Konso dwellings are seen near the town of Konso, Ethiopia. Bernard Gagnon / Wikimedia Commons / CC by 3.0
Indigenous people around the world have lived in concert with nature for centuries, practicing responsible land management, regenerative farming practices and water conservation.
<p>But as Indigenous populations continue to be pushed off of their lands by development, it's more important than ever to learn how their practices can counter the climate crisis.</p><p>"By ignoring what Indigenous people know about how to protect their forests, we lose potential solutions to the climate crisis. We lose time and we lose money. It is unstrategic and unethical," Marcia Nunes Macedo and Valéria Paye Pereira wrote in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/02/opinion/amazon-rainforest-fire-prevention.html#click=https://t.co/xBBOmRgcQn" target="_blank">The New York Times</a>.</p>
Controlled Fires
<p>From the Americas to the Amazon to Australia, culturally significant controlled burns have been an integral part of proactive fire management that prevents forest fires from spreading.</p><p>In one example, Karuk tribal traditions in Northern California use frequent, low-intensity fires to help restore and maintain the region's flora and fauna, according to researchers in <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-western-states-can-learn-from-native-american-wildfire-management-strategies-120731" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">The Conversation</a>. More specifically, the fires help restore grassland for elk and for making basketry. Meanwhile, smoke from summer fires provides cool temperatures for river fish.</p><p>"[Cultural burning] links back to the tribal philosophy of fire as medicine," Frank Kanawha Lake, a research ecologist with the USDA Forest Service, firefighter and Karuk descendent, told the <a href="https://www.history.com/news/native-american-wildfires" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">The History Channel</a>. "When you prescribe it, you're getting the right dose to maintain the abundance of productivity of all ecosystem services to support the ecology in your culture."</p><p>Aboriginal Australians monitor controlled fires to prevent them from damaging seedlings or soil nutrients. They also avoid burning logs or trees that house insects and animals. Furthermore, the controlled burns help to restore growth and strengthen ecosystems, <a href="https://www.yesmagazine.org/environment/2020/01/13/australia-fires-aboriginal-land-management/#:~:text=Aboriginal%20fire%20management%2C%20also%20called,and%20nutrients%20in%20the%20soil." rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Yes! Magazine</a> reported.</p><p>Over in the Amazon, the Kuikuro people in the Xingu Indigenous Territory use an elaborate system of ditches, dikes and roads to create a break that controls the spread of wildfires, according to <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/02/opinion/amazon-rainforest-fire-prevention.html#click=https://t.co/xBBOmRgcQn" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">The New York Times</a>.</p>Water Management
<p>Australia has been under a severe drought for years, <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/sydney-water-shortage-2641353372.html" target="_self">threatening Sydney's water supply</a>. As a result, the regional governments of New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia have teamed up with Aboriginal tribes to learn Indigenous water management techniques. For example, the Ngarrindjeri Nation in South Australia helped implement innovative environmental solutions during the Millennium Drought that lasted from 2001-2009.</p><p>"When Indigenous nations become sovereign partners in environmental management, the power structures and worldviews that underlie decision-making can be productively challenged... creating new solutions to pressing environmental issues," Dr. Samantha Muller, lead author of <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/1745-5871.12362" target="_blank">Indigenous sovereignties: relational ontologies and environmental management</a>, said in <a href="https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/11/191105075838.htm" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Science Daily</a>.</p><p>"Indigenous agency and governance is driving innovations in land management worldwide that provide more equitable solutions and strategic approaches to looking after the lands, waters and all living things, particularly in the face of climate change," she added.</p><p>To increase respect for water usage, Western Australia has issued <a href="https://www.watercorporation.com.au/Education/Water-in-Aboriginal-culture" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">lesson plans and instructional videos</a> about water's role in Aboriginal culture.</p>Farming and Land Management
<p><br>The efficient use of water often goes hand-in-hand with farming practices. The Konso people in East Africa have used water and land so effectively that their community is officially recognized and protected by UNESCO as a cultural heritage site. For example, <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/2158244016682292" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">one study</a> noted, "They work together to build attractive terracing landscapes and complex village compounds in addition to construction and protection of water systems. To strengthen their togetherness, they frequently use the proverb 'Living together means sharing resources.' This social cohesion is the basic underlying factor in achieving sustainability even in modern management."</p><p>Indigenous communities also use fire to clear small plots of land and strengthen their harvest. In the Amazon, communities grow cassava and then let the land lie fallow for years while farming another section. The fallow period allows the vegetation to improve and helps to prevent soil erosion. The restored land is again burned, with the ashes fertilizing the soil, <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2020/10/in-a-drier-amazon-small-farmer-and-researchers-work-together-to-reduce-fire-damage/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Mongabay</a> reported.</p><p>The idea of Indigenous land control is reinforced by Greenpeace campaigners in <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2020/10/12/to-protect-nature-bring-down-the-walls-of-fortress-conservation/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Al-Jazeera</a>. The authors explain how this transfer away from the industrial world would help meet climate goals and reduce pollution. For example, "In Mexico's Cabo Pulmo, local communities secured legal protection and are reviving marine life and livelihoods," they write.</p><p>"There is a lot of potential in providing people with the means to resist industrial expansion that is contributing to species loss, climate breakdown and deepening inequalities," they add.</p>From Your Site Articles
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Indigenous Peoples Day celebrating Los Angeles County's decision to replace Columbus Day, on October 8, 2017 in Los Angeles, California. David McNew / Getty Images
By Malinda Maynor Lowery
Increasingly, Columbus Day is giving people pause.
More and more towns and cities across the country are electing to celebrate Indigenous Peoples Day as an alternative to – or in addition to – the day intended to honor Columbus' voyages.
<p><a href="https://www.latimes.com/opinion/readersreact/la-ol-le-columbus-day-indigenous-peoples-20171014-story.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Critics of the change</a> see it as just another example of political correctness run amok – another flash point of the culture wars.</p><p><a href="https://history.unc.edu/faculty-members/malinda-maynor-lowery/" target="_blank">As a scholar of Native American history</a> – and a member of the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina – I know the story is more complex than that.</p><p>The growing recognition and celebration of Indigenous Peoples Day actually represents the fruits of a concerted, decades-long effort to recognize the role of indigenous people in the nation's history.</p>
Why Columbus?
<p>Columbus Day is a relatively new federal holiday.</p><p>In 1892, a <a href="https://www.whatsoproudlywehail.org/curriculum/the-american-calendar/proclamation-on-the-400th-anniversary-of-the-discovery-of-america-by-columbus" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">joint congressional resolution</a> prompted President Benjamin Harrison to mark the "discovery of America by Columbus," in part because of "the devout faith of the discoverer and for the divine care and guidance which has directed our history and so abundantly blessed our people."</p><p><a href="https://www.history.com/topics/westward-expansion/manifest-destinyin%20their%20conquest" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Europeans invoked God's will</a> to impose their will on indigenous people. So it seemed logical to call on God when establishing a holiday celebrating that conquest, too.</p><p>Of course, not all Americans considered themselves blessed in 1892. That same year, a lynching forced black journalist Ida B. Wells to <a href="https://daily.jstor.org/peoples-grocery-lynching/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">flee her home town of Memphis</a>. And while Ellis Island had opened in January of that year, <a href="https://www.nps.gov/elis/learn/education/upload/statistics.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">welcoming European immigrants</a>, Congress had already banned Chinese immigration <a href="https://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=false&doc=47" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">a decade prior</a>, subjecting Chinese people living in the U.S. to widespread persecution.</p><p>And then there was the government's philosophy towards the country's Native Americans, which Army Colonel Richard Henry Pratt <a href="http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/4929/" target="_blank">so unforgettably articulated in 1892</a>: "All the Indian there is in the race should be dead. Kill the Indian in him, and save the man."</p><p>It took another 42 years for Columbus Day to formally become a federal holiday, thanks to <a href="https://www.loc.gov/item/today-in-history/october-12/" target="_blank">a 1934 decree</a> by President Franklin D. Roosevelt.</p><p>He was responding, in part, to a campaign by the Knights of Columbus, a national Catholic charity founded to provide services to Catholic immigrants. Over time, <a href="https://archive.org/details/faithfraternalis00kauf" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">its agenda expanded</a> to include advocacy for Catholic social values and education.</p><p>When Italians first arrived in the United States, they were <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/The_History_of_White_People.html?id=F-GFUyty3SAC" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">targets of marginalization and discrimination</a>. Officially celebrating Christopher Columbus – an Italian Catholic – became one way to affirm <a href="https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691160825/impossible-subjects" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">the new racial order that would emerge</a> in the U.S. in the 20th century, one in which the descendants of diverse ethnic European immigrants became "white" Americans.</p>
Indigenous People Power
<p>But some Americans started to question why Indigenous people – who'd been in the country all along – didn't have their own holiday.</p><p>In the 1980s, Colorado's American Indian Movement chapter <a href="https://www.westword.com/news/colorado-the-first-state-to-give-columbus-a-holiday-considers-abolishing-it-10844725" target="_blank">began protesting the celebration of Columbus Day</a>. In 1989, activists in South Dakota persuaded the state <a href="https://www.argusleader.com/story/davidmontgomery/2014/10/13/native-american-day/17194651/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">to replace</a> Columbus Day with Native American Day. Both states have large Native populations that played active roles in the <a href="http://colorado-aim.blogspot.com/2012/10/war-on-columbus-day.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Red Power Movement</a> in the 1960s and 1970s, which sought to make American Indian people more politically visible.</p><p>Then, in 1992, at the 500th anniversary of Columbus' first voyage, American Indians in Berkeley, California, organized the first "<a href="https://www.berkeleyside.com/2017/10/09/berkeley-became-1st-city-dump-columbus-day-indigenous-peoples-day" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Indigenous Peoples' Day</a>," a holiday the city council soon formally adopted. Berkeley has since replaced its commemoration of Columbus with a celebration of indigenous people.</p><p>The holiday can also trace its origins to the United Nations. In 1977, indigenous leaders from around the world organized a United Nations conference in Geneva to promote indigenous sovereignty and self-determination. <a href="http://ipdpowwow.org/Archives_1.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Their first recommendation</a> was "to observe October 12, the day of so-called 'discovery' of America, as an International Day of Solidarity with the Indigenous Peoples of the Americas." It took another 30 years for their work to be formally recognized in the <a href="https://www.un.org/development/desa/indigenouspeoples/declaration-on-the-rights-of-indigenous-peoples.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples</a>, which was adopted in September 2007.</p>Unexpected Allies
<p>Today, cities with significant native populations, like Seattle, Portland and Los Angeles, now celebrate either Native American Day or Indigenous Peoples Day. And states like Hawaii, Nevada, Minnesota, Alaska and Maine have also formally recognized their Native populations with similar holidays. Many Native governments, like the Cherokee and Osage in Oklahoma, either don't observe Columbus Day or have replaced it with their own holiday.</p><p>But you'll also find commemorations in less likely places. Alabama <a href="https://www.al.com/news/2017/10/alabamas_weird_holiday_you_jus.html" target="_blank">celebrates Native American Day</a> alongside Columbus Day, as does North Carolina, which, with a population of over <a href="https://files.nc.gov/governor/documents/files/Indigenous%20Peoples%27%20Day.pdf" target="_blank">120,000 Native Americans</a>, has the largest number of Native Americans of any state east of the Mississippi River.</p><p>In 2018, the town of Carrboro, North Carolina, <a href="https://townofcarrboro.org/CivicSend/ViewMessage/message/69242" target="_blank">issued a resolution</a> to celebrate Indigenous Peoples Day. The resolution noted the fact that the town of 21,000 had been built on indigenous land and that it was committed to "protect, respect and fulfill the full range of inherent human rights," including those of indigenous people.</p><p>While Columbus Day affirms the story of a nation created by Europeans for Europeans, Indigenous Peoples Day emphasizes Native histories and Native people – an important addition to the country's ever-evolving understanding of what it means to be American.</p>From Your Site Articles
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Indigenous Leaders Furious After EPA Grants Oklahoma Control Over Sovereign Tribal Lands
06 October
Climate
An oil pump is seen in Glenpool, Oklahoma. roy.luck / Wikimedia Commons / CC by 2.0
By Brett Wilkins
In a little-noticed development last week that drew ire after being reported Monday, the Trump administration's EPA granted the state of Oklahoma wide-ranging environmental regulatory control on nearly all tribal lands in the state, stripping dozens of tribes of their sovereignty over critical environmental issues.
<p><em>The Young Turks</em> which first reported the news, obtained a copy of an October 1 <a href="https://documentcloud.adobe.com/link/review?uri=urn:aaid:scds:US:9c26a810-0dec-46bf-a0a7-55ca523d6ffc#pageNum=1" target="_blank">letter</a> from EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler granting a request by Republican Gov. J. Kevin Stitt for control of environmental regulations on tribal land on a wide range of issues, including:</p><ul><li>Dumping hazardous waste—including formaldehyde; mercury; lead; asbestos; toxic air pollutants; per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS); pesticides; the herbicide glyphosate, and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs)—on tribal lands. </li><li><a href="https://www.epa.gov/uic" target="_blank">Underground Injection Control</a>, the EPA's fracking permitting system. </li><li>Protecting major agricultural polluters, including large-scale factory farming operations. </li></ul>
<div id="33841" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="5a14c6042aa0d0712fe13d5eb759cef5"><blockquote class="twitter-tweet twitter-custom-tweet" data-twitter-tweet-id="1313101832315641858" data-partner="rebelmouse"><div style="margin:1em 0">The Environmental Protection Agency @EPA has stripped indigenious tribes of regulatory control over environmental i… https://t.co/w1tlxBaWtl</div> — Climate Justice Alliance (CJA) (@Climate Justice Alliance (CJA))<a href="https://twitter.com/CJAOurPower/statuses/1313101832315641858">1601902847.0</a></blockquote></div><p>Wheeler's letter acknowledges <em>McGirt v. Oklahoma,</em> in which the U.S. Supreme Court <a href="https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/07/09/holding-us-government-its-treaty-promises-once-supreme-court-rules-nearly-half" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">ruled</a> in July that much of eastern Oklahoma is Native American land. The new EPA move essentially means the state of Oklahoma now has the same rights as it did before <em>McGirt</em>. Attorney General William Barr has joined Republican leaders in <a href="https://www.kosu.org/post/us-attorney-general-visits-oklahoma-discuss-effects-scotus-ruling" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">seeking ways to undermine</a> the landmark ruling.</p>
<div id="19548" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="0db07e3f6b7e98220fdf3d2d226ca16d"><blockquote class="twitter-tweet twitter-custom-tweet" data-twitter-tweet-id="1310611113575419906" data-partner="rebelmouse"><div style="margin:1em 0">Cherokee Nation is now visible on Google Maps. It is the latest reservation added after a Supreme Court ruling in… https://t.co/G4yxXdRpJP</div> — AJ+ (@AJ+)<a href="https://twitter.com/ajplus/statuses/1310611113575419906">1601309014.0</a></blockquote></div>
<p>The fossil fuel and industrial agriculture industries wield tremendous power in Oklahoma. The state Capitol—which was built on stolen Indigenous land—sits atop a large oil field and has<a href="https://oklahoman.com/article/1974476/our-petunia-capitol-is-only-one-with-an-oil-well" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"> a working oil rig</a> on its grounds. The names of oil companies are also inscribed inside the building's dome. </p><p>The EPA policy change—which affects some 38 Native American tribes—sparked anger among Indigenous leaders.</p><p>"After over 500 years of oppression, lies, genocide, ecocide, and broken treaties, we should have expected the EPA ruling in favor of racist Gov. Stitt of Oklahoma, yet it still stings," Casey Camp-Horinek, environmental ambassador and elder and hereditary drum keeper for the Ponca Tribe of Oklahoma, told <em>TYT</em>.</p>
<p>Camp-Horinek continued:</p><blockquote>Under the Trump administration, destroying all environmental protection has been ramped up to give the fossil fuel industry life support as it takes its last dying breath. Who suffers the results? Everyone and everything! Who benefits? Trump and his cronies, climate change deniers like Gov. Stitt, Sens. [James] Inhofe and [James] Lankford, who are financially supported by big oil and gas.<br><br>I am convinced that we must fight back against this underhanded ruling. In the courts, on the frontlines and in the international courts, life itself is at stake.<br></blockquote><p>The EPA attempted to assuage tribal leaders in a September 29 <a href="https://documentcloud.adobe.com/link/review?uri=urn:aaid:scds:US:c37ccfcb-547a-475b-8105-3ab26ee9b896#pageNum=1" target="_blank">summary report</a> in which the agency vowed to adhere to federal law. However, under President Donald Trump, the agency has reversed, or is in the process of reversing, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/climate/trump-environment-rollbacks.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">over 100 environmental rules</a> governing clean air and water, toxic chemicals, and more. </p><p>The summary report notes that the EPA consulted with 13 Indigenous tribes. It also acknowledges that all of the tribes questioned the limited time and geographical scope of the consultations. </p>
<p><em>Reposted with permission from <a href="https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/10/05/indigenous-leaders-furious-after-epa-grants-oklahoma-control-over-sovereign-tribal?fbclid=IwAR0eZeGbhOeuLUIhyw6Jk3nOSDLkVHaCZ47LR2RnnDTGDg4HgjYhGo2ECvQ" target="_blank">Common Dreams</a>.</em></p>From Your Site Articles
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Native American girls from the Omaha tribe attending the Carlisle School in Pennsylvania, the first government-run boarding school for Native American children. © CORBIS / Corbis / Getty Images
Two lawmakers introduced a bill Tuesday addressing previous actions the U.S. government inflicted upon Native Americans.
The bill, authored by Rep. Deb Haaland from New Mexico and Sen. Elizabeth Warren from Massachusetts, specifically addresses the "intergenerational trauma" caused by policies that tore Native American children away from their families and sent them to boarding schools to be educated in white culture, HuffPost reported.
<p>The bill, called <a href="https://www.warren.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/The%20Truth%20and%20Healing%20Commission%20on%20Indian%20Boarding%20School%20Policy%20Act.pdf" target="_blank">The Truth and Healing Commission on Indian Boarding School Policy in the United States Act</a><em>, </em>would create a formal inquiry to document how the government's Indian boarding school policy amounted to cultural genocide as children were prevented from learning Indigenous traditions. Instead, the government forced them to assimilate into mainstream American culture.</p><p>According to HuffPost, the first-of-its-kind commission would be asked to find ways to improve the public's awareness and incorporate that into public education. That way, future generations of Americans would have a better understanding of the government's former policy and how its consequences continue to affect Native Americans.</p><p>"The Indian Boarding School Policy is a stain in America's history, and it's long overdue that justice is sought for victims of this policy who suffered unimaginable harm and thousands of Native families who remain impacted by this policy," Warren said in a <a href="https://www.warren.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/warren-haaland-introduce-bill-to-seek-healing-for-stolen-native-children-and-their-communities" target="_blank">statement</a>. "This is why I'm joining Congresswoman Deb Haaland in introducing legislation to formally investigate the past wrongs of the federal government's practices of cultural genocide and assimilation and to respond to ongoing historical and intergenerational trauma devastating tribal communities today," she added.</p>
<p>The issue hits close to home for Haaland, whose grandparents were separated from their family by the policy, HuffPost reports. She is one of only two Native American women that have ever been elected to Congress.</p><p>"Native people are resilient and strong, but the painful and traumatic history of genocide and forced assimilation by the federal government lives on in our communities and our people have never been able to fully heal," Haaland said in a <a href="https://haaland.house.gov/media/press-releases/haaland-warren-seek-healing-stolen-native-children-and-their-communities" target="_blank">statement</a>. "I know not many people are aware of the history of Indian boarding schools, and I know it's not taught in schools — but our country must do better to acknowledge our real history and push for truth and reconciliation."</p><p>The policy removed hundreds of thousands of Native American children from their families between 1869 and the 1960s — about 83 percent by 1926. The purpose of the policy was to "Kill the Indian, save the man," according to <a href="https://boardingschoolhealing.org/education/us-indian-boarding-school-history/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">The National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition</a>.</p>
<p>The children were sent to one of 367 boarding schools across 30 states, which resulted in "human rights violations including spiritual, physical, psychological, and sexual abuse and violence," Haaland and Warren said in their statements.</p><p>The timing of the bill is meant to coincide with President Trump's recent announcement that he would sign an executive order encouraging educators to teach America's greatness instead of its misdeeds and cruelty, HuffPost reported.</p><p>The bill does have bipartisan support, with two Republicans from Oklahoma co-sponsoring the bill. However, the bill's future is uncertain as Congress focuses on a new stimulus package and the upcoming election, HuffPost reported.</p>
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A protest in solidarity with the Wetʼsuwetʼen's anti-pipeline struggle, at Canada House in Trafalgar Square on March 1, 2020 in London, England. More than 200 environmental groups had their Facebook accounts suspended days before an online solidarity protest. Ollie Millington / Getty Images
Facebook suspended more than 200 accounts belonging to environmental and Indigenous groups Saturday, casting doubt on the company's stated commitments to addressing the climate crisis.
<p>The suspensions came days after Facebook launched a <a href="https://www.facebook.com/climatescienceinfo/" target="_blank">Climate Science Information Center</a> to correct widely-shared posts that spread disinformation about climate change, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/sep/22/facebook-climate-change-environment-groups-suspended?fbclid=IwAR0RFAFizQbp6B206VEU-mxSUQs0AD15d6qDEgK0LjzWr6dO_-NJlf2quhQ" target="_blank">The Guardian pointed out</a>. The same week, Facebook <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/google-facebook-climate-commitments-2647660142.html" target="_self">also pledged</a> to achieve carbon neutrality by 2030. But the activist groups expressed doubt about Facebook's priorities, saying they were locked out of their accounts days before a planned protest against a <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/fossil-fuels" target="_self">fossil fuel</a> company building a <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/pipelines" target="_self">pipeline</a> through Indigenous land.</p><p>"Actions speak louder than words and once again Facebook has taken actions that are in stark contrast to public statements from the company," senior corporate campaigner at <a href="https://secure.greenpeaceusa.org/fires-2020/?&utm_source=website&utm_medium=takeover&utm_campaign=fires_2020" target="_blank">Greenpeace USA</a> Elizabeth Jardim told The Guardian. "The recent bans targeting people fighting to save their communities from climate change and the continued exploitation of fossil fuel companies show us that when push comes to shove, Facebook will side with polluters at the cost of their users' trying to organize."</p>
<p>Greenpeace USA reported it <a href="https://www.greenpeace.org/usa/news/facebook-suspends-hundreds-of-accounts-associated-with-online-event-targeting-coastal-gaslink-pipeline/" target="_blank">was one</a> of the suspended groups, along with others including Rainforest Action Network, Presente.org and Wet'suwet'en Access Point on Gidimt'en Territory. The groups were all co-hosts of an event in May targeting the company KKR & Co. Inc., which is the new majority funder of the Coastal GasLink <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/natural-gas" target="_self">natural gas</a> pipeline that the Wet'suwet'en community <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/pipeline-blockade-british-columbia-2625969371.html" target="_self">is fighting</a> to keep off its unceded land in British Columbia. Another online protest against the company had been scheduled for Monday.</p><p>The accounts were told they were being suspended for three days for "copyright infringement," Greenpeace said.</p><p>"The timing was more than suspect," Delee Nikal, a Wet'suwet'en activist from the Gidimt'en clan, told <a href="https://www.nationalobserver.com/2020/09/21/news/facebook-suspends-then-reinstates-hundreds-accounts-linked-anti-coastal-gaslink" target="_blank">Canada's National Observer</a>. "We would like to have transparency in this situation."</p>
<p>Facebook, meanwhile, claimed the accounts were suspended by accident and had since been reinstated.</p><p>"Our systems mistakenly removed these accounts and content," a company spokesperson told the National Observer.</p><p>The company did not provide any more information about how or why the mistake was made. Most of the accounts were able to post Monday night, but some are still locked out, Greenpeace's Valentina Stackl said.</p>
<p>The suspended activists also pointed out that the social media giant has allowed right-wing groups and posts to spread false information or encourage violence without suspending them. For example, the CO2 Coalition, a group that argues carbon dioxide is beneficial, was able to bypass a Facebook fact check this month by publishing its article as opinion, The Guardian pointed out. Facebook also refused to act on complaints when a militia group used the platform to urge armed people to attend a Black Lives Matter protest in Kenosha, Wisconsin, according to the National Observer.</p><p>"We are not surprised by the actions that Facebook has taken," Nikal told Greenpeace. "This once again exposes the white supremacy inherent in the system. Videos of extreme violence, alt-right views and calls for violence by militias in Kenosha, Wisconsin, are allowed to persist on Facebook. Yet, we are banned and receive threats for permanent removal, for posting an online petition. Facebook is actively suppressing those who oppose fascism and the colonial capitalists."</p>
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Participants hold an Indigenous sovereignty banner as hundreds of protesters disrupted traffic marching on Central Park West in New York City on Oct. 14, 2019. Activist group Decolonize This Place and a citywide coalition of grassroots groups organized the fourth Anti-Columbus Day tour. Erik McGregor / LightRocket via Getty Images
By Jazmin Murphy
Whenever you talk about race relations here in so-called "America," Indigenous communities [are] always the last ones on the rung," says Wanbli Wiyan Ka'win (Eagle Feather Woman), also known as Joye Braun, a front-line community organizer with the Indigenous Environmental Network who fought against the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines. In defending the land so deeply beloved and cherished by her people, the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe, Braun recounts how actively her community is excluded from environmental work and how she and her colleagues are blatantly silenced, even when working alongside allies. "We've had to really fight … to even have a seat at the table," she says.
<p>The exclusion of Indigenous people and other non-White communities in environmental and conservation work is, unfortunately, nothing new. For centuries, conservation has been driven by Eurocentric, Judeo-Christian belief structures that emphasize a distinct separation of "Man" and "Nature" — an ideology that does not mesh well with many belief structures, including those belonging to Indigenous communities.</p>
<p>"Christianity has been largely built up around the idea of colonization," Braun says. Not only do these belief structures hold disproportionate power in environmental legislation, but they hold historical pains for those outside of Western religions. "Christianity was forced down our throats," Braun says. "Our reservations were divided up: 'OK this community … you can be Catholic. This community … you're Lutheran. This community … you're whatever.'"</p><p>Before the onset of such religion through colonialist conquests, the overwhelming consensus throughout the world was that human beings were just a small part of this natural world. Neither detached, nor superior. Of course, this "consensus" was not necessarily expressed in such a way that all groups adhered to the same belief structures. Yet, the underlying environmental ideology remains: Human beings are, to some extent, connected to all other living things on Earth, even the Earth itself. As European imperialism — and along with it, cultural genocide — began to take hold worldwide, so began the spread of the "Man versus Nature" dogma.</p><p>Today Braun's life is just one example of the ideological exclusion of non-European thought as it relates to wildlife and the natural world. Nonsubscribers are barred from participation in the protection of the world and nonhuman lives they hold so dear, which inhibits their environmental stewardship. But around the world, and especially in the United States, we are witnessing a historical push toward the dismantling of imperialism, the decentralization of power, and the welcoming of non-White, non-European values into conservation.</p>
<h3>How Modern Conservation Upholds the Superiority of Humans</h3><p>Christianity has deep, painful historical associations with the obsession of dominance. The same Bible that was used to enforce humans' domination over nature was also used to force Indigenous peoples to abandon their cultural truths for those more palatable to Europeans. This laid the foundation that continues to separate human life from nature to this day.</p><p>As the Bible states in Genesis, "Let [Man] have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over all the wild animals of the earth." We see echoes of this passage in the frameworks of many conservation objectives today, with concepts such as "creating" sustainable forests, "managing" wildlife populations, and "preserving" wilderness as a realm separate from that of humans. This reduces our perception of human connectivity to nonhuman life and to distance constituents from the objective recognition of Earth's intrinsic value.</p><p>Take one of the U.S.'s leading environmental organizations, for example. The <a href="https://www.nps.gov/aboutus/index.htm#:~:text=Follow%20Us-,Our%20Mission,of%20this%20and%20future%20generations." target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">National Park Service</a>—a federal organization with <a href="https://www.eenews.net/stories/1063447583" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">well-known racist origins</a>—has a mission statement that almost exclusively highlights the instrumental value of North America's natural lands: "The National Park Services preserves unimpaired the natural and cultural resources and values of the National Park System for the enjoyment, education, and inspiration of this and future generations … to extend the benefits of natural and cultural resources conservation … throughout this country and the world."</p><p>Their mission is painfully anthropocentric, never mind that the very lands it aims to extend were stolen from Indigenous tribes who are now denied access. Missions such as these create a nigh impenetrable ideological barrier through which environmentalists of non-Christian cultures cannot pass.</p>
<h3>Keeping POC Out of Conservation</h3><p>These organizational goals exclude other faith (or non-faith) groups and have nurtured a hostile environment that disproportionately affects people of color. Historical experiences function to reinforce these impacts, further preventing people of color from exercising agency in conservation initiatives. For one, White constituents do not live with the same generational trauma that people of color do.</p><p>Experiences rooted in genocide and slavery, for example, still inform people's experience of the outdoors. Black people were forbidden to enter certain spaces owned by the National Park Service and other natural lands because of Jim Crow laws and deeply rooted racism, <a href="https://conbio.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/conl.12431" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">as pointed out by researchers Rachelle K</a>. <a href="https://conbio.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/conl.12431" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Gould and others</a>. Many were lynched in these landscapes as well. Thus, for Black people, experiencing the outdoors was to put one's life on the line.</p><p>Simultaneously, "those in power [imposed] a particular concept of environment," Gould says, which denied Black people's experiences in natural habitats. Ideological disparities have likewise discouraged Indigenous agency in land management despite how profoundly they value land and wildlife. In the words of <a href="https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-94-017-0149-5_17" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Paula Gunn Allen of the Laguna Pueblo</a>, "The land is not really the place (separate from ourselves) where we act out the drama of our isolate destinies … It is not a matter of being 'close to nature'… The Earth is, in a very real sense, the same as our self (or selves)."</p><p>Inequality lies even in the evasiveness of definitions. "Google the word, 'environment' and see how far you need to scroll to see pictures of people in urban areas," Pomona College psychologist Adam Pearson says. "What counts as being an 'environmentalist?' And what counts as 'environmentalism?'" The vast majority of Americans believe that people of color do not feel strongly about environmental causes. Black, Latino, Asian, and White respondents <a href="https://www.pnas.org/content/115/49/12429.short" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">in a 2018 survey</a> overwhelmingly associated environmentalism with whiteness and underestimated environmental valuation in their own communities. Some 65% of Latin and 68% of Asian respondents self-identified as "environmentalists," compared to 50% of White respondents.</p>
<h3>What Equal Opportunity Actually Looks Like</h3><p>The public has long held onto the idea that the socioeconomic inequalities play a large role in a person of color's individual capacity to care for the environment when in fact, conservation organizations often create unequal socioeconomic barriers. People of color who try to enter professional roles in American conservation often encounter pay rates <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/aug/17/all-work-no-pay-the-plight-of-young-conservationists" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">below the poverty line</a> (and have done so for decades). That requires applicants to have enough accumulated wealth to be able to afford forgoing reasonable pay to "gain experience" — a luxury out of reach for many non-Whites because of <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2020/02/27/examining-the-black-white-wealth-gap/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">massive racial wealth disparities that result from long-standing discrimination</a>. Even those who fall in line with the Christian dogma are granted unequal access and compensation. Forty-nine percent of Black Christians, compared to 28% of White Christians, earn less than $30,000 annually, according to the <a href="https://www.pewforum.org/religious-landscape-study/christians/christian/racial-and-ethnic-composition/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Pew Research Center</a>.</p><p>Ideological disparities have also had clear effects on Indigenous agency in land management. For example, the United States Department of Agriculture's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Services works to combat "<a href="https://www.aphis.usda.gov/wildlife_damage/directives/pdf/1.201.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">wildlife damage</a>," the idea that wildlife poses a threat not only to human health, safety, and property, but to natural resources as well. This concept is a stark contrast to many cultures' environmental values.</p><p>How would one expect an Indigenous person, a Buddhist, or a Muslim to feel welcome in such a space? The answer lies not only in dismantling millennia of imperialism, but also in the conscious invitation of non-White, non-European cultures into conservation.</p><p>According to Pearson, this requires combating stereotypes of environmentalists and creating enthusiasm for working in traditionally noninclusive spaces. Fulfilling these responsibilities requires taking an honest look at how ideological contrasts actively exclude people of color and perpetuate a negative feedback loop that overrepresents White people in environmental and conservation spaces.</p><p>"Inviting people to advise doesn't mean that they're gonna listen," Braun notes when discussing possible methods of increasing diversity in conservation. "I've seen that a lot. That's just them patting themselves on the back." She says real progress relies on human connection. "When you are facing one another, then you're forced to deal with things like the prejudices you carry on your back. You're forced to face the potential of racism. You're forced to face the economic divides."</p>
<h3>Abandoning Exclusivity for Diverse Community-Based Management</h3><p>As climate change becomes a mainstream concern, Indigenous knowledge can reveal truths not visible with White, Eurocentric approaches to conservation. Traditional ecological knowledge is <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13280-019-01218-6" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">central to monitoring and combating climatic change</a>, according to a 2019 study in British Columbia and Alaska. "The region is a bellwether for biodiversity changes in coastal, forest, and montane environments," the authors write, and "an extremely dynamic and resilient social-ecological system where Indigenous Peoples have been adjusting to changing climate and biodiversity for millennia."</p><p>Nearly 100 Indigenous elders from communities along the Pacific Coast shared with researchers the changes they had observed in coho and sockeye salmon migration patterns and the effects of warming aquatic temperatures with great detail. They had similar observations of the Sitka black-tailed deer, highlighting that their migration patterns had been influenced by fluctuating factors such as rising temperatures and reduced snowfall. Ultimately, the researchers asserted that present environmental governance is far too rigid in its exclusivity of Indigenous knowledge and that "token community visits" must evolve to invite Native environmental observers and managers to share their knowledge to create tangible progress.</p><p>While these ideas remain nascent in much of American conservation, other countries provide examples of success. For decades, forests in Benin were exclusively owned and managed by state officials. They were supported (and thus, politically influenced) by major stakeholders including the Fondation Aide á l'Autonomie Tobé, a Swiss non-governmental organization. Though the foundation surely had the best interests of the Benin constituents in mind, their collaboration didn't represent the public's values. Those living within the Tobé-Kpobidon forest, for example, did not feel welcome in forest management, which led to unsustainable resource use and degradation of the land.</p><p>To establish newfound hope for sustainable forest management and community involvement, a team of researchers, led by Rodrigue Castro Gbedomon <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1389934116300016" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">implemented a "community forestry approach" in 2016</a>. This methodology aims to "alleviate poverty among forest users, empower them, and improve the condition of the forests." The idea was that the invitation for community involvement (and thus, agency in management decision-making processes) would nurture a sense of ownership in constituents, encouraging them toward more conservative use of forest resources, thereby creating a more sustainable existence for the forest.</p><p>The team consciously invited varying ideals and perspectives into management practices by interviewing elders and community leaders on their perspectives regarding the forest's health. Stakeholders included nongovernmental organization leaders, and traditional and religious authorities that led and guided the surrounding communities. Divinity priests were invited as well, representing deities revered by the locals, including Ogu (the god of iron), Tchankponon (the god of smallpox), Otchoumare (the god of the rainbow), and Nonon (the god of bees). First Settlers and local hunters were also given authority in this work, serving to extend the network of participation deeply into every facet of the residents surrounding and within the Tobé-Kpobidon forest.</p><p>This decentralization of power and integration of diverse belief structures was supported by the foundation, which provided the financial resources and the means for reinforcement of the constituents' chosen management policies. This included warning signs indicating forest boundaries and guards to manage entry into the area. The foundation also rewarded locals' involvement with a yearly stipend of 500,000 FCA ($1,000) to further encourage their continued dedication to conservation activities.</p><p>This new governance structure yielded phenomenal results. As community access to the forest expanded for medicinal gathering, hunting, beekeeping, and more, the forest's contribution to the local economy increased to make up more than 25% of the First Settlers' income. Also, the native flora experienced a "progressive evolution" alongside a healthy, low rate of human agricultural interference. (Cashew plantations, for example, expanded at only 0.4% annually). This community-focused approach continued to have positive effects on the forest in the years after the study.</p><p>The Tobé-Kpobidon Forest experimental management approach, along with the extensive foundation of evidence validating Indigenous knowledge, serve as a beacon of hope amid the darkness that looms over non-White, non-European demographics that yearn for a role in conservation initiatives. It demonstrates that the present ideological chasms that keep people of color out of conservation can be defeated and that such cultural victories powerfully serve both humans and the natural landscapes in which we reside.</p>
<p><em>Reposted with permission from <a href="https://www.yesmagazine.org/environment/2020/09/15/conservation-decolonize-environmentalism/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+yes/most-recent-articles+(YES!+Magazine+Most+Recent+Articles)" target="_blank">YES! Magazine</a>.</em><br/></p>From Your Site Articles
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An aerial view captures the Amazon Rainforest in Brazil. ubasi / Wikimedia Commons / CC by 2.0
The Uru-Eu-Wau-Wau are a tribe of less than 300 people in the Brazilian Amazon Rainforest who first came into contact with people outside their community in the early 1980s, according to the Povos Indigenas No Brasil. While they still maintain many of their tribal ways, they and other tribes have recently begun using modern drones to detect and fight illegal deforestation in their territory.
<p>"Nature is everything to us," Awapy Uru-Eu-Wau-Wau told <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/01/americas/amazon-drones-brazil-deforestation-cte-spc-intl/index.html" target="_blank">CNN</a>. "It is our life, our lungs, our hearts. We don't want to see the jungle chopped down. If you chop it all down, it will definitely be hotter, and there won't be a river, or hunting, or pure air for us."</p><p>Awapy is a member of the Uru-Eu-Wau-Wau tribe. Last December, he and other young leaders from six Indigenous communities learned how to operate drones to track deforestation, <a href="https://interestingengineering.com/amazon-tribes-use-drones-to-watch-over-the-forest" target="_blank">Interesting Engineering</a> reported. The training was held by <a href="https://www.wwf.org.uk/philanthropy/forests#the-heart-of-the-amazon" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">World Wildlife Federation</a> (WWF) and the <a href="https://www.devex.com/organizations/associacao-de-defesa-etnoambiental-kaninde-kaninde-104815" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Kanindé Ethno-Environmental Defense Association</a>, a local NGO dedicated since 1992 to protecting the Uru-Eu-Wau-Wau and the environment in their home state of Rondônia, Brazil.</p><p>"They really accepted the technology with open arms, and really started to use it," WWF Brazil Senior Conservation Analyst Felipe Spina Avino told CNN.</p>
<p>Avino added that the Indigenous trainees became hooked when they realized they could see the forest from above and <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/indigenous-people-amazon-2645327056.html?rebelltitem=7#rebelltitem7" target="_self">keep patrol over much greater areas than ever before</a>.</p><p>According to CNN, the Uru-Eu-Wau-Wau tribal lands lie within a roughly 7,000-square-mile protected area of dense jungle that can be difficult to traverse and monitor on foot. Drones allow them to cover more territory faster and avoid potentially dangerous confrontations with loggers, miners and land-grabbers.</p><p>Within the first month of drone surveillance, the tribe discovered an area of about 494 acres being illegally deforested within their reserve, <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-brazil-forest-drones-feature/flying-high-brazilian-tribe-keeps-watch-over-forest-with-drones-idUSKBN20S1N8" target="_blank">Reuters</a> reported. Days later, a helicopter spread grass seed on the plot, indicating that the land would be used for cattle pasture; Awapy's team caught it all on drone video, reported CNN.</p>
<p>"The technology today, for territorial monitoring, is very worthwhile," said Bitate, a 19 year old from Awapy's tribe who was also trained in drone operation, reported Reuters. "Without a drone, that deforestation — which was already advanced — would still be unknown to us."</p><p>They called FUNAI, the Brazilian governmental agency in charge of Indigenous affairs, to stop the illegal land-grab, supplying video evidence and GPS coordinates, but the latter did not respond before the destruction was done, reported Reuters. Awapy hopes technology will help tribes stop deforestation sooner, as it is already too late once trees have been felled and burned, Reuters reported.</p><p>So far, the WWF-Kaninde project has donated 19 drones costing around $2,000 each to 18 organizations focused on the Amazon, Interesting Engineering reported.</p>
<p>Aerial drones have been used by Indigenous peoples in Ecuador, Peru and other places for about three years after becoming more affordable, reported Reuters. The images illustrate the damage of deforestation.</p><p>"Seeing the extent of deforestation from above is much more impactful than standing in the middle of it," Jessica Webb, senior manager for global engagement with Global Forest Watch told Reuters.</p><p>The high-resolution images, video and GPS mapping data from drones can also be submitted in court as evidence of illegal activities, CNN reported. Drones are likely to become more widespread as technology advances allow for longer range and stronger batteries.</p>
<p>"The key is not to think of the technology as a silver bullet," Webb told CNN, advocating to pair the new technology with Indigenous knowledge to create more powerful protections for the forest.</p><p>Keeping remaining rainforest intact is crucial to slow global warming since trees act as a carbon sink. Conservation also protects the Amazon's rich biodiversity, and is critical to food security, water services and the preservation of Indigenous cultures, noted WWF.</p><p>Despite this, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/brazil-amazon-deforestation-coronavirus-2645950493.html" target="_self">consistently pushes to develop Indigenous lands</a> and allow mining and commercial farming to deforest the Amazon. Last year, the <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/amazon-rainforest-fire-invisible-damage-2647014608.html" target="_self">Brazilian Amazon suffered its highest level of deforestation since 2008</a>, with this year poised to become worse, WWF reported.</p><p>Awapy and his team have faced death threats from illegal loggers and land-grabbers for their work protecting the forest, CNN reported, but they remain determined to use this new technology to protect their home for future generations.</p><p>"My hope is that while I am alive, I want to see the jungle standing, the jungle intact. That is my hope," Awapy told CNN.</p>
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Mining Company CEO Forced to Resign After Blasting of 46,000-Year-Old Aboriginal Site
11 September
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Western Australia's Juukan Gorge has been home to a sacred site to local Indigenous peoples for over 46,000 years. In May of 2020, the site was destroyed in an explosion designed to expand a nearby iron ore mine. About the House: the official channel of the Australian House of Representatives
The chief executive officer and two senior executives are being forced out of the mining giant Rio Tinto several months after investors started to revolt over the company's destruction of an ancient aboriginal rock shelter, according to CNN.
<p>CEO Jean-Sebastian Jacques will leave in March 2021, while two senior executives, Chris Salisbury, iron ore chief executive, and Simone Nieven, head of corporate relations who had the responsibility of handling relations with Indigenous communities, will leave at the end of 2020, according to <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/isabeltogoh/2020/09/11/ceo-of-one-of-the-worlds-largest-mining-companies-forced-to-resign-over-destruction-of-sacred-indigenous-site/#790943ed412a" target="_blank">Forbes</a>.</p><p>The 48-year-old chief executive is being forced out after investors listened to a continuing outcry from the Indigenous people of Australia who were horrified that Rio Tinto would trounce upon their sacred ground and blast away the ancient Juukan Gorge rock shelters, two culturally significant rock shelters in Western Australia's Pilbara region. Despite knowing the importance of the grounds to the the Puutu Kunti Kurrama and Pinikura people, Rio Tinto blasted the site in order to mine a better quality of iron ore, according to <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/sep/11/rio-tinto-ceo-senior-executives-resign-juukan-gorge-debacle-caves" target="_blank">The Guardian</a>.</p>
<p>The company's board responded to the move by cutting executive pay and stripping the three executives of $7 million in bonuses, but investors lined up to denounce that penalty as inadequate.</p><p>"There were certainly some shareholders who felt strongly that the accountability was inappropriate and that this was an issue that needed to be addressed to rebuild trust," said Rio Tinto Chairman Simon Thompson to <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/business/companies/rio-tinto-ceo-top-executives-resign-amid-cave-blast-crisis-20200910-p55uf8.html" target="_blank">The Sydney Morning Herald</a>.</p><p>"While there is general recognition of the transparency of the board review and support for the changes recommended, significant stakeholders have expressed concerns about executive accountability for the failings identified," the company said in a statement, as The Guardian reported.</p>
<p>The wanton destruction of the site has shed light on the remarkable power the mining industry has over sacred, traditional lands. It has shown the need for greater legal guarantees to make sure heritage sites are protected.</p><p>A spokesperson for the Puutu Kunti Kurrama and Pinikura people told The Sydney Morning Herald, "Our focus continues to rest heavily on preserving Aboriginal heritage and advocating for wide-ranging changes to ensure a tragedy like this never happens again. We cannot and will not allow this type of devastation to occur ever again."</p><p>Among the prominent shareholders to express their misgivings were several large Australian investment funds and a group of 81 British pension funds. Also, the National Native Title Council in Australia said the board was divorced from reality in thinking that the pay cuts were somehow just punishment for destroying a 46,000-year-old site, according to The Sydney Morning Herald.</p>
<p>"There is more work to be done," said Jamie Lowe, chief executive for the National Native Title Council, as The Guardian reported. "The law needs to be strengthened. We can't rely on the goodwill of mining companies, we need the law strengthened. We can't rely on their word that things will get better."</p><p>"What happened at Juukan was wrong," Thompson said Friday to The Sydney Morning Herald. "We are determined to ensure the destruction of a heritage site of such exceptional archaeological and cultural significance never occurs again at a Rio Tinto operation."</p><p>Ian Silk, the chief executive of Australia's biggest superannuation fund, AustralianSuper, said that he was "satisfied that appropriate responsibility has now been taken by executives at Rio Tinto," according to The Guardian,</p><p>"Rio can now work with traditional owners to guarantee that its processes are appropriate for the protection of culturally important sites and that it has the right internal accountabilities," he added, as The Guardian reported.</p>
<p>Additionally, the Australian Center for Corporate Responsibility applauded Friday's announcement as an end to the "dishonest malaise of Rio Tinto's board and senior management," according to The Guardian.</p><p>While the news of the executives departing is welcome, the institutional investors who have the clout to spur action within the company said the company would have to take steps to repair its relationship with Australia's Indigenous people.</p><p>"Rio Tinto now has the opportunity to address the necessary remediation, cultural heritage and risk processes with fresh eyes," said Louise Davidson, chief executive of the Australian Council of Superannuation Investors, which advises 38 large super funds on governance issues, to The Guardian.</p><p>"Rio Tinto must prioritise working with traditional owners the Puutu Kunti Kurrama and Pinikura people to rebuild their relationship. It is critical that this is not delayed," she added.</p>
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Yasuni Man follows Otobo Baihua, a Waorani man who lives in the Yasuni community of Boanamo in Ecuador's Amazon. ©Ryan P. Killackey / Pollywog Productions
Among its many devastating impacts, the coronavirus has brought ecotourism to a halt in the Ecuadorian Amazon. But you can still visit the region from the safety of your couch, while supporting its Indigenous communities, by streaming Yasuni Man.
<p>The award-winning documentary transports viewers to the<a href="https://en.unesco.org/biosphere/lac/yasuni" target="_blank"> Yasuni Biosphere Reserve</a>, an imperiled pocket of the Ecuadorian<a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/Amazon-rainforest" target="_self"> Amazon</a> that is one of the most biodiverse places on Earth. After touring the festival circuit for about two years, the film made its debut on major streaming services Aug. 25. If you watch <em>Yasuni Man</em> within the first two weeks of its release, a percentage of the proceeds benefit the<a href="http://www.amazonemergencyfund.org/" target="_blank"> Amazon Emergency Fund</a> to help the region's<a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/indigenous" target="_self"> Indigenous</a> communities fight COVID-19.</p><p><em>Y</em><em>asuni Man</em> tells the story of Ecuador's Indigenous Waorani people and their fight to protect the area of rainforest they call home. The film follows Director Ryan Patrick Killackey as he visits the home of a Waorani man named Otobo Baihua and his family in the Yasuni community of Boanamo.</p><p><span></span>The movie alternates between telling the complex history of Yasuni and showing unprecedented footage of daily Waorani life. Killackey's camera follows Baihua and his family as they hunt for monkeys with blow darts, grind yuca to make a drink called chicha and introduce visiting scientists to the<a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/wildlife" target="_self"> wildlife</a> in their backyard.</p>
<p>But Yasuni is also home to <a href="https://phys.org/news/2016-09-ecuador-oil-amazon-nature-reserve.html" target="_blank">more than 40 percent of Ecuador's oil reserves,</a> and the film details the conflict between fossil fuel companies, the Ecuadorian government and different communities of Waorani over the future of this unique ecosystem.</p><p>As the forest and its inhabitants face new threats from<a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/fossil-fuel" target="_self"> fossil fuel</a> extraction and the coronavirus pandemic, Killackey says the film is more relevant than ever. <br></p><p>"I actually don't think <em>Yasuni Man</em> will ever become irrelevant because our global community is not taking steps to stop the crisis that's happening in Yasuni and other biodiverse places," Killackey told EcoWatch. </p><p><em>Yasuni Man</em> was filmed over five expeditions between 2011 and 2016, but Killackey said not much had changed since then in terms of the underlying pressures on the reserve and its inhabitants. However, Ecuador's<a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/oil-spill-time-coronavirus-200710101154552.html" target="_blank"> worst oil spill in decades</a> and the spread of the coronavirus have made the reserve's fate all the more urgent.</p>
<p>The oil spill occurred April 7, when a landslide ruptured three<a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/pipelines" target="_self"> pipelines</a> along the Coca River, dumping 15,800 barrels of crude oil into the water. The spill eventually reached the Napo River that borders Yasuni. The contamination of water and wildlife made it harder for Indigenous communities throughout Ecuador to protect themselves from the coronavirus as it interfered with their ability to sustain themselves in isolation.<br></p>
<p>"What should you do in case of a fire during a tornado?" scholars<a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/profile/manuela-picq.html" target="_blank"> Manuela Picq</a> and<a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/profile/eduardo-kohn.html" target="_blank"> Eduardo Kohn</a> wrote of the dilemma faced by Ecuador's Indingeous communities in the wake of the spill. "Leave the building or stay inside?"</p><p>In addition to threatening Indigenous health and compounding the impact of the oil spill, Killackey explained that the coronavirus has had two other negative effects on Yasuni. First, the pandemic has ended ecotourism across Ecuador, but fossil fuel extraction continues. The former removes a major source of employment for Yasuni's Indigenous people and gives them little choice but to seek work with the oil companies or participate in bushmeat hunting or logging.</p>
<p>Second, the pandemic has made it more difficult for larger nonprofits and smaller grassroots organizations to monitor the oil companies on the ground. Satellite images published by<a href="https://www.amazonconservation.org/2020-itt-yasuni/" target="_blank"> Amazon Conservation</a> revealed that construction began on a new oil road in Yasuni in March. This was especially concerning because the road moved closer to the "Intangible Zone," a part of the reserve set aside for the Tagaeri and Taromenane, two Waorani clans living in voluntary isolation.<br></p>
<p>"Yasuni is like this microcosm," Killackey told EcoWatch. "You can just look at this little beautiful gem of a forest and see all of these crises happening very clearly."</p><p>Since the images were published, construction on the road has ceased. But the incident reveals the ways in which companies across the Amazon are taking advantage of the pandemic.</p>
<p>"Development is not stopping," Killackey said. "And this whole crisis with coronavirus is actually probably helping many of these major corporations and these banks to be able to go in there and exploit the natural resources and exploit the people."<br></p>
<p>Killackey hopes the film will raise awareness of the pressures on Yasuni and provide advocates with the tools to help preserve it.</p><p>"Really I think the most important thing you can do is educate an audience and try to make them feel a bond and a connection with a place and a people," Killackey said.</p><p>As part of that educational project, Killackey, a wildlife biologist by training, brought a team of scientists to Boanamo to survey the<a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/biodiversity" target="_self"> biodiversity</a> in Otobo Baihua's community and filmed their research as part of the documentary. The survey resulted in eight scientific studies, two of which, on<a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/323483191_Rapid_inventory_preliminary_annotated_checklist_and_breeding_records_of_the_birds_Aves_of_the_Boanamo_indigenous_community_Orellana_Province_Ecuador" target="_blank"> birds</a> and<a href="https://www.degruyter.com/view/journals/mamm/ahead-of-print/article-10.1515-mammalia-2019-0144/article-10.1515-mammalia-2019-0144.xml" target="_blank"> mammals</a>, have already been published in peer-reviewed journals.</p>
<p>Among other finds, the team discovered a previously undescribed species of fish and two seemingly identical frogs in the genus <em>Pristimantis </em>that were actually distinct species<em>.</em><br></p><p style="">Killackey and his team said it was important to document and showcase the biological richness of Yasuni so that people would know what was there and be motivated to protect it.</p><p style="">"Very few Ecuadorians are truly aware of the biodiversity we have, specially about fishes, and its importance," Cecilia Puertas-Donoso, an ichthyologist featured in the film, said in an email. "That is something we should be proud of, and eager to preserve. I would like to tell them this phrase I read somewhere, that 'Destroying the Amazon to extract oil is like making a hole in the Sistine Chapel to remove stones.'"</p><p style="">You can stream <em>Yasuni Man</em> on<a href="https://play.google.com/store/movies/details/Yasuni_Man?id=DzYRWAUEknE.P&hl=en" target="_blank"> GooglePlay</a>,<a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/video/detail/B08CVRTWBF/ref=atv_dp_share_cu_" target="_blank"> Amazon</a>,<a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/movie/yasuni-man/id1523042123?ls=1" target="_blank"> iTunes</a> or<a href="https://vimeo.com/ondemand/yasuniman" target="_blank"> Vimeo</a>.</p>
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Maisa Guajajara, march of indigenous women, Brasilia, 2019. Marquinho Mota / FAOR
By Rosamaria Loures and Sarah Sax
On an early December morning last year in the state of Maranhão, Brazil, half a dozen members of the Indigenous Guajajara people packed their bags with food, maps and drone equipment to get ready for a patrol. They said goodbye to their children, uncertain when, or whether, they would see them again. Then, they hoisted their bags over their shoulders and set out to patrol a section of the 173,000 hectares (428,000 acres) of the primary rainforest they call home.
<p>This is the Caru Indigenous Territory, where the Amazon peters out toward the northeastern coast of Brazil, and it contains some of the last stretches of intact, contiguous forest in Maranhão. It is also under increasing threat: this part of Brazil has been ravaged by some of the country's highest rates of deforestation and land conflicts over the past decade. Patrols led by Indigenous groups like theirs, known often by the moniker of "Forest Guardians," have been instrumental in enforcing protections and preventing loggers from entering Indigenous territories. Patrols and their enforcement tactics, which have been ramping up over the past decade, have also resulted in community members being threatened, attacked, and killed — as in the case of Paulo Paulino <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2019/11/guardian-of-the-forest-ambushed-and-murdered-in-brazilian-amazon/" target="_blank">Guajajara</a> last year, who was murdered in a neighboring Indigenous territory.</p><p>But members of the patrol that set out through the forest last December don't call themselves guardians; they prefer warriors. And they differ in one other notable aspect: they are all women.</p>
<img lazy-loadable="true" src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMzU5NDQwMy9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYzNDQ1MTIzMX0.AkVqG_3D6cdcY7NHyt2UXYTSb0Ofr1JSye0mjWlQw6w/img.jpg?width=980" id="0a47f" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="7c5fba3813d842215435c6180ee9d5e4" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" />
Women warrior Rosilene Guajajara sits in her home village. Sarah Shenker / Survival
<p>"Why did we take the initiative? Because we are mothers. If we don't act, there would be no forest standing," said Paula Guajajara, one of the "women warriors of the forest," in a public event last year.</p><p>Called <em>guerreiras da floresta</em> in Portuguese, this is the name these women have given themselves. They are in many ways an embodiment of what policymakers, politicians and scholars around the world say is a necessary shift toward gender equality in environmental movements. And they are contributing not just womanpower to the patrols — they are also helping to diversify the tactics and forge new partnerships.</p><p>In Brazil in particular, where protecting intact forests is one of the cheapest, easiest and most effective solutions for<a href="https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rstb.2019.0126" target="_blank"> combating climate change</a>, the work they are doing is literally saving the world.</p><span style="display:block;position:relative;padding-top:56.25%;" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="244a0eac1110c46f755b64bd798f35ac"><iframe lazy-loadable="true" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/QqKrthJmcN0?rel=0" width="100%" height="auto" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" style="position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;"></iframe></span>
Creating a Space and Finding Their Voice
<p>Actively patrolling their land for invaders is nothing new to the Guajajara; Indigenous people have more than 500 years of experience in this. Today, they use satellite technology and coordinate efforts with outside law enforcement to achieve their goals. This approach is relatively new, but its use has been on the rise in recent years.</p><p>"Across the country more of these groups are forming because of government inaction — or worse, because the government is actively trying to exploit their lands," Sarah Shenker, campaign coordinator for Survival International's <a href="https://www.survivalinternational.org/uncontactedtribes" target="_blank">Uncontacted Tribes team</a>, said in an interview. These groups are primarily men, although women are sometimes included in the patrols. But according to Shenker, as well as other experts interviewed for this article, to have "forest guardian" groups made up solely of women is unique.</p><p>The women warriors were formed six years ago, an offshoot of a program developed by Indigenous organizations and the Brazilian government and implemented by the Ministry of the Environment to enhance the territorial and cultural protection of Indigenous people, called Projeto Demonstrativo de Povos Indígenas (PDPI) in Portuguese. At the time, the predominantly male forest guardians were attempting to end illegal logging and the sale of wood from their territory — a task that was proving extremely difficult. Seeing this, the women stepped in and formed their own group consisting originally of 32 women.</p><p>"In order not to let the project end, we, the Guajajara women, entered and took over the project," Cícera Guajajara da Silva, one of the women warriors, said in an interview.</p><p>But the path to being taken seriously and treated as equals has been long.</p><p>"To seek partnership, we walked, talked, slept on the floor — all in order to seek improvement for our community," Paula Guajajara said, recalling the initial difficulty in being heard and taken seriously inside and outside of the communities. Their patience has paid off, and the women are quick to point out the support and close collaboration of the male forest guardians that has allowed them to combat the greater goal of stopping illegal logging. "Today we have the women warriors who work together with the forest guardians," Paula Guajajara said. "We've already evicted a lot of loggers. If we hadn't acted, there would be no forest standing."</p><p>Many of the married women had already been acting independently, accompanying their husbands in some activities, according to Gilderlan Rodrigues da Silva, the Maranhão coordinator of the Indigenous Missionary Council (CIMI), a Catholic Church-affiliated organization, who has worked with the women warriors. "But, from the moment they created the women's group, they gained strength and visibility," he said in an interview. "Once they were formed, there was this very strong change. Both in the context of decreasing the invasions and waking up to the collective awareness to protect the territory."</p>The Direct and Indirect Impacts of Greater Inclusion
<p>The results are clearly visible. In 2018, there was only 63 hectares (156 acres) of deforestation in the reserve, compared to 2016, when deforestation reached a high of 2,000 hectares (4,940 acres), according to <a href="https://www.globalforestwatch.org/map/country/BRA/10?analysis=eyJzaG93RHJhdyI6ZmFsc2V9&mainMap=eyJzaG93QW5hbHlzaXMiOnRydWUsImhpZGVMZWdlbmQiOmZhbHNlfQ%3D%3D&map=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%3D&mapPrompts=eyJzdGVwc0tleSI6InJlY2VudEltYWdlcnkiLCJzdGVwc0luZGV4IjowLCJvcGVuIjpmYWxzZSwic3RlcEluZGV4IjowLCJmb3JjZSI6dHJ1ZX0%3D&menu=eyJkYXRhc2V0Q2F0ZWdvcnkiOiJsYW5kVXNlIiwibWVudVNlY3Rpb24iOiIiLCJzZWxlY3RlZENvdW50cmllcyI6WyJCUkEiXX0%3D&treeLoss=eyJpbnRlcmFjdGlvbiI6e319" target="_blank">Global Forest Watch.</a> "The biggest achievement I see today in my village is because of the territorial protection, there are no loggers within our territory, and we managed to combat the sale of wood," Cícera Guajajara da Silva said.</p><p>The women's association has also been instrumental in connecting with other Indigenous groups similarly seeking to protect their territories, such as the Ka'apor, Awa-Guaja, and other Guajajara communities.</p><p>"There are 16 Indigenous territories in Maranhão — we have to seek unity to move forward in our struggle," said Maísa Guajajara, one of the original women warriors. Through coordination with other women's groups, like the Articulation of Indigenous Women of Maranhão (AMIMA), they were able to <a href="http://www.funai.gov.br/index.php/comunicacao/noticias/4678-amima-realiza-i-encontro-de-articulacao-de-mulheres-indigenas-do-maranhao?highlight=WyJwcm90ZVx1MDBlN1x1MDBlM28iLCJ0ZXJyaXRvcmlhbCIsInByb3RlXHUwMGU3XHUwMGUzbyB0ZXJyaXRvcmlhbCJd" target="_blank">bring 200 </a>Indigenous women from around the state together for the first time in 2017 to talk about various issues, including territorial protection, reforestation, and environmental education.</p><p>"This whole movement is extremely important because it shows this strength, and that women have a lot to contribute to the movement because they are part of the territory and are concerned with it, and with future generations," Rodrigues da Silva told Mongabay.</p><p>They don't just coordinate with other Indigenous groups; they also conduct training with neighboring communities about the importance of environmental conservation. "Not all women do surveillance work because we know it is dangerous work, but there are always some who do," Maísa Guajajara said. "The warriors generally do more surveillance activities outside the territory, we give lectures around our territory to talk about the invasions within our territory, and we raise awareness in the villages by talking about the importance of keeping nature standing." For example, the women warriors are partners in the Mãe D'água (Mother of Water) project that, together with the Brazilian NGO Fórum da Amazônia Oriental (FAOR), provides support for Indigenous women to strengthen their collective actions against ongoing deforestation and water pollution. These actions include visits to nearby riverine communities in which the women warriors explain their ways of living, such as hunting and rituals, to their neighbors. For the women warriors, the more that their neighbors know about Guajajara culture, the more they will respect their actions to defend their territory.</p>Why Women Are Key to Forest Conservation
<p>In Brazil, and around the world, <a href="https://catarinas.info/43-mulheres-indigenas-do-brasil-e-da-america-latina-para-se-inspirar/" target="_blank">Indigenous women</a> are increasingly at the forefront of environmental movements.</p><p>"The struggle of Indigenous women happens in different ways, day by day. If I am here today, I am the fruit of the women who came in front of me," Taynara Caragiu Guajajara, a member of the Indigenous women's collective AMIMA, said during a live online event in April. "In the context of the world we live in today, we have been conquering space inside and outside the community. We Indigenous women have not always had that voice … but today the struggle is driven by Indigenous women, we are the ones who are in charge of the struggle."</p><img lazy-loadable="true" src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMzU5NDQyNS9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYwODU3Mzg3Nn0.tOmJ5rRpzd5YHOVbW4gkCJgwoSCeIi9bz-X-VzNa77E/img.jpg?width=980" id="bf09d" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="c9fd70128e206770b386d470cdc4f733" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" />
Maisa Guajajara, march of indigenous women, Brasilia, 2019. Marquinho Mota / FAOR
<p>Women are increasingly leading the struggle on issues like climate change, but <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2019/02/gender-bias-persists-international-reporting-atlantic/582235/" target="_blank">their voices are heard much less often then men's </a>— to the detriment of everyone. This is partially a byproduct of <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2019/02/gender-bias-persists-international-reporting-atlantic/582235/" target="_blank">gender bias</a> in <a href="https://www.fastcompany.com/90401548/theres-a-gender-crisis-in-media-and-its-threatening-our-democracy" target="_blank">journalism itself</a>.</p><p>In 2015, of every four people interviewed, mentioned or seen in the news worldwide, only one was a woman, according to a report by the <a href="http://whomakesthenews.org/gmmp" target="_blank">Global Media Monitoring Project</a>, which releases its findings every five years. A closer look at the data shows that even when women are interviewed, it is for personal quotes, rather than for their expertise. It's a figure that <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2019/02/gender-bias-persists-international-reporting-atlantic/582235/" target="_blank">seems to have barely budged</a> over the past few years, although some newsrooms are starting to actively change that.</p><p>Studies show that, in general, women receive <a href="https://niemanreports.org/articles/where-are-the-women/" target="_blank">greater exposure in newspaper</a> sections led by female editors, as well as in newspapers whose editorial boards have higher female representation. But men are <a href="https://www.poynter.org/business-work/2017/women-dominate-journalism-schools-but-newsrooms-are-still-a-different-story/" target="_blank">disproportionately represented</a> from editors through to reporters, meaning that critical issues for women often go unreported. One of these areas is precisely the connection between conservation solutions and gender equality.</p><p>Women are disproportionately affected by climate change and <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2020/01/30/asia/environment-gender-violence-study-intl-hnk/index.html" target="_blank">environmental degradation</a>. <a href="https://www.unenvironment.org/resources/report/global-gender-and-environment-outlook-ggeo" target="_blank">Mounting evidence </a>shows that gender gaps and inequalities, such as inequitable land tenure and women's reduced access to energy, water and sanitation facilities, negatively impact human and environmental well-being. The climate crisis will only make <a href="https://www.unwomen.org/en/digital-library/publications/2020/03/womens-rights-in-review" target="_blank">gender disparities worse</a>.</p><p><a href="https://justassociates.org/sites/justassociates.org/files/jass_mch6._rethinking_protection_power_movements_4.pdf" target="_blank">Gender-based violence</a> against women environmental human rights defenders in particular is <a href="http://im-defensoras.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/283951300-Informe-2012-2014-de-Agresiones-contra-Defensoras-de-DDHH-en-Mesoamerica.pdf" target="_blank">on the</a> <a href="https://defenddefenders.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/FINAL-REPORT_pdf-3-1.pdf" target="_blank">rise</a>, and increasingly <a href="https://justassociates.org/sites/justassociates.org/files/jass_mch6._rethinking_protection_power_movements_4.pdf" target="_blank">normalized</a> in both public and private spheres, making it more difficult for women to get justice. As Indigenous communities are often on the front lines of defending their territories, resources and rights from extractive projects and corporate interests, Indigenous women in particular face a two-headed beast of gender-based violence and racism.</p><p>"We fought to defend our territory against invasions and we sought this autonomy to fight for rights," Taynara Caragiu Guajajara said in an interview. "Being a woman is difficult within the macho society, but being an Indigenous or black woman becomes even more difficult, because the prejudice is so great."</p><p>Having more women involved in everything from environmental decision-making to climate politics benefits society at large. <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-019-0438-4" target="_blank">Higher female </a>participation in policymaking increases the equality and effectiveness of climate policy interventions;<a href="https://hdr.undp.org/sites/default/files/reports/271/hdr_2011_en_complete.pdf" target="_blank"> evidence</a> shows that high gender inequality is correlated with higher rates of deforestation, air pollution and other measures of environmental degradation.</p><p>Yet <a href="https://www.greengrants.org/what-we-do/womens-environmental-action/" target="_blank">less than 1% </a>of international philanthropy goes to women's environmental initiatives, and women are continuously<a href="https://genderandenvironment.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/CI-REPORT.pdf" target="_blank"> left out </a>of decisions about land and <a href="https://www.wri.org/publication/making-womens-voices-count" target="_blank">environmental resources</a>.</p><p>"The global community cannot afford to treat nature conservation and the fight for women's equality as separate issues — they must be addressed together," <a href="https://www.iucn.org/news/secretariat/202003/iucn-acting-director-generals-statement-international-womens-day-2020" target="_blank">said</a> Grethel Aguilar, the acting director-general of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), on international women's day this year.</p><img lazy-loadable="true" src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMzU5NDM3NS9vcmlnaW4ucG5nIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY0NjM5NDE0Mn0.n5vyjCQm5G8uiinRRX4wi_9jSlqmueI3r2KcvjUDYAk/img.png?width=980" id="50e14" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="15ca14a4768bfb8892e12430cdbe467a" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" />
Map of Maranhão state in northeastern Brazil.
Why the Fight for Indigenous Territorial Rights in Brazil Matters to Conservation
<p>Tracking tree cover loss in Maranhão over the past two decades shows the crucial importance of Indigenous territories in protecting intact forest. Viewed from space, as the forest cover rapidly disappears, the outlines of Indigenous territories become more and more distinct.</p><p>"These Indigenous territories are islands of green in a sea of deforestation in one of the worst deforested places in Brazil," Shenker said.</p><p>The Caru Indigenous Territory, for example, has seen 4% forest loss in comparison to the state of Maranhão, which has lost almost a quarter of its tree cover since 2000, according to Global Forest Watch data. Alongside the various other benefits that come with forest preservation, the forests in the Caru Indigenous Territory are also home to some of the last uncontacted Awá people; video of of two Awá men taken in the neighboring Araribóia Indigenous Territory <a href="https://www.survivalinternational.org/news/12171" target="_blank">made international headlines last year</a>.</p><p>These patches of intact, tropical forests are also the crux of "natural climate solutions" protection. These solutions essentially entail stopping deforestation, improving management of forests, and restoring ecosystems, and could provide more than one-third of the cost-effective climate mitigation needed between now and 2030 to stabilize warming to below 2° Celsius (3.6° Fahrenheit).</p><p>According to one of the seminal <a href="https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rstb.2019.0126" target="_blank">papers on natural climate solutions,</a> the single most effective approach in the tropics has proven to be actively protecting intact forests. Protecting intact forests offers twice as much of the cost-effective climate mitigation potential as the second best pathway, reforestation. The Amazon as a whole plays a vital role in mitigating climate change by absorbing and storing carbon dioxide in its forests. When cut down, burned, or degraded through logging, the forest not only ceases to fulfill this function, but can become a source of carbon emissions.</p><p>"Protecting and or conserving intact ecosystems is the number-one priority," said <a href="https://pursuit.unimelb.edu.au/individuals/dr-kate-dooley" target="_blank">Kate Dooley,</a> a research fellow at the Australian-German Climate & Energy College at the University of Melbourne, who has <a href="https://www.iatp.org/documents/missing-pathways-15degc" target="_blank">authored several papers</a> on the potential of forests as a natural climate solution. "Way-way-way down the line is planting trees. And even then, it needs to be the right kind of trees."</p><p>Of all the countries in the world with some kind of tropical rainforest, Brazil holds more mitigation potential than 71 of the 79 countries combined, <a href="https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rstb.2019.0126" target="_blank">according to a recent paper on this topic</a>. It isn't too hyperbolic, then, to say that groups like the women warriors are protecting humanity's last best hope for a livable future.</p><p>"Plenty of research showing that forests are more intact in collectively held lands," Dooley said. "With or without secure land tenure those lands are more intact and less degraded." According <a href="https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rstb.2019.0126" target="_blank">to a report in 2018 by the Rights and Resources Initiative</a>, almost 300 <em>billion metric tons of carbon</em> are stored in collectively managed lands across all forest biomes, and <a href="https://www.wri.org/blog/2016/10/protecting-indigenous-land-rights-makes-good-economic-sense" target="_blank">numerous</a> <a href="https://rightsandresources.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/Toward-a-Global-Baseline-of-Carbon-Storage-in-Collective-Lands-November-2016-RRI-WHRC-WRI-report.pd" target="_blank">studies</a> have found that the best way to protect forests is to empower the people who live in them, granting them land rights and legal standing.</p><p>This is <a href="https://blog.globalforestwatch.org/people/geospatial-data-indigenous-community-land-forest-management?utm_campaign=BLOG:+LandMark+Data&utm_medium=bitly&utm_source=MonthlyRecap" target="_blank">especially true for Indigenous-held lands in places like Brazil</a>. Between 2000 and 2015, legally designated Indigenous territories in Brazil <a href="http://www.edf.org/sites/default/files/indigenous-territories-barrier-to-deforestation.pdf" target="_blank">saw a tenth </a>the amount of forest loss than non-Indigenous territories. Brazil is home to approximately 900,000 Indigenous citizens from 305 peoples, most of who live in Indigenous territories. Even so, more than half of the locations claimed by Indigenous groups have not yet received formal government recognition.</p><p>"Surveillance and inspection by Indigenous peoples is extremely important, as they are the ones who know the territory and the region best," Rodrigues da Silva said. "On the other hand, unfortunately they are left alone, the Indigenous body responsible for inspection ends up not fulfilling the role and leaving only the Indigenous people."</p>Prevailing Amid Growing Threats
<p>Despite an increasingly hostile government, the women warriors say they are committed to continuing their monitoring, surveillance and educational activities, and are hoping to inspire other groups to do the same.</p><p>"Today women act 100% in defense of the territory," Paula Guajajara said. "Today we are serving as an example."</p><p>But the work is daunting.</p><p>Brazil has the rights of Indigenous people written into its constitution of 1988, and is a signatory to the International Labour Organization's (ILO) <u>Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention.</u> Yet, the current administration of President Jair Bolsonaro has made it clear that Indigenous peoples won't be allowed to<a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2019/01/bolsonaro-government-reveals-plan-to-develop-the-unproductive-amazon/" target="_blank"> comment</a> on infrastructure projects<a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2019/03/brazil-to-build-long-resisted-amazon-transmission-line-on-indigenous-land/" target="_blank"> affecting</a> Indigenous territories in the Amazon. Bolsonaro's administration has also <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2020/02/bolsonaro-sends-congress-bill-to-open-indigenous-lands-to-mining-fossil-fuels/" target="_blank">proposed opening up</a> Indigenous territories to extractive activities — something the constitution specifically prohibits.</p><p>Hundreds of people have been killed during the past decade in the context of conflicts over the use of land and resources in the Amazon — many by people involved in illegal logging — according to the Pastoral Land Commission (CPT), a Catholic Church-affiliated nonprofit that follows land conflicts.</p><p>But perpetrators of violence in the Brazilian Amazon are rarely brought to justice.</p><p>Of the more than <a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2019/11/15/brazils-amazon-and-its-defenders-are-under-attack-illegal-loggers" target="_blank">300 killings that the CPT</a> has registered since 2009, only 14 ultimately went to trial. Maranhão, where the Guajajara live, is among the most dangerous states for Indigenous people in Brazil: more <a href="https://www.cptnacional.org.br/" target="_blank">attacks on Indigenous groups</a> were reported here than anywhere else in 2016, according to data from the CPT.</p><p>The <a href="https://www.thenewhumanitarian.org/feature/2020/05/11/coronavirus-Latin-America-Amazon-indigenous-communities" target="_blank">coronavirus poses an additional threat</a> to Indigenous peoples throughout the Amazon and especially in Brazil, <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/23/world/coronavirus-indigenous-death-apib-intl/index.html" target="_blank">where the death rate from COVID-19</a> is much higher than the national rate.</p><p>"The surveillance expeditions are stopped by the pandemic, we are not doing surveillance, to care for everyone in the village," Cícera Guajajara da Silva said. "Especially in order to protect our health, because nobody knows who the types of people [invaders] are inside the forest, they may even be infected with the virus, the invader himself can bring the virus to our territory, and that's why we stopped [the expeditions], we are now only sheltering in the village."</p><p>But despite the mounting difficulties, the women warriors are committed to continuing their work.</p><p>"We have the courage to defend our territory," Maisa Guajajara said. "I am a woman and I will fight against all the threats that are in our territory."</p>From Your Site Articles
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The Mountain Valley Pipeline proposes to carry natural gas for hundreds of miles over dozens of water sources, through protected areas and crossing the Appalachian Trail. Appalachian Trail Conservancy / YouTube
It's been a bad summer for fracked natural gas pipelines in North Carolina.
<p>First, the <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/atlantic-coast-pipeline" target="_self">Atlantic Coast Pipeline</a>, which would have ended in the state, was <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/atlantic-coast-pipeline-canceled-2646347475.html" target="_self">canceled</a> by its owners following years of legal challenges. Now, the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality (NC DEQ) has denied a key water permit for a project that would have extended the controversial <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/mountain-valley-pipeline" target="_self">Mountain Valley Pipeline</a> (MVP) 75 miles into the state.</p><p>"Today's announcement is further evidence that the era of fracked gas pipelines is over," <a href="https://www.sierraclub.org/" target="_blank">Sierra Club</a> Senior Campaign Representative for the Beyond Dirty Fuels Campaign Joan Walker <a href="https://www.sierraclub.org/press-releases/2020/08/breaking-north-carolina-rejects-fracked-gas-mountain-valley-pipeline" target="_blank">said in response</a>. "We applaud the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality for prioritizing North Carolina's clean water over corporate polluters' profits. Dirty, dangerous fracked gas pipelines like Mountain Valley threaten the health of our people, <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/climate-change/" target="_self">climate</a>, and communities, and aren't even necessary at a time when clean, <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/renewable-energy/" target="_self">renewable energy</a> sources are affordable and abundant."</p>
<p>The MVP Southgate project would extend the main Mountain Valley Pipeline from where it now ends in Chatham, Virginia through Eden, North Carolina and ending in Graham, North Carolina, <a href="http://www.ncpolicywatch.com/2020/08/11/breaking-deq-denies-key-permits-for-mvp-southgate-natural-gas-pipeline/" target="_blank">NC Policy Watch explained</a>.</p><p>To do this, it would have to cross 207 streams and three ponds. These include the Dan River, which is home to <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/endangered-species" target="_self">endangered species</a>, and the Stony Creek Reservoir, which is the main source of <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/drinking-water" target="_self">drinking water</a> for the city of Burlington.</p><p>In issuing its <a href="https://files.nc.gov/ncdeq/pipelines/2018-1638v3-MVP-Southgate---Rockingham-Alamance---Denial.pdf" target="_blank">decision</a> Tuesday, NC DEQ ruled the risks to the state's water supply were not worth the trouble, especially since there are doubts over whether the main Mountain Valley Pipeline will ever be built.</p>
<p>Construction on the MVP, which would carry fracked natural gas 303 miles from northern West Virginia to southern Virginia, is currently halted by an order from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). The pipeline has already racked up more than $2 million in fines owing to more than 300 water quality violations in both states, the <a href="https://www.nrdc.org/media/2020/200811" target="_blank">Natural Resources Defense Council pointed out</a>.</p><p>While MVP's owner EQT Corporation claims construction on the project is 92 percent completed, a recent analysis of MVP filings with the FERC revealed the project is only around 50 percent finished, Jonathan Sokolow wrote for the <a href="https://www.virginiamercury.com/2020/08/10/despite-company-claims-only-a-fraction-of-the-mountain-valley-pipeline-is-complete-in-virginia/" target="_blank">Virginia Mercury</a>.</p><p>But beyond the proposed pipeline's dependence on the uncertain MVP, DEQ Secretary Michael Regan also questioned the need for more natural gas infrastructure in general.</p><p>"North Carolina's clean energy future is not dependent on adding more natural gas infrastructure," Regan said in a statement reported by NC Policy Watch. "Projects like this slow down the state's goal to reduce greenhouse gases under North Carolina's Clean Energy Plan and our efforts to address climate change under Executive Order 80. We should invest in clean, renewable energy sources and the economic benefits of energy innovation."</p>
<div id="af879" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="35fd9ebf3cd5f747a00866dbc13e2d9a"><blockquote class="twitter-tweet twitter-custom-tweet" data-twitter-tweet-id="1293266496467107845" data-partner="rebelmouse"><div style="margin:1em 0">"NC's clean energy future is not dependent on adding more natural gas infrastructure. Projects like this slow down… https://t.co/R4bQrQVpp3</div> — N.C. DEQ (@N.C. DEQ)<a href="https://twitter.com/NCDEQ/statuses/1293266496467107845">1597173735.0</a></blockquote></div>
<p>The NC DEQ's rejection is also a win for <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/indigenous-rights" target="_self">Indigenous rights</a>. The pipeline would have traveled through Indigenous family lands and potentially impacted Indigenous burial mounds that might be located near rivers and streams.</p><p>"This is huge," activist and citizen of the Occaneechi Band of the Saponi Nation Crystal Cavalier told NC Policy Watch. "I'm so excited that North Carolina is taking a stand for indigenous people. Because once you dig up this land, you can't renew it."</p>
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A scenic view of West Papua. Reza Fakhrudin / Pexels
By Arkilaus Kladit
My name is Arkilaus Kladit. I'm from the Knasaimos-Tehit tribe in South Sorong Regency, West Papua Province, Indonesia. For decades my tribe has been fighting to protect our forests from outsiders who want to log it or clear it for palm oil. For my people, the forest is our mother and our best friend. Everything we need to survive comes from the forest: food, medicines, building materials, and there are many sacred sites in the forest.
<p>We have been taught for generations about how to maintain a good relationship with the forest. If it is cut down, it will be the same as cutting down our lives. This has been critical for us during this Covid pandemic because, with the shortage of rice, we have been relying on our traditional staple food, sago, that comes from the forest. And we have gone further by harvesting it to provide food for the surrounding area.</p>
<img lazy-loadable="true" src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMzU0ODg4OS9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYxMjc0MjUzMX0.ryirsbiRERuALoNk4rGlvrhXBacs0wi90ZXnMa8jKuo/img.jpg?width=980" id="6aa7c" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="065f0a6f305cacc8928f8ee694cefa25" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" />
Map of the Knasaimos traditional lands.
<p>The first threat to our forest was in 1988-89 when I was young. The government wanted to make a transmigration scheme settlement in our area but our elders rejected it because we were worried a lot of new people would harm the forest. Then in the early 2000s companies came wanting to log the valuable trees in our forest. After some years of struggle, we saw them off in 2005 but only after they did some damage to our forest.</p><p>The most recent threat is from oil palm. We heard news reports in 2012 there was an oil palm company going into a neighboring village. The news was quite alarming. Our tribe was sad. We had heard about thousands of hectares being cleared for oil palm plantations in Merauke and Sorong Districts. We thought that if oil palm is planted in a neighboring village, it is certain that the forests around our villages, Sira and Manggroholo, could also be under threat. But we stood firm on protecting our forest for our children and grandchildren. Our people consistently oppose oil palm, because we realize that our economic, customary and cultural lives depend heavily on the forest.</p><p>After our earlier fight with the illegal loggers, we decided in 2006 that we wanted to gain recognition for our customary forests. What has interested me most was getting the rights of the people to manage their forest. We worked with our Non-Government Organization friends, including Bentara and Greenpeace, to do participatory mapping of our own village lands and mark the boundary of all 81,446 hectares of our tribal lands. It is our custom to pass down from generation to generation where the boundaries of our forests are. Everything is collective, or is inherited collectively through the clans; it comes from our ancestors.</p>
<p>In 2008 we made a declaration to reject logging and palm oil. We invited the Regent and local Parliament to tell them that our area is small, if these forests are cut down, where do we go then? Where will we find wood to build our house? Where will we go to make our gardens? Where do we go to get medicines? If forests in these two villages are cut down, where will we move to?</p><p>So then we began the process of getting the recognition for our customary forests so that it will not be continually disturbed by logging licenses or permits for oil palm plantations. In 2014, after a long struggle, we had success with Village Forest permits for 3,545 hectares of customary forests of the two villages Mangroholo and Sira. We celebrated securing permits from the Ministry of Environment and Forestry as part of the government's social forestry program. We now have the legal rights to face the threat of illegal deforestation, oil palm planting that damages the environment.</p><p><span></span>A good example of how different it is now with the Village Forest permit. One day when we were patrolling in our forest we found merbau or ironwood trees (<em>Intsia bijuga</em>) had been illegally cut. Merbau is one of the main trees targeted by the illegal loggers. We caught the people doing this and issued them with a customary fine of Rp40 million ($2,700).</p><p>As well, since we obtained the status of Village Forest and we manage the forest ourselves, we are more organized in using Non Timber Forest Products (NTFP) such as damar (tree resin), agarwood, and sago, from a big palm that grows in our swamp forests. But our people have always made use of forests sustainably by taking forest products as needed. Especially with sago we have done a lot of work to turn it into a small enterprise that makes a good income for the village so we can pay things like school fees. We have had training, received new processing machines to speed up production, and help with local marketing to sell what we make. We have been providing food for the local region during Covid as the local government was buying our sago and giving it to the people. We are proud to make some money from our protected forest using our customary management without harming it. The forest is still here tall and strong.</p>
<p>But we still have a long way to go. We are now fighting for the recognition of the whole Knasaimos tribal area of 81,446 hectares as Customary Forest. We were very happy in 2018 when the Governor of West Papua Dominggus Mandacan made his <a href="https://www.idhsustainabletrade.com/uploaded/2018/12/MANOKWARI-DECLARATION-2018.pdf" target="_blank">commitment</a> to make 70% of West Papua Province protected areas. For us it means the Governor is fighting alongside us.</p><p>For the future we hope that the regent of our District, Mr. Samsudin, will soon issue a regional regulation that recognizes Knasaimos rights and forest, and that the Ministry of Environment and Forestry will support our application for a Customary Forest permit through the government Social Forestry Scheme so we can be on the frontline in supporting the government to protect Papua's forests.</p><p>I hope that every village in the Knasaimos customary area can experience the customary forest program to protect the future of our mother, the forest, and the rights to life of communities in Papua. Getting rights to forests in one's own area is the key to protecting the forest and community-based forest management. That is our aspiration, and this will make me very happy.</p>
<p><em>Reposted with permission from <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2020/08/i-am-fighting-for-my-tribes-forest-it-gives-us-food-culture-and-life-commentary/" target="_blank">Mongabay</a>.</em></p>From Your Site Articles
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Women sort potatoes in the Andes Mountains near Cusco Peru on July 7, 2014. Thomas O'Neill / NurPhoto / Getty Images
By Alejandro Argumedo
August 9 is the International Day of the World's Indigenous Peoples – a celebration of the uniqueness of the traditions of Quechua, Huli, Zapotec, and thousands of other cultures, but also of the universality of potatoes, bananas, beans, and the rest of the foods that nourish the world. These crops did not arise out of thin air. They were domesticated over thousands of years, and continue to be nurtured, by Indigenous people. On this day we give thanks to these cultures for the diversity of our food.
<p>Yes, even in a globalized world and food system. Most diversity in crops – and livestock – is still found in the regions where they have been around longest, adapting to climatic extremes, pests, and diseases through millennia interaction with human cultures – as we have weathered our own storms and pandemics. Known as primary regions of crop and livestock diversity, these places are central to the present and future viability of food systems. They are also the homelands of many Indigenous peoples.</p>
<p>For centuries, crop diversity has enriched the world, but has been taken out of the hands of Indigenous people in doing so. That story is only beginning to shift as the rest of the world starts to give Indigenous farmers the respect they are due. Community initiatives like the <a href="https://parquedelapapa.org/" target="_blank">Parque de la Papa</a> (Potato Park), in the primary region of potato diversity in the Andes of Peru, are connecting with worldwide conservation efforts on the farmers' own terms.</p><p>Six Quechua communities established the Parque to ensure the survival of the thousands of traditional potato cultivars they grow. They then co-designed a unique agreement with the <a href="https://cipotato.org/" target="_blank">International Potato Center</a> genebank in Lima and the nonprofit <a href="https://andes.org.pe/" target="_blank">Asociacion ANDES</a> to return 410 native potato varieties to the Parque communities. Scientists had collected these from the region's communities since the 1960s, but many had disappeared from farmers' fields in the recent decades. That first agreement led to more collaborative research and monitoring, and today the Parque's diversity is conserved in farmers' fields, in new community seedbanks, in the CIP genebank in Lima, and, as a final safety backup, 7,000 miles north in the <a href="https://www.seedvault.no/" target="_blank">Svalbard Global Seed Vault</a> – where the Indigenous farmers who deposited them still retain their rights over their seeds.</p><p>Indigenous farmers and cooks in the primary regions of diversity are resilient. They know all about getting through trying times. Through it all, they have persisted: through loss of access to land and other resources; through industrialization, subsidies, and trade agreements that undermine rural livelihoods; through civil strife and political neglect. Often working in places of extreme topography, they have faced the most severe impacts of the climate catastrophe. This year they have been struck disproportionally, sometimes threatened in their very existence, by the COVID-19 pandemic.</p>
<p>In some countries, legislation finally respects their rights to traditional knowledge and livelihoods. Yet a larger transformation is still needed – to redress injustices, secure access to land, and generate a greater range of opportunities in food and agriculture.</p><p>I believe that a key agent of this transformation will be a global network that is already beginning to unite stewards of food traditions in primary regions of diversity. The potential is clear in the direct connections that Indigenous communities are making with chefs, civil society, and commercial endeavors to create – together – market opportunities for agriculturally resilient and nutritious local foods. It is encouraging that consumers are increasingly showing a willingness to try diverse foods, while recognizing the work of farming communities. A boom in community-based development and wider marketing of products made with local crop and livestock diversity is a small sign of the big shift coming.</p><p>Another emerging opportunity for Indigenous communities is the increased capacity to learn from the successes and challenges of others. While communities in primary regions of diversity often maintain a broad menu of domesticated and wild species, their food systems generally center on a few key species. Potatoes and quinoa in parts of the Andes; maize and beans in Mesoamerica; bananas and tubers in the highlands of Papua New Guinea: such emblematic foods can be pillars around which to co-organize global networks of custodians of agricultural biodiversity, building on existing networks of small-scale and Indigenous farmers. One such effort is hosted by the <a href="https://inmip.net/" target="_blank">International Network for Mountain Indigenous Peoples</a>. Inspired by the Parque de la Papa, it now includes communities in Bolivia, China, Ecuador, Ethiopia, Guatemala, India, Kenya, Mexico, Papua New Guinea, Peru, and Tajikistan, each organized around different emblematic Indigenous crops. With time, the initial focus on relatively "charismatic" crops can be leveraged to benefit other, less well-known species and their stewards, too.</p><p>I draw hope and excitement from seeing Indigenous communities achieve recognition in local, national, and international policy arenas, and watching them strengthen their work by seeking out collaborations based on mutual respect. That kind of collaboration can reach across dramatically different scales, from farmers' fields, homes, and tables, to community actions like local seedbanks, to the large public genebanks that make crop conservation a global effort, and a global good. Meanwhile, redressing the imbalances that disadvantage Indigenous communities, and undervalue the diversity they generate and maintain, will mean reframing this diversity and its engendering biocultural processes as central community assets.</p><p>Celebrating Indigenous people on August 9 is not just about having a party; it helps keeps diversity and community on their feet as globalization shifts the ground from under us all.</p><p><em>Alejandro Argumedo is Director of Programs and Andes Amazon Lead of Swift Foundation (<a href="http://www.swiftfoundation.org/" target="_blank">www.swiftfoundation.org</a>); he is a recognized indigenous peoples' food rights activist currently acting as the international coordinator of the International Network of Mountain Indigenous Peoples (INMIP).</em></p>
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