January 2007 Archive

January 11, 2007 Listen to the Show

Navajo Blockaders Gain Support for Resistance While Protesting President's Inauguration

Indigenous News Roundup:

San Barred From Ancestral Land Despite Court Victory
In Botswana, the San rights organization First People of the Kalahari (FPK) has announced the San tribe will make a second attempt on Friday to return to their ancestral home after winning a lengthy court battle against their eviction. Two weeks ago, authorities refused to allow 24 members of the group back in the Central Kgalagadi Game Reserve (CKGR) in the Kalahari Desert despite the court ruling. The San are traditional hunters and gatherers. Several thousand of them were evicted from the Game Reserve in 2002 to make way for a wildlife sanctuary. The government and the De Beers diamond mining company deny allegations that the San were also evicted for diamond mining. Last month, the High Court of Botswana ruled that the San, also known as the Bushmen, had been wrongfully evicted after 244 of their leaders protested in a lawsuit. The court also ruled the San have the right to hunt and gather food in the reserve, and do not need to apply for permits to enter the parks. The advocacy group Survival International said that when the first group tried to return, authorities at the entrance of the reserve said only the people whose names appeared on the court ruling could enter. Fiona Watson said, “Families have been separated because obviously each applicant on the [court] list has their family, their spouse and their children. And the Bushmen said we want to go in with our families. How can it be that the ruling can only apply to certain people and not whole families?" The group is now living at a government resettlement camp outside the game reserve. Activists say conditions in the camps are deplorable and the Bushmen are suffering serious effects from unemployment, alcoholism and the AIDS virus. Survival International says that more than one in 10 of the original 239 Bushmen who signed up to the legal case have since died in the camps.

Sami Win Rights, Gearing up to Fight for More.
In Sweden, the indigenous Sami people in the north have gained full control of reindeer herding for the first time. The 31-member Sami Parliament won control January 1st over such issues as Sami local borders, the distribution of an $18 million fund for fodder subsidies and compensation for losses to predators, and registration of the cuts in reindeers' ears that show herd ownership. Sami rights advocates say now it is time to look into land rights. There are an estimated 70,000 Sami in the northlands of Sweden, Finland, Norway and Russia. The Sami herd 240,000 reindeer in Sweden and need access to large areas in the north to move them and find food. People have struggled to define "traditional" land for the Sami because herders were nomads who followed their animals. Last month, a claim for “tax lands" taken by the Swedish crown during the mid-1800s settlement the country went to the European Court of Human Rights. Sami advocates hope this will force the Swedish government to set out clear guidelines. Sweden's attorney-general, Goran Lambertz, recently told Reuters “there is reason to believe that th[e Sami] may be entitled to their land in the very north.”

Mapuche Indians Meet With Chilean President Bachelet.
In Chile, leaders of the Mapuche indigenous group recently met with President Michelle Bachelet to discuss a new working relationship. The Mapuches presented proposals for greater political participation, the right to self-determination, the recovery of ancestral lands, and for better economic development and education. The proposals were drawn up last November when nearly all Chile’s Mapuche organizations and committees convened and drafted a document addressed to the State of Chile. Indigenous leader Miguel Melin told Inter Press Service after Thursday's meeting with Bachelet, "The president acknowledged the Chilean state's 'historical debt' to the Mapuche people, agreed to appoint a special interlocutor to engage in dialogue, and promised to report in March how the process will be implemented." The Mapuches are asking for the recognition of a national Mapuche parliament able to take binding decisions, modification of the present electoral law so that Mapuches can win seats in the Chilean Congress, and elections by popular vote for regional authorities. They are also calling for the ratification of all international treaties for the protection of indigenous peoples, the release of Mapuche political prisoners, and do not want anti-terrorism laws applied in Mapuche conflicts.

Alaskan Bristol Bay Opened for Drilling.
In Alaska, the Bush administration announced on Tuesday it had lifted a ban on offshore oil and gas leasing in Bristol Bay in southwest Alaska. The decision drew no opposition and some support from Alaska’s state and congressional leaders. The Bush administration has proposed lease sales for 2010 and 2012. The bay waters are home to the world’s largest annual migration of sockeye salmon and is rich with whales, walrus and other marine mammals important to Native subsistence hunters. Critics of offshore drilling point out that the Northern Pacific Right whale, a critically endangered species, will be threatened by noisy seismic testing after the area is leased. In 1988, oil companies paid the federal government $95 million for rights to explore and develop the area. But the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill in Prince William Sound led the government to buy back the drilling rights in 1995 after the oil spill killed hundreds of thousands of animals. Chief executive of the Bristol Bay Native Association, Ralph Anderson said he was “really disappointed with the President’s decision” to lift the ban. Anderson said the industry has not yet demonstrated it can clean up oil spills in broken ice conditions. University of Alaska professor Rick Steiner said Bristol Bay is "really one of the last, best places in the world that we should subject to the very real risks of oil and gas development…the risks dramatically outweigh the benefits." The Alaska Marine Conservation Council, said it would call on the new Democrat-controlled Congress to restore the leasing ban.

Disparity in Life Expectancy in Australia
Figures recently released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics show that Australians are among the longest-living people in the world, with an average life span of 78.5 years for males and 83.3 years for females born in the country. However not everyone there is quite as fortunate. For indigenous Australians the figures drop by around 17 years, whose average life expectancy in 2001 was 59.4 years for males and 64.8 for females. The disparity in life expectancy is generally attributed to poverty, discrimination, low education, substance abuse and poor access to health services.

Navajo Blockaders Gain Support for Resistance While Protesting President’s Inauguration.
In Burnham, New Mexico, the Doodá Desert Road Blockade is still going strong as it nears the one-month mark. The action has been spearheaded by the Doodá Desert Rock Committee, which is resisting plans for a new coal-fired power plant proposed by the Sithe Global Power company and the Dine Power Authority. The proposed Desert Rock Energy Project would be the third such power plant on the Navajo Nation’s reservation. Many say the pollution they spew cause deadly environmental and health problems. Burnham elders and local residents blockaded the Dine Power Authority or DPA and Sithe from entering the proposed site on December 12th and have been camped out near the site since. On Tuesday, the blockaders demonstrated at Navajo President Joe Shirley’s inauguration for his second term, but were turned away from the ceremony. While they were forced out, they were able to talk to Navajo Nation members about their struggle and concerns, and reported that many people were supportive and wanted to learn more.

Hank Dixon, Doodá Desert Rock Spokesperson.

For more information: The Doodá Desert Rock Committee's web site www.desert-rock-blog.com "MAKING A STAND AT DESERT ROCK", produced by Indigenous Action Media. View the video at www.indigenousaction.org

A Look at Mysterious Phenomena and the U.S. Military: the Real X-Files?
Tiokasin speaks with a former researcher for the U.S. government about the use of natural human gifts and senses for military purposes. - Steve Hammons, journalist and former U.S. government researcher.

January 4, 2007 Listen to the Show

Indigenous Rights in the Pacific Basin: Struggling to Stay Afloat Despite Stranglehold of Economic Globalization; An Indigenous Perspective on Climate Justice

Indigenous Rights in the Pacific Basin: Struggling to Stay Afloat Despite Stranglehold of Economic Globalization
Some say the modern era in the Pacific indigenous rights movement began after World War II mainly in response to two things. The first was the recognition of the right to self-determination for colonized peoples in the newly drafted UN Charter. The second major event in 1946 was the onset of a 50-year era of Pacific nuclear testing led by the U.S. in the Marshall Islands, followed by the United Kingdom in 1952 and France in 1966. The Pacific indigenous rights movement can be viewed as a response to the West's colonial domination in violation of the UN Charter's call for decolonization and the West's Cold War pretext for use of the Pacific islands for devastating nuclear testing. That struggle is now extended to fight neocolonialism in the form of economic globalization. Indigenous islander Mililani Trask talked about this issue at a forum in New York City in November called Indigenous Peoples Resistance to Economic Globalization: A Celebration of Victories, Rights and Cultures.
Mililani Trask, a Native Hawaiian attorney with an extensive background on Native Hawaiian land trusts, resources and legal entitlements. Her work has been cited by the Hawaii Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights and published by Cultural Survival and IWGIA magazines on issues relating to native people and human and civil rights. Mililani is a founding member and current chair of the Indigenous Women's Network, a coalition of Native American Women whose work includes community based economic development, social justice, human rights, housing and health. In 2001, she was nominated and appointed as the Pacific representative to the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues and is currently considered an indigenous expert to the United Nations in international and human rights law. She is an instructor with the International Training Center for Indigenous Peoples in Nuuk, Greenland and a lecturer with the University of Hawaii Center for Hawaiian Studies.

An Indigenous Perspective on Climate Justice
We spend the second half of the hour speaking with Oannes Pritzker, a Native ecologist , journalist and activist of the Wabanaki people. He discusses global warming and how lack of spiritual attention leads to environmental disaster. He is director of Yat Kitischee Native Center; an Inter-Tribal Cultural/Environmental/ Social Justice/Educational/News-Media grassroots organization. Oannes has participated in many international, inter-tribal, and national conferences, gatherings, campaigns, and protest actions. He has traveled throughout much of the world as an activist and journalist, reporting on many issues of earth-justice and human rights. He is host and producer of a weekly one-hour worldwide radio program; "Honoring Mother Earth/Indigenous Voices" broadcast on Radio for Peace International, on Radio4all.net, and a number of community radio stations across North America. As an Ecologist, Oannes has been actively involved in the establishment and leadership of the national environmental justice movement, which he remains active with. More Info is available at the Yat Kitischee Native Center Web Site.