Recent Posts
January 31, 2008
Danko Miriman
Danko Miriman www.mapucheinternationalsolidaritynetwork.blogspot.com
Danko Miriman gives an update of international demonstrations that occurred on Tuesday, January 28th after MISN hand-delivered a letter to the New York Chilean Consulate. Patricia Troncoso ended a 111-day hunger strike, which had focused attention on the plight of the Mapuche minority. Activists say that despite Chile's economic growth, the Indians have been left largely landless, impoverished victims of police repression and anti-terrorism laws. The Mapuche have never used weapons.
Oren Lyons, Onondaga from the Haudenosaune speaks of the differences and non-consequential living.
Written accounts and short clips of the 1890 Massacre at Wounded Knee of the Mnicoujou Lakota.
January 24, 2008
Mapuche International Solidarity Network
Danko Miriman http://misn.wordpress.com
Roberto Cachimuel www.yarinamusic.com
Rodstarz and G1 www.rebeldiaz.com
Since January 21, Patricia Troncoso has been force-fed against her will by a team of doctors set up by the Ministry of Home Affairs. According to a witness from the Catholic Church, she has been tied up and sedated in order to quell her resistance. The witness, Father Jose Luis Ysern, is the only person who has been allowed to see Patricia recently and told a reporter that she had asked him to give her the last rites. Her own family has been denied visiting rights and this has led to much concern about her real state of health.
Patricia has been on hunger strike since 10 October 2007, in protest against the violation of her due process. She had been accused of an arson attack against a pine plantation owned by the Mininco Forestry Company, situated in ancestral Mapuche land. The case against Patricia was widely known throughout Chile to have been manufactured, and she was unjustly sentenced to ten years' imprisonment after an unfair trial. Her aims are to establish a re-trial, to secure the release of other Mapuche political prisoners and end the ongoing persecution against Mapuche activists.
According to information provided by Radio Bio-Bio, Patricia has now been moved from Chillan Prison to the special unit of the Martin Herminda hospital in Chillan to receive intravenous feeding.
Her personal doctor, Berne Castro, said she fears that Patricia's life is in imminent danger and stated: "After 106 days of this hunger strike, with a serious immunity deficiency, with renal failure and cardiovascular damage, it is important that the procedure of intravenous feeding is performed in careful conditions. If it is not, they put Patricia at risk of death or irreparable neurological damage."
Dr. Castro further alleged that: "the procedure is being carried out in a unit without cardiovascular or respiratory monitoring, without sufficient equipment if Patricia enters into a cardiac arrest, and without the necessary monitoring equipment to observe her dangerous condition, which could lead to her suffering comprehensive neurological damage."
Dr. Castro also states that Patricia's doctors are professional prison doctors. "No prison doctors have clinical experience in this field. One of them has had no clinical practice for a long time and another, who is directly involved, is a general practitioner without much experience in procedures like this."
The Declaration of Malta on Hunger Strike adopted by the World Medical Association (AMM), in November 1991, and revised by the General Assembly of the AMM, Pilanesberg, South Africa, in October 2006, states that:
"the doctor must respect the autonomy of the individual and should not force people on hunger strike to be treated if they reject. Force-feeding against an informed and voluntary rejection is unjustifiableÉ. Force-feeding is never ethically acceptable, even with the intention of benefiting. Food threats, pressure, use of force or physical restraint are forms of inhuman and degrading treatment."
Mapuches and other supporters throughout Chile have reacted with anger to the news that Patricia is now being force-fed, as they consider this a further violation of her human rights. In Chillan groups of supporters have been holding night-long vigils in tents outside the hospital where she is being held. The police have intervened, destroying tents and dispersing a crowd that included women and children, who were holding a religious ceremony at the time.
There have also been demonstrations every day in Santiago since the killing of a young Mapuche man, Matias Catrileo, who was shot in the back by Chilean police on 3 January this year on the outskirts of Vilcun, IX Region of Araucan’a. On 22 January five protesters were detained by police in La Moneda Palace in Santiago.
January 10, 2008
Amerindians: The Return
AMERINDIANS: THE RETURN written, directed, and choreographed by Cristina Cortes. Interdisciplinary collaboration of dance, spoken word, body art and a sound video installation, based on Native rites, iconography and symbolism. A multi-media concept piece examining the theme of "return" which is presents in many Native American and Meso-American cultures. Blending dance, spoken word, body art and sound and video, Cortes and her team create a spiritual journey of the earth's awakening, drawing on legends from such cultures as Aztec, Mayan, Cherokee, Navajo, Sioux, Lakota and more www.amerindiansthereturn.com
Ofelia Rivas Founder of Voices Against the Wall
Imperialism – lately this word has been re-entering debate and speech around the country. For the most part these days, the word imperialism is being used to describe the actions of the United States Government as it seeks to gain control over Middle Eastern governments and economies. The continuing occupation of Iraq by the United States is the best example of this neo-imperialism.
But imperialism is not limited to lands across the oceans, and the United States Government is currently engaged in the occupation of lands much closer to home. We must never forget that the very lands claimed by the Government of the United States in North America are claimed by nothing other than the right of conquest. The United States Government is a Government of occupation here in North America and the lands that it continues to claim and occupy are in spirit still the autonomous territories of the indigenous tribes that existed here before the first European colonists stepped foot on the continent.
Since 9-11 the United States government has ratcheted up its attacks against the Indigenous residents of the United States. In southern Arizona, these attacks have come in the guise of borderland defense. The traditional O'odham residents of southern Arizona have become the victims of a joint program carried out by the Department of Homeland Security and the Border Patrol to build a border wall across the entire 330 mile U.S / Mexico border, a 65 mile section of which will run along the southern edge of the Tohono O'odham reservation. This wall will effectively cut in half the traditional territory of the O'odham and serve to isolate O'odham villages that exist on opposite sides of the international border. To justify the building of this wall the government has once again used the fear of terrorism, as has become common since 9/11, to advance its fascistic imperialist interests.
For more information, visit: www.tiamatpublications.com/odham_solidarity_project.html.