live among them need the rights to manage their forest.</p>
<p>Standing for biodiversity means communities should get the rights to manage their forests, instead of the corporations that destroy them. </p>
<p class=""><em>Lamfu Fabrice Yengong is a Congo Basin researcher. </em></p><p><em>Sylvie Djacbou Deugoue is a forest campaigner for Greenpeace Africa.</em></p>From Your Site Articles
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View of a windmill farm in the Tehuantepec Isthmus region, Mexico, on July 27, 2017. PATRICIA CASTELLANOS / AFP / Getty Images
By Sam Edwards
The Isthmus of Tehuantepec in southern Mexico is one of the windiest places on earth. Hemmed in by two mountain ranges, the flat strip of land between the Pacific and the Gulf of Mexico is a natural wind tunnel. A single gust can flip over cars. It's the perfect place for turbines.
<p>The unique geography of the isthmus has brought it mixed fortunes. Union Hidalgo, once a sleepy, agrarian town, is among the predominantly indigenous communities in the area that began experiencing a "wind rush" in the 2000s. Some dubbed it "La Nueva Conquista" — the new conquest — as large, often European, corporations hurried to harness the isthmus' natural power.</p><p>Like so many in this area, Guadalupe Ramirez's home in Union Hidalgo is dwarfed by seemingly endless rows of wind turbines.</p><p>In 2009, Ramirez, an indigenous Zapotec housewife-turned-activist now in her 60s, signed a 30-year lease for her land to be used for a wind power project. She has been fighting ever since to ensure others are better informed than she was before making a similar deal.</p><p>"We want people to be informed of what will come [with new wind parks], to know that it won't just bring benefits but also many problems," she told DW. "When people have all the facts, it won't be so easy to convince them."</p><p>Ramirez and other activists argue that Mexico's wind farms bring little or no economic benefit to the local community. They also compete for space with small-scale farming, the main source of income for many in the town.</p><p>The principle problem, though, lies with the fraught consultation process. Under Mexican law indigenous communities should be given a deciding vote on projects but in practice, activists say, the information they are given beforehand is often incomplete or misleading, and those opposed to new developments sometimes face harassment and intimidation.</p><p>Ramirez is now placing her hopes on an ongoing legal battle that could shape the course of clean energy in Mexico by halting the latest controversial project before construction begins.</p>
Clean Energy at a Price
<p>The Gunaa Sicaru wind park is planned to be built next to Union Hidalgo. Run by French energy giant EDF, it would provide 252 megawatts of power. But first it needs approval from locals through an ongoing public consultation. And as for many multinational-backed wind parks in Oaxaca, that's proving a challenge.</p><p>In a country historically reliant on oil revenue, wind power and other renewables could bring a transition to cleaner energy. But Alejandra Ancheita, director of NGO ProDESC, warns green power must not replicate the environmental harm and mishandling of local communities typical of the global fossil fuel sector.</p><p>"Renewable energy projects can't be justified solely on the basis they are creating clean energy," Ancheita told DW. "It's not 'clean energy' if it isn't developed with a strict respect for the local communities where the project will be built."</p><p><span></span>ProDESC's legal team represents a group of Union Hidalgo residents in an injunction against EDF and local authorities, alleging violations of the consultation process. The NGO claims the local authorities and EDF failed to provide accurate information on the project's impacts and distributed misleading translations from Spanish to Zapotec.</p>Community Conflict
<p>Ramirez and other local activists say oil runoff from the turbines that already dominate the landscape pollutes waterways, while the sound of the wind farms — many of which are close to towns — disturbs residents and local birdlife.</p><p>But while Ramirez and others fight to prevent further damage to their land, some in Union Hidalgo support the development, particularly those who can earn a steady income from leasing their land.</p><p>"It's creating a lot of division in our community," Ramirez said.</p><p>According to a report by the Berlin-based <a href="https://www.ecchr.eu/fileadmin/Publikationen/ECCHR_PP_WINDPARK.pdf" target="_blank">European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights</a> (ECCHR), conflict in the community escalated in 2018, after critics of the project were condemned as "enemies of development" in the EDF consultation meetings.</p><p>ProDESC and ECCHR said in a formal letter last year, that the company needed to do more to prevent conflict in the community.</p><p>EDF told DW it had met its obligations in the consultation process for Gunaa Sicaru but it was the Mexican authorities who ultimately bore the responsibility for ensuring residents were informed and free to make a decision. EDF has received no reports of threats against critics of the Gunaa Sicaru project, the company added.</p><p>The Oaxaca state government did not respond to DW's request for comment.</p>Future of Clean Energy
<p>Mexico, one of the world's top 15 carbon emitters, has committed to producing 35% of its electricity from clean energy by 2024. Renewables have drawn significant interest from investors since a reform opened the sector to private investment in 2013. Both the solar and wind sectors reported record growth last year.</p><p>But observers fear the future of renewables is uncertain under President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrado. Lisa Viscidi, from think tank The Inter-American Dialogue, told DW that regulatory changes under the current administration are undermining incentives to invest in the sector. Winning consent from communities in Oaxaca has been another significant challenge. A 2019 report authored by Viscidi on Mexico's first clean energy auction found several projects had been delayed due to a failure to get the community on board.</p>Alternative Development
<p>The challenges of wind energy in Oaxaca are not unique.</p><p>The transition to renewables will be an "epochal shift" in most countries, says Cymene Howe, an anthropologist with Rice University in Texas and author of a book about wind energy in Oaxaca. That's because energy infrastructure will move into parts of the planet untouched by fossil fuel industries.</p><p>"[It will be] a fundamental shift in how we imagine landscapes, what land is to be used for, who lives there and who has responsibility," she said. "This is a new frontier."</p><p>In Union Hidalgo, Ramirez says the conflicts over wind parks have already forced some people to move elsewhere searching for work or new land to farm. She fears that if Gunaa Sicaru goes ahead, the town will soon be bordered on most sides by wind turbines and unable to grow.</p><p>"No one is coming here to force us off our land. [But] one day we'll have to leave ourselves because we won't be able to handle being surrounded," Ramirez said.</p><p>For her, it is not about stifling wind power development, but empowering locals to shape it — for example through community-owned wind parks that would funnel profits back into the local community.</p><p><span></span>"Development can take many forms," Ramirez said.</p>From Your Site Articles
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$3 Million and an Official Apology: Brazil’s Ashaninka Get Unprecedented Compensation for Deforestation on Their Land
18 April
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Arison Jardim / The Ashaninka of the Amônia River Association
By Naira Hofmeister, Translated by Matt Rinaldi
- An unprecedented court settlement guaranteed reparations to the Ashaninka people of the state of Acre, in the Brazilian Amazon, whose lands were deforested in the 1980s to supply the European furniture industry. The logging company penalized was owned by the family of the current governor of Acre, Gladson Cameli.
- The conflict was resolved through mediation from the Prosecutor General of the Republic, Augusto Aras, after the case had circulated in the courts with no resolution for 20 years.
- The indigenous people only agreed with the negotiation because it included an official apology and a recognition of their "enormous importance as guardians" of the Amazon.
<div></div>
<p class=""><em>Reposted with permission from <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2020/04/3-million-and-an-official-apology-brazils-ashaninka-get-unprecedented-compensation-for-deforestation-on-their-land/" target="_blank">Mongabay</a>. </em><em></em></p><div></div>
<p>Far from the Brazil nut trees that shape the landscape of the <a href="https://terrasindigenas.org.br/pt-br/terras-indigenas/3716" target="_blank">Kampa do Rio Amônia</a> Indigenous Reserve in the western tip of the state of Acre, the <a href="https://pib.socioambiental.org/pt/Povo:Ashaninka" target="_blank">Ashaninka</a> people realized their most important victory since the federal government first recognized their territory in 1992. On April 1, 2020, the Prosecutor General of the Republic, Augusto Aras, signed an unprecedented settlement that guaranteed reparations for crimes committed almost 40 years ago. The <a href="http://www.mpf.mp.br/pgr/documentos/documentoassinado.pdf" target="_blank">agreement</a> gives this indigenous community the right to compensation of R$ 14 million (nearly US$ 3 million) with an official apology from the criminal offenders.</p><p><span></span>Their crime: cutting down of thousands of mahogany, cedar and other tree species to supply the European furniture industry from 1981 to 1987. The devastation struck a quarter of the area that currently comprises the indigenous reserve. Francisco Piyãko, the Ashaninka leader, was an adolescent at the time of the logging invasion. "What matters to us is what this agreement represents for the Ashaninka cause and how it can have repercussions in affirming the rights and values of the indigenous peoples in a broader sense," explained Piyãko to Mongabay.</p><img lazy-loadable="true" src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMzE0NDA1MS9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYwMjEzMDQ2Mn0.3FgS_tcOPfnZeV70vUcF34iy6jQIrgBrOgu4snWhLPE/img.jpg?width=980" id="d3a3e" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="73b5348078c1a5f78d0092370479e5b0" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" />
Celebration of the Ashaninka people in the Kampa of the Amônia River Indigenous Reserve, by the Peruvian border. Arison Jardim / The Ashaninka of the Amônia River Association
A Two-Decade Dispute
<p>The settlement marks the end of a legal dispute that started in 1996, when the Federal Public Ministry (MPF) brought a Public Civil Action against lumber companies owned by the powerful Cameli family. The same family as the current governor of Acre, Gladson Cameli, and his uncle, Orleir Cameli, who was also governor from 1994 to 1998.</p><p>The Ashaninka prevailed in their initial court case, in appeals courts and also in the Superior Court of Justice (the highest <a href="https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Appellate_court" target="_blank">appellate court</a> in Brazil for non-constitutional questions). But as soon the case reached the federal Supreme Court in 2011, it stalled.</p><p>At an impasse, an extrajudicial settlement was imposed, but it took a year of regular negotiations until both sides accepted the terms of the agreement. "It was a great challenge for everyone, because the negotiation involved large sums and constitutional questions. It required a lot of study, partners and various public authorities to analyze each detail," observes Antônio Rodrigo, attorney for the Ashaninka.</p><p>"This is the first time in the history of Brazilian law that something like this happened. I'm so proud. It was hard, but wonderful," he summarizes.</p><p>According to a <a href="http://www.mpf.mp.br/pgr/noticias-pgr/acordo-historico-garante-reparacao-a-povo-indigena-ashaninka-por-desmatamento-irregular-em-suas-terras" target="_blank">notification posted on the Federal Public Ministry's website</a>, which qualified the result of the negotiation as "historic," Augusto Aras celebrated the enforcement of the constitution, "appreciating that the indigenous people have the guaranteed right to a decent life, to choose their own destiny and take part in political decisions."</p><p>"With this agreement, there is a feeling that we are building a new moment of peace, harmony and, above all, understanding that wounds exist to be healed, not perpetuated," Aras concludes.</p><p>One of the defendants in the case, Abrahão Cândido da Silva, was excluded from the settlement and still faces charges for the deforestation and invasion of the indigenous land. The case is on the <a href="http://www.stf.jus.br/portal/pauta/verTema.asp?id=134777" target="_blank">federal Supreme Court docket for April</a>. In this case, the Supreme Court ministers will decide not only whether to convict the remaining defendant, but also if there is a statute of limitations for claiming compensation for an environmental crime.</p><p>The federal Public Ministry maintains that this environmental damage is indefeasible, meaning it cannot be overturned, as it falls under the "right to life," and that determining a statute of limitations would deny future generations the right to fight for a healthy environment. That thesis was accepted by the Superior Court of Justice, and the Supreme Court review of their decision will take on a status of general repercussion — or, in other words, the ruling will apply to all cases from this point on.</p><p>"This definition will affect hundreds of thousands of cases. To give three recent examples of massive environmental crimes that took place in Brazil: we have Mariana, Brumadinho and, last year, the oil spill in Brazilian waters," asserts the attorney Rodrigo.</p><img lazy-loadable="true" src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMzE0NDA1Mi9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYxNzU4MDI3MH0.GGo1eIDplqDP3QMJCcjAvWi3yKP00ETazc8VccYPY_Y/img.jpg?width=980" id="5805e" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="6d074ceed98430a5947fcd7d937d629b" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" />The Amônia River in the state of Acre. It crosses the indigenous reservation named for it, which is home to the Ashaninka in Brazil. Diego Gurgel / Government of Acre
Acknowledgement of Guilt Was Decisive
<p>The R$ 14 million will be paid to the indigenous people in installments over a period of five years. The ultimate beneficiaries of the compensation will be decided annually at an Ashaninka assembly, but it is required to be applied to projects "in defense of the community itself, the Amazon, the indigenous peoples and the peoples of the forest."</p><p>"Our resources will go to maintaining and bringing back our values. We are calling for this region to be increasingly respected and valued, for its products to be placed on the market with added value, which will, in turn, serve to guarantee sustainability. This is what are going to do: we are not going to stop," promises Francisco Piyãko, whose father, Antônio Piyãko, was the man responsible for <a href="http://cpiacre.org.br/conteudo/2020/04/09/reparacao-historica-ao-povo-ashaninka/" target="_blank">reporting the invasion to the world through an open letter published in 1991</a>.</p><p>On top of the damages paid to the Ashaninka, the logging companies will also have to pay R$6 million (US$1.2 million) to the Human Rights Defense Fund as compensation for the harm caused to society as a whole.</p><p>Still, for the Ashaninka, the high point of the settlement with the logging companies was the official apology, contained in the agreement signed by all parties.</p><p>"In the face of all the facts narrated and discussed at length for years in the Courts, (the logging companies) formally extend an official apology to the Ashaninka Community of the Amônia River for all the ills caused, respectfully recognizing the enormous importance of the Ashaninka people as guardians of the forest, dutiful in the preservation of the environment and in the conservation and dissemination of their customs and culture," the settlement states.</p><p>"If there had been no acknowledgement of guilt, the indigenous people would not have taken the deal," asserts Rodrigo, attorney for the Ashaninka.</p><p>According to Piyãko, this moral reparation transcends the financial settlement, symbolizing a victory for all the traditional peoples of Brazil and the world for the usurpation of their lands and traditional ways of life.</p><p>"Many indigenous communities have to see themselves in this acknowledgement, because there are things that cannot be paid in money," comments the Ashaninka leader. "Our intention is for this official apology to be the recognition of an error committed and (a promise) that, from this point on, it will be repeated no longer. And let it serve as a reference for other companies, because some laws and rights must be regarded and respected."</p><img lazy-loadable="true" src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMzE0NDA1My9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYzMTI4OTIxN30._J7xanpd8WWUA9UduaoTuIxhnImkUivLSidNpt2Y9VI/img.jpg?width=980" id="438f3" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="ba215854fa2adb0418d6a2ab5e4e389d" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" />Francico Piyãko in a celebration of the Ashaninka people. Arison Jardim / The Ashaninka of the Amônia River Associatio
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Aerial view of the Esperanca IV informal gold mining camp, near the Menkragnoti indigenous territory, in Altamira, Para state, Brazil, in the Amazon basin, on August 28, 2019. Joao LAET / AFP / Getty Images
By Peter Yeung
From the skies above Creporizao, a remote town in the south of the Brazilian Amazon, the surrounding area looks like a vast blanket of dark green rainforest. But along the dirt roads and rivers that run through it like arteries are telling patches of muddy brown: illegal gold mines.
<p>Wildcat miners come to the area seeking their fortune. Every day, hundreds of laborers embark on long journeys up and down the Crepori river to reach the gold pits, while others fly in on small planes that land on makeshift airstrips. Such scenes have become common across the world's largest rainforest, and are being held up as the cause of widespread destruction.<br></p><p>Jose Maria, a miner from the state of Maranhao, some 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) to the east — who does not reveal his full name — is waiting on the river banks for a ride. "We're here to do honest work and earn a living," he said. "I don't see what the problem is."</p>
<p>But the pits where Jose Maria and fellow miners work are located on the more than two million-hectare territory of the Munduruku, one of the largest indigenous tribes in the Amazon, whose mineral-rich lands are protected under Brazil's 1988 Constitution.</p><p>A 2019 survey by polling institute Datafolha showed 86% of Brazilians oppose mining on indigenous territory, yet it has been encouraged by Brazilian president <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/brazils-bolsonaro-proposes-bill-allowing-mining-on-indigenous-land/a-52273665" target="_blank">Jair Bolsonaro's controversial bill, which calls for the legalization of commercial mining on indigenous land.</a></p><p>Submitted to Brazil's Congress in early February, the bill has yet to be put to a vote. A planned ballot was pushed back with the president of the Chamber of Deputies, Rodrigo Maia, telling Congress it was "not the right moment." But he also stressed that the bill was "not unconstitutional."</p>
<p>Brazil's Ministry of Mines and Energy told DW it was planning to "regulate activities" on indigenous land, adding that the process would require "consultation with the indigenous communities," which would be able to participate in mining activity.</p><p>While some in the Munduruku have been won over by the allure of riches, and allow gold extraction on their land in exchange for money, the majority remain opposed to illegal mining.</p>
'Full-scale gold rush'
<p>About 13% of Brazil's territory is classified as indigenous land, spread across more than 400 reserves. But <a href="https://www.amazoniasocioambiental.org/en/" target="_blank">according to the Amazon Geo-Referenced Socio-Environmental Information Network</a>, there are more than 450 illegal mining sites in the Brazilian Amazon, where most of those reserves are located.</p><p>The proposed law would likely lead to a dramatic rise in the level of mining activity.</p><p>"Once you open the door, it will become a flood," Glenn Shepard, an American anthropologist who works with indigenous populations affected by illegal mining, told DW. "The law will create a precedent for miners to go in. It's already a full-scale gold rush going on, and these indigenous groups are losing control."</p><p>Greenpeace's journalism team, Unearthed, has reported that <a href="https://unearthed.greenpeace.org/2020/04/03/coronavirus-brazil-amazon-gold-rush-indigenous-groups-deforestation/" target="_blank">gold miners planned to continue working through the coronavirus pandemic</a>, increasing fears of spreading the disease to indigenous groups. </p><p>In advance of the vote on the bill, the Ministry of Mines and Energy told DW it had received more than 4,000 applications for mining-related activities on indigenous land.</p><p><a href="https://www.dw.com/en/brazilian-indigenous-tribesmen-shot-in-hit-and-run-attack/a-51574624" target="_blank">Tensions between miners and local communities are already high.</a> In June last year, Brazil's indigenous rights agency, Funai, reported dozens of miners dressed in military uniform invading the Wajapi community, in the Brazilian Amazon, stabbing and killing one of its leaders.</p><p><a href="https://www.globalwitness.org/en/press-releases/spotlight-criminalisation-land-and-environmental-defenders/" target="_blank">According to research by international NGO, Global Witness</a>, 20 land and environmental defenders were killed in Brazil in 2018 alone. Globally, the nonprofit cited mining as the deadliest sector, with 46 reported murders in the same year.</p>
The deforestation issue
<p>Environmentally, <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/amazon-sees-alarming-rise-in-deforestation/a-51668498" target="_blank">one of the biggest impacts of mining is logging.</a> A 2017 report published in the journal Nature Communications found that mining accounted for 9% of all forest loss in the Amazon between 2005 and 2015.</p><p>Satellite <a href="https://maaproject.org/2020/gold_brazil/" target="_blank">analysis </a>published by the Monitoring of the Andean Amazon Project revealed that 2,000 hectares of gold mining-related deforestation occurred in 2019 across the Munduruku indigenous reserve, more than double the amount recorded the year before.</p><p>Last November dozens of tribal leaders from the Amazon met with officials in Brasilia to file claims and report serious threats to their territories.</p><p>Alessandra Korap Munduruku, a leader from Para state who attended the meeting, says the legalization of mining would "be the death of our people."</p><p>Besides bringing "disease and prostitution to our people, drug addiction to our children, and violent conflict to the Munduruku men," she said gold mining activity is also killing fish through mercury poisoning.</p><p>Released across the region's major Tapajos River during the mining process, mercury is seeping into the tributaries like those that snake past the mining town of Creporizao. Local communities rely on these rivers for many of their water needs.</p><p>Late last year, in the first study of its kind, Erik Jennings, a neurologist based in the city of Santarem, took blood and hair samples from 112 tribespeople to assess mercury levels.</p><p>"It's a slow genocide," Jennings told DW. "The mercury can cause serious cognitive and visual impairment, and deform fetuses."</p>
Problematic legal trade
<p>Even the legal gold trade in Brazil is largely unregulated, which facilitates illegal business and plays a significant role in the destruction of the Amazon. Prosecutors in Para state say the lack of regulation in the legal trade and the fact that receipts are paper-based carbon copies make it easy for criminals to thrive and illegal gold to enter the legal system.</p><p>"The practice of fraud in the sector is quite easy, and the investigation of illegalities becomes an almost insurmountable obstacle," Luis de Camoes Lima Boaventura, public prosecutor in the Amazonian city of Santarem said.</p><p>"Until a computerized system is installed, the authorities cannot check, in real time, the legality of the transactions. To make a transaction of illegal gold, all you currently need is a pen and paper."</p><p>According to National Mining Agency estimates, around 30 tons of gold worth some 4.5 billion reals ($1.1 billion, €900 million) are illegally traded in the state of Para annually. That is around six times more than the amount legally declared.</p><p>When miners like Jose Maria return to Creporizao at the end of what can be days away, they come to one of a dozen gold shops that line the main drag to melt what they have mined into standardized bars. Once that is done, illegally-mined gold, which is responsible for widespread deforestation, pollution and violence in the Amazon, has entered the system and can no longer be traced.</p>From Your Site Articles
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1 in 10 Children Affected by Bushfires Is Indigenous. We’ve Been Ignoring Them for Too Long
02 April
Insights + Opinion
A schoolchildren crossing sign is seen in front of burned trees in Mallacoota, Australia on Jan. 15, 2020. Luis Ascui / Getty Images
By Bhiamie Williamson, Francis Markham and Jessica Weir
The catastrophic bushfire season is officially over, but governments, agencies and communities have failed to recognize the specific and disproportionate impact the fires have had on Aboriginal peoples.
<p>Addressing this in bushfire response and recovery is part of <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-06-10/barunga-festival-marred-by-unfinished-treaty-business/11194706" target="_blank">Unfinished Business</a>: the work needed for <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/indigenous-peoples">Indigenous</a> and non-Indigenous people to meet on more just terms.</p><p>In our recent <a href="https://caepr.cass.anu.edu.au/research/publications/aboriginal-peoples-and-response-2019-2020-bushfires" target="_blank">study</a>, we found more than one quarter of the Indigenous population in New South Wales and Victoria live in a fire-affected area. That's more than 84,000 people. What's more, one in ten infants and children affected by the fires is Indigenous.</p><p>But in past bushfire inquires and royal commissions, Aboriginal people have been mentioned only sparingly. When referenced now, it's only in relation to cultural burning or cultural heritage. This must change.</p>
<h3>Bushfire Residents</h3><p>Indigenous people comprise only 2.3% of the total population of NSW and Victoria. But they make up nearly 5.4% of the 1.55 million people living in fire-affected areas of these states.</p><p>And of the total Indigenous population in fire-affected areas, 36% are less than 15 years old. This is a major concern for delivering health services and education after bushfires have struck.</p>
<img lazy-loadable="true" src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMjkwOTg2OC9vcmlnaW4ucG5nIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYxODA3NTM4Nn0.NhSy_34bnZ6eh_hCxHw1mKS7kgIU5Ha4yOFltveyT_o/img.png?width=980" id="ecdda" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="4426250aec98566f7f93867603354d75" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" />
Table: The Conversation. Source: Authors' calculations from 2016 Census of Population and Housing (ABS 2020) and 2016 ERP (ABS 2017b). Get the data
<p>Importantly, where Indigenous people live has a marked spatial pattern.</p><p>There are 22 discrete Aboriginal communities in rural fire-affected areas. Of these, 20 are in NSW, often <a href="https://aiatsis.gov.au/research/finding-your-family/family-history-sources/mission-and-reserve-records" target="_blank">former mission lands</a> where people were forcibly moved or camps established by Aboriginal peoples.</p><p>Ten percent of Indigenous people in fire-affected areas in NSW and Victoria live in these communities.</p><p>And those living in larger towns and urban areas aren't evenly distributed. For example, Indigenous people comprise 10.6% of residents in fire-affected Nowra–Bomaderry, compared with 1.9% of residents in fire-affected Bowral–Mittagong.</p><p>These statistics are steeped in histories and geographies that need to directly inform where and how services are delivered.</p>
<h3>Indigenous Rights and Interests</h3><p>Aboriginal people hold significant legal rights and interests over lands and waters in the fire-affected areas. These are recognized by state, federal or common law. This includes native title, land acquired through the NSW Aboriginal Land Rights Act or lands covered by Registered Aboriginal Parties in Victoria.</p><p>Even where there's no formal recognition, all fire-affected lands have Aboriginal ownership held and passed down through songlines, languages and kinship networks.</p>
<img lazy-loadable="true" src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMjkwOTg3MS9vcmlnaW4ucG5nIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYyMTUxODA2Mn0.HH1LDiPZiGw6gls_6pHwureGp4D0vnh_w2IapuovFI4/img.png?width=980" id="0e5b1" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="ae30fbcd0ccc42ba5bff49f1cbbfdc6f" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" />
Areas in NSW and Victoria burnt and affected by fires of 250 ha or more, July 1, 2019 to January 23, 2020, and Aboriginal legal interests in land. Author provided
<p>The nature of these legal rights and interests means the bushfires have different consequences for Aboriginal rights-holders than for non-Indigenous landowners.</p><p>Many non-Indigenous landowners in the fire-affected areas face the difficult decision of whether to stay and rebuild, or sell and move on. Traditional owners, on the other hand, are in a far more complex and unending situation.</p><p>Traditional owners carry intergenerational responsibilities, practices and more that have been formed with the places they know as their Country.</p><p>They can leave and live on someone else's Country, but their Country and any formally recognized communal land and water rights remain in the fire-affected area.</p>
<h3>Relegated to the Past</h3><p>Clearly, Aboriginal people have unique experiences with bushfire disasters, but Aboriginal voices have seldom been heard in the recovery processes that follow.</p><p>The <a href="https://www.cmtedd.act.gov.au/functions/publications/archived/mcleod_inquiry/report" target="_blank">McLeod Inquiry</a>, which followed the 2003 Canberra bushfires and the 2009 Black Saturday Royal Commission – were critical processes of reflection and recovery for the nation. Even in these landmark reports, references to Aboriginal people are almost completely absent.</p><p>There were only four brief mentions across three volumes of the <a href="http://royalcommission.vic.gov.au/Commission-Reports/Final-Report.html" target="_blank">Black Saturday Royal Commission</a>. Two were cultural heritage protections discussions in relation to pre-bushfire season preparation, and two were historical references to past burning practices.</p><p>In other words, Aboriginal people – their cultural practices, ways of life and land management techniques – are relegated to the past.</p><p>This approach must change to acknowledge that Aboriginal people are present in contemporary society, and have distinct experiences with bushfire disasters.</p>
<h3>More Than Cultural Burning</h3><p>This year, we've seen strong interest in Aboriginal people's fire management, including in the early months of the federal <a href="https://naturaldisaster.royalcommission.gov.au/publications/commonwealth-letters-patent-20-february-2020" target="_blank">royal commission</a>, and in <a href="https://www.nsw.gov.au/improving-nsw/projects-and-initiatives/make-a-submission-to-the-bushfire-inquiry/nsw-independent-bushfire-inquiry-terms-of-reference/" target="_blank">NSW</a> and <a href="https://www.igem.vic.gov.au/Fire-Season-Inquiry" target="_blank">Victoria</a> state inquiries.</p><p>But including Aboriginal voices only in regards to cultural burning is deeply problematic. Yet, it's an emerging trend – not only in these official responses, but in the <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-01-30/aboriginal-cultural-burning-funding-for-bushfire-mitigation/11910464" target="_blank">media</a>.</p><p>This narrowly defined scope precludes the suite of concerns Aboriginal people bring to bushfire risk matters. Their concerns go across the natural hazard sector's spectrum of preparation, planning, response and recovery.</p><p>Aboriginal people need to be part of the broad conversation that bushfire decision-makers, researchers and the public sector are having.</p>
<h3>Amplifying Aboriginal Voices</h3><p>To date, Victoria offers the most substantial effort to include Aboriginal voices by establishing an Aboriginal reference group to work alongside the <a href="https://www.vic.gov.au/bushfire-recovery-victoria" target="_blank">bushfire recovery agency</a>. But Aboriginal people require a much stronger presence in every facet of these state and national inquiries.</p><p>We identify three foundational steps:</p><ol><li>Acknowledge that Aboriginal people have been erased, made absent and marginalized in previous bushfire recovery efforts, and identify and address why this continues to happen.</li><li>Establish non-negotiable instructions for including Aboriginal people in the terms of reference and membership of post-bushfire inquiries.</li><li>Establish Aboriginal representation on relevant government committees involved in decision-making, planning and implementation of disaster risk management.</li></ol><p>The continued marginalization of Aboriginal people diminishes all of us – in terms of our values in living within a just society.</p><p>It was never acceptable to silence Aboriginal people in responses to major disasters. It's incumbent upon us all to ensure these colonial practices of erasure and marginalization are relegated to the past.</p>
<p><em>Bhiamie Williamson is a research associate & Ph.D. candidate at Australian National University.<br/></em></p><p><em><span style="background-color: initial;">Francis Markham is a r</span>esearch fellow at the College of Arts and Social Sciences, Australian National University.<br/></em></p><p><span style="background-color: initial;"><em>Jessica Weir</em></span><em>Senior is a research fellow at Western Sydney University.</em><br/></p><p><em>Disclosure statements: Bhiamie Williamson is a member of the ACT Bushfire Council. </em><em>Jessica Weir receives funding from Bushfire and Natural Hazards CRC. </em><em>Francis Markham does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond his academic appointment.</em></p><p><em>Reposted with permission from <a href="https://theconversation.com/1-in-10-children-affected-by-bushfires-is-indigenous-weve-been-ignoring-them-for-too-long-135212" target="_blank">The Conversation</a>.</em></p>From Your Site Articles
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The Dakota Access Pipeline protest camp in North Dakota on the day it was slated to be raided, Feb. 22, 2017. Michael Nigro / Pacific Press / LightRocket via Getty Images
Nearly four years after massive protests drew worldwide attention to the struggle of indigenous peoples to protect their land from fossil fuel projects, a federal judge has ordered a full environmental review of the controversial Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL).
<p>Wednesday's <a href="https://earthjustice.org/sites/default/files/files/standing-rock-sj.pdf" target="_blank">ruling</a> is a long-deferred victory for the <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/standing-rock" target="_self">Standing Rock</a> Sioux Tribe, who have been concerned the pipeline will leak where it runs below the Missouri River just upstream of their reservation, contaminating their <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/drinking-water" target="_self">drinking water</a>, as <a href="https://www.npr.org/2020/03/25/821643911/judge-orders-environmental-review-of-controversial-dakota-access-pipeline?t=1585214009596" target="_blank">NPR explained</a>.</p>
<p>"After years of commitment to defending our water and earth, we welcome this news of a significant legal win," Standing Rock Sioux Tribe Chairman Mike Faith said in a <a href="https://earthjustice.org/news/press/2020/standing-rock-sioux-tribe-prevails-as-federal-judge-strikes-down-dapl-permits" target="_blank">press release</a> announcing the decision. "It's humbling to see how actions we took four years ago to defend our ancestral homeland continue to inspire national conversations about how our choices ultimately affect this planet. Perhaps in the wake of this court ruling the federal government will begin to catch on, too, starting by actually listening to us when we voice our concerns."</p>
<iframe width="100%" height="150" scrolling="no" class="rm-shortcode twitter-embed-1242940652704477184" id="twitter-embed-1242940652704477184" lazy-loadable="true" src="/res/community/twitter_embed/?iframe_id=twitter-embed-1242940652704477184&created_ts=1585175118.0&screen_name=StandingRockST&text=https%3A%2F%2Ft.co%2FwBZKcG2nJt+%0A%0A%E2%80%9CFederal+Judge+orders+Army+Corp+to+prepare+a+FULL+environmental+impact+statement+after+SR%E2%80%A6+https%3A%2F%2Ft.co%2FKEit8ughMo&id=1242940652704477184&name=Standing+Rock+Sioux" frameborder="0" data-rm-shortcode-id="5ab68acc396f7e2bd910d785eb844d91"></iframe>
<p>Permits for the pipeline <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/army-corps-permit-dakota-access-pipeline-2128363393.html" target="_self">were denied</a> by the Obama administration following massive protests in 2016, and the the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers was set to conduct a full environmental review, as <a href="https://apnews.com/37c60bfb22580ec7921454e225ee5c1f" target="_blank">The Associated Press explained</a>. But when President <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/donald-trump" target="_self">Donald Trump</a> took office, he <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/trump-dakota-access-pipeline-2211697835.html" target="_self">rushed through</a> the pipeline approval process via executive order and the review was jettisoned, until now.</p><p>Judge James Boasberg said the approval process was "highly controversial" and ordered a thorough review.</p><p>"The many commenters in this case pointed to serious gaps in crucial parts of the Corps' analysis – to name a few, that the pipeline's leak-detection system was unlikely to work, that it was not designed to catch slow spills, that the operator's serious history of incidents had not been taken into account, that the worst-case scenario used by the Corps was potentially only a fraction of what a realistic figure would be – and the Corps was not able to fill any of [the gaps in the analysis]," Boasberg argued, according to NPR.</p>
<p>The more than 1,000-mile pipeline carries crude oil from North Dakota to Illinois and is owned by Energy Transfer Partners. But the company and the Army Corps lawyers declined to comment on the case to NPR and The Associated Press.</p><p>Oil has been flowing through the pipeline since June 2017, and it is not clear if it will stop while the review takes place. Boasberg has ordered both the tribe and the Army Corps to submit briefs making their case.</p><p>But Earthjustice attorney Jan Hasselman, who represents the tribe, vowed to ultimately stop that flow.</p><p>"This validates everything the Tribe has been saying all along about the risk of oil spills to the people of Standing Rock," Hasselman said. "The Obama administration had it right when it moved to deny the permits in 2016, and this is the second time the Court has ruled that the government ran afoul of environmental laws when it permitted this pipeline. We will continue to see this through until DAPL has finally been shut down."</p>
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Paula Kahumbu attends the TDI Awards during the 2017 Tribeca Film Festival at Spring Studios on April 25, 2017 in New York City. Rob Kim / Getty Images for Tribeca Film Festival
Women have long been at the forefront of the effort to protect the earth and its creatures. Some of them, like Greta Thunberg and Jane Goodall, are household names.
<p>Others, like <a href="http://www.drfisher.umd.edu/PCM_PreliminaryResults.pdf" target="_blank">around 55 percent of the people who hit the streets for 2014's People's Climate March</a>, are anonymous (s)heroes. In between these extremes are many women who have made a significant individual difference as scientists, inventors or activists and who deserve more recognition for their inspiring efforts.</p><p>Here are five women using their unique talents to protect the planet that we at EcoWatch think you should know about.</p>
<p><strong>1. Miranda Wang, Inventor and Entrepreneur, Canada and U.S.</strong></p>
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<p>Only nine percent of the world's <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/plastics" target="_self">plastic</a> is actually recycled. The rest is landfilled, burned or discarded into the environment, where it risks joining the <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/8-million-metric-tons-of-plastic-dumped-into-worlds-oceans-each-year-1882012563.html" target="_self">eight million metric tons</a> that pollute the world's oceans every year. But Miranda Wang is working to change that.<br></p><p>Together with her high school friend Jeanny Yao, Wang developed a method of using chemicals to break down unrecyclable polyethylene film plastics — such as the infamous plastic bag — into reusable compounds, <a href="https://www.mercurynews.com/2019/05/28/recycling-pilot-program-with-local-start-up-in-final-phase/" target="_blank">The Mercury News explained</a>. In 2015, the pair co-founded the company <a href="https://www.biocellection.com/" target="_blank">BioCellection</a> when they were just 21 to put their invention into practice.</p><p>Wang and Yao first met in their Vancouver, B.C. high school's <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/recycling" target="_self">recycling</a> club, where they visited waste plants.</p><p>"[W]hen I visited my first waste plant, the scale of the problem hit me," Wang told <a href="https://www.unenvironment.org/youngchampions/news/story/young-champion-earth-winner-north-america" target="_blank">UN Environment</a>. "All that waste."</p><p>She is now tackling the problem full time as CEO of BioCellection, which is based in Menlo Park, California. She is working on a pilot program with the city of San Jose and its waste handler GreenWaste to integrate her and Yao's innovation into its preexisting system.</p><p>"The long-term goal is to be able to recycle all of the city of San Jose's — and other cities' — polyethylene plastic," Wang told The Mercury News.</p>
<p><strong>2. Dr. Paula Kahumbu, Conservationist, Kenya</strong></p>
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<p>Dr. Paula Kahumbu, who has been called the "life force" behind Kenya's <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/conservation" target="_self">conservation</a> movement, has been working to protect <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/elephants" target="_self">elephants</a> since she was in her early 20s. She and a group of friends measured every piece in Kenya's <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/ivory" target="_self">ivory</a> stockpile to create an ivory "bonfire" in 1989, <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/campaigns/elephant-campaign/dr-paula-kahumbu-interview-africans-must-be-equal-partners-in-a-war-on-elephant-poachers-9123089.html" target="_blank">The Independent reported</a>.</p><p><a href="https://paulakahumbu.org/about/" target="_blank">Since then</a>, she has gone on to earn a Ph.D. at Princeton in ecology and evolutionary biology, to serve as the CEO of Kenyan conservation nonprofit <a href="https://wildlifedirect.org/" target="_blank">WildlifeDirect</a>, and to launch the successful <a href="https://wildlifedirect.org/hands-off-our-elephants/" target="_blank">Hands Off Our Elephants Campaign</a> with Kenyan first lady Margaret Kenyatta in 2014.</p><p>"From spending so much time with [elephants], I know they are not just another animal," she told The Independent. "They are beings with personalities; with families; with feelings. It is such a horrendous injustice to allow them to be slaughtered."</p><p>Hands Off Our Elephants works to tackle the <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/poaching" target="_self">poaching</a> crisis in Kenya by enacting new laws and making sure they are enforced, working directly with communities to develop conservation strategies that benefit humans and <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/wildlife" target="_self">wildlife</a> and building public support in Kenya for elephant conservation. Since it was launched, elephant poaching in the country has decreased by 80 percent and rhino poaching by 90 percent. One of Kahumbu's key insights has been the importance of engaging Africans, and particularly African women, in protecting their continent's unique animals.</p><p>"It can be hard for Africans, and especially African women, to be heard in this male-dominated world of Western scientists and academics," she told The Independent. "Maasai women, who have been studying elephants for 20 to 40 years each; should have Ph.D.s [by now], but they don't. There has been a real failure to develop the capacity of the people who are instrumental on the ground."</p>
<p><strong>3. Artemisa Xakriabá, Indigenous Activist, Brazil</strong></p>
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<p>The <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/brazil-bolsonaro-amazon-climate-2616170023.html" target="_self">election</a> of right-wing Brazilian President <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/jair-bolsonaro" target="_self">Jair Bolsonaro</a> was a blow to climate action and <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/indigenous-rights" target="_self">indigenous rights</a>. So far, he has overseen <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/amazon-rainforest-wildfires-2639934452.html" target="_self">historic wildfires</a> in the <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/amazon-rainforest" target="_self">Amazon rainforest</a> and <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/brazil-bolsonaro-bill-open-indigenous-land-2645088985.html" target="_self">pushed</a> to open indigenous forest reserves to the mining and fossil fuel industries. But indigenous women are fighting back.</p><p>Among them is 19-year-old Artemisa Xakriabá, a member of Brazil's Xakriabá tribe. In August, she participated in the first Indigenous Women's March in Brasilia to protest Bolsonaro's anti-environment and anti-indigenous policies, <a href="https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/indigenous-activist-bolsonaro-amazon-brazil_n_5db31aece4b079eb95a2d409?ri18n=true" target="_blank">HuffPost reported</a>. She was then chosen by a coalition of South American and East Asian indigenous youth groups to represent their cause at youth climate strikes in New York and Washington, DC last September.</p><p>"We, the indigenous peoples, are the children of nature, so we fight for our Mother Earth, because the fight for Mother Earth is the mother of all other fights," she said in New York, as <a href="https://www.democracynow.org/2019/9/23/brazil_indigenous_climate_activist_artemisa_xakriaba" target="_blank">Democracy Now reported</a>. "We are fighting for your lives. We are fighting for our lives."</p><p>Xakriabá's activism predates Bolsonaro, however. When she was only seven, she helped her classmates reforest 15 riverside areas near their traditional territory in Minas Gerais in southeast Brazil, according to HuffPost.</p><p>In New York, she spoke of the common struggle of all women to protect the earth.</p><p>"I am also here as a young woman," she said, as Democracy Now reported, "because there's no difference between an indigenous young female activist like myself and a young indigenous female activist like Greta. Our future is connected by the same threads of the <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/climate-change/" target="_self">climate crisis</a>."</p>
<p><strong>4. Dr. Maria Caffrey, Scientist and Whistleblower, U.S.</strong></p>
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<p>Dr. Maria Caffrey is another woman who stood up to a climate denying administration.</p><p>In 2012, the National Park Service (NPS) funded a project she had designed to estimate future <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/sea-level-rise" target="_self">sea levels</a> and storm surges at 118 coastal <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/national-parks" target="_self">national parks</a> based on different levels of greenhouse gas emissions, as Caffrey wrote for <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jul/25/trump-administration-climate-crisis-denying-scientist" target="_blank">The Guardian</a>. She completed the first draft in the summer of 2016, but then President <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/donald-trump" target="_self">Donald Trump</a> took office, and the report was delayed. Finally, a colleague told her that all mentions of climate change had been edited out of her report. Senior officials wanted her to approve the changes, and, if she refused, threatened to release the report without climate references, to delete her name or not to publish it at all.</p><p>"Each option would have been devastating to my career and for scientific integrity. I stood firm," she wrote. "And I prevailed."</p><p>The report was published, but Caffrey paid for her persistence. She received pay cuts and demotions and then, in February 2019, NPS refused to renew her funding, leading Caffrey to file a whistleblower complaint against the administration.</p><p>Caffrey also sued the administration and testified before Congress in an attempt to raise awareness about the silencing of scientists.</p><p>"Money was never really the point of the lawsuit," Caffrey told <a href="https://www.cpr.org/2019/07/29/boulder-climate-scientist-sues-trump-administration-over-matter-of-scientific-integrity/" target="_blank">Colorado Matters</a>. "The point of the lawsuit is to get on the record and show what the Trump administration is doing to scientists and that that's not OK. And so I think it's important that we stand up and we fight back."</p>
<p><strong>5. Nirupabai, Activist, India</strong></p>
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<p>In India, the expansion of <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/coal" target="_self">coal</a> doesn't just hurt the global climate. Government-owned Coal India and its subsidiaries have bypassed local and international law in evicting people from their homes in order to expand mines in the states of Jharkhand, Odisha and Chhattisgarh, according to a 2016 Amnesty International report publicized by <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2016/jul/13/coal-india-accused-of-bulldozing-human-rights-mining-operations-amid-production-boom-amnesty-international" target="_blank">The Guardian</a>. These evictions particularly target indigenous Adivasi communities, including a woman named Nirupabai whose home was bulldozed in 2014.</p><p>"I cried, I screamed, trying to save it," she told The Guardian of the eviction. "All my things, my son's school books, a year's worth of rice, everything was scattered, everything in ruins."</p><p>But Nirupabai has gone on to fight the coal company with every means at her disposal, <a href="https://elle.in/article/nirupabai/" target="_blank">Elle reported</a>. She has picketed company offices, spoken at environmental hearings and she spoke in <a href="https://amnesty.org.in/news-update/cost-coal-using-virtual-reality-tell-story-indias-coal-mining-affected-communitie/" target="_blank">The Cost of Coal</a>, India's first VR film to be acquired by the UN. What she wants is for Coal India to stop expanding until people like her are compensated for the land they have lost.</p><p>"You tell me what will grow on this poor land? Coal is the heart of the earth, but they remove it and say we are the sarkar. What is it that you have in your pocket that you didn't take from our land?" Nirupabai said, according to Elle.</p><p>Nirupabai has won one important victory. Coal India usually does not let women who have been displaced by its activities work in the mines because it deems the work unsafe. But a court order filed by another woman, Ratthobai Rathia, has given her the right to work for the land she has lost. Nirupabai isn't done fighting, however.</p><p>"I will fight for every last inch," she told Elle.</p>
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Salt River Project-Navajo Generating Station in the red desert of Page, Arizona seen above before it shut down in November 2019.
Members of the Navajo and Hopi tribes are struggling to adjust to a new way of life following the closure of the coal-powered Navajo Generating Station late last year, as leaders look for new sources of revenue and energy.
<p>Both the AP and the Arizona Republic reported last month that Navajo and Hopi tribe members, who had access to coal from the mine to heat their homes, are struggling in their first winter without the mine. Some of the <a href="https://newsletter.climatenexus.org/e2t/c/*MWkRkl1JtxzW6Tdj633VPkym0/*N6-JGdpQkj1mW8blG797j97s30/5/f18dQhb0Sjvg8XJ9fqN834vY8HyjJqVQK2VH8rl9YqN3hHh9SXL0jYVp3s9r7s5LskW8T37sB8-y10rW8-hQnL1VbT0mVqCHYq7qHJy0W8ZPPCP4dL9wSW4bJ02h4b_rKwW7MbC3c8T3zSVVtDzXp55WFbkW3-8Sdh55nSC9W1VJH714c2Rr9W7MtYb849z-4PN2MV0XLbG0m9W8W1JLS2KSp1NW2jt1653NnV4FW1nJpwv26pdfjW35ybh16SN4n9Mc2TMZNBYs8VgN1lW8q0rNGN96Lf0sc351ZVb2YJ17fn6g9VQKgdH4TKl7KN2Dx8FNWhVr7VQZsFp396NMkMTpZzVdxL6tW7ddCj_3Ppn9PW5y7nXs36MwH0MVQKwrMMdrFW7q7-Qc6jZ_YvN45Ly2MkwRPgW8j1Bvz7v563yW1BML017xRd-4W2JDMBl3hSFjWW1ny5pj6w0QV4VcxpdW6YnztmW3ygdk128GqNNW3RN-fl6PYS6cN5y8gdmdSQk9V1_P-w5LcShW111" target="_blank">15,000</a> families without electricity are traveling for hours to cut wood from forests miles away or rely on local wood delivery service, while others have resorted to burning clothes or furniture to keep warm. </p><p>The tribes are also looking to renewables: Earther reports that the Navajo Nation is working with the city of Los Angeles, a partial owner of the former plant, to create a renewable energy hub on the plant's site to help power the city and bring electricity to more tribe members. </p><h4>For a deeper dive:</h4><p><a href="https://newsletter.climatenexus.org/e2t/c/*MWkRkl1JtxzW6Tdj633VPkym0/*W714yx98h-HBfN1q4xjtFjTbr0/5/f18dQhb0SbTH8YHtvCN834vY8HyjJqVQK2VH8rl9YqW3hHh8k2P7_nXVcnTGj98kDmwW6cc-5H7nwMJHW1wYvYF6bMHT5N2JbBBCdnLWPW1q25QC654qzPW7dKZmM8qSGdvW90G7th8S3yR5VbY02S4s7X0SW1nk4sT4D5QSsW1c08qM7JCxGlW81bhDK7N_KqMW12CJpd3VKVtLW6mGYn87G222cW6pzHWB79p919W2tk5vH2z_scnW6x2RKS5-lMJcW5sSvPr4w-xtpW5TML7D2nMPhBW6rYB8_5PnbhCW5S8R3r5TfZ6SW4Jjw2v6VKVR6W47ShFK3dp4-tW5qCdpW5kgd2gW3zGwjS62g9yPW2-w3v-5h8hCZW4yDvPf4lfJh3W6NZDfB3KszDsW6vDrRf3ySs-TW82G-VB8yRlRqMrPpMvrJh2DW4kxR6D5DjW8tW4sg6JZ7nwRx9W1nyXgW2lpPhKW5mRgWy3dx7dkW4NkG663sccKWW6sb2FB5LWn3_W1Xn_92841l_QW2MC3Cp4Q-5SVW4HzlYM1BkT2h111" target="_blank">AP</a>, <a href="https://newsletter.climatenexus.org/e2t/c/*MWkRkl1JtxzW6Tdj633VPkym0/*W2zm_pH78LkYLVNPsjB6_SQQ10/5/f18dQhb0S65M2jVHPSW12hcpX4-t2_mV2xZHz2llXVwW7Zn2Rs33rx3zW8sGzf-1pSM4dW5wbk6c6KlcTrW43QXrC80MH2kW8P3dBG1xYK82N3hwVnK9N9z8W1hlfVb4DF3cQW31fT6x99LkScW6YCH612X8VcMVTXx2m5GkzBFV-kf2B7lpNrTW7_NDw33mHJVhW2LzMbk2mXtLjW7WTWk76t_KmBW2qTF1P1SnD53W5BkZ6S1K3vZSW7694pP5lP7vxW4TSlgY2Z5gvYN2lnD46k-L-jM9rSVXd6JG6W39Yb2s5CDWz3W2Gq-kB42rL7CW3kMg0M1xMxhjW81PsNf21S6CcW4nvZKx5ZZvFCW7sPDJV5dKCsCW6N6vcN6dB9ynW4RxQf46zkWNmW2QzBHX5Js1f4W1vFCKS60_k6rW27fBR84qqC0bW53BLsH65-_8DN4Z87R7wwPvFW1W0--M4P-XjZW6knztq3-PMz_W7LtYC35QyCYsW2zM0bw7csm-mW2xp4qL86YMg-W1h2vfg8sX3VTN4p2tTHvY_GgW8Nqmpz4GkFK0W3jMV4Y4gTBz6W2NYj9h8tpzw7W4ZfHkX5L0PbNW9j-YKf2QPzNKW8rDr6-9fWqh6W4jN-bt48Xg4cW7tnGpM8s7Vd5f3xrfCJ02" target="_blank">Arizona Republic</a>, <a href="https://newsletter.climatenexus.org/e2t/c/*MWkRkl1JtxzW6Tdj633VPkym0/*W40S5P490NNNFW6LpQBb3dqrrN0/5/f18dQhb0S65P2dYTs8W12N-ps1f7-VqW4_m2Fn4_cbVhV8xZ962rw0LQW2rymv11mKSVDW7x70Rf5Gj32YN1rRmSGym_sKW4PX3PM3bxykwW4hKzQB2DsdBLW4vshw28Pz1kjW61fk2J841Yp1W1-lQ1164MMbjW57pqMR2l6KwwW7l0Nnq2GmsV6VK864q5XWJkHW3w_2q42vv9CGN11N7Zf186sfTd01V2wbdB7VxFsns9hkhmdW1fv-DN61vq_JW98RVVB3ZvHYrW2fT3_86h5kBZW1ZHKRf505wMRW2NB_1w6sdznYN1jssqGW0f75W7-707k3mxRtjW9dFKK26MwDf4N7Y9lfn-DbdnW4g29sM7FPd8XN45MmJwq8tCsW8FqMr35YBcD4W8wJy8X1GQwfMW6DgGxH4-3csPW8VzHyC1TBy4YW6SKGCl8FY46GW4jyqdt3H0kTfW3jTZ5388y-bhW2-2DK06FVx-fW5Mb0PL7rlRPJW78FP_G2Hdkk2W422gwM5Y5JgjN32mdw-YxcGhW4qdxB39c8ySyW10lnpD2gPJd3W5yKRWv8Xlx8kW5t90Tv6FWs-8W99hyXN2Djm61102" target="_blank">Earther</a></p><p><em>For more </em><a href="http://ecowatch.com/climate-change-news/" target="_blank"><em>climate change</em></a><em> and </em><a href="http://ecowatch.com/business/renewables/" target="_blank"><em>clean energy</em></a><em> news, you can follow Climate Nexus on </em><a href="https://twitter.com/ClimateNexus" target="_blank"><em>Twitter</em></a><em> and </em><a href="https://www.facebook.com/ClimateNexus/" target="_blank"><em>Facebook</em></a><em>, and sign up for daily </em><a href="http://climatenexus.us4.list-manage1.com/subscribe?u=d1f5797e59060083034310930&id=7c84c08aaa" target="_blank"><em>Hot News</em></a><em>.</em></p>
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