Earlier this month, the Mayan community of San Miguel Ixtahuacán issued a public statement denouncing the recent actions of Guatemala’s National Civil Police.
Acting on behalf of the Canadian-mining company Montana Exploradora de Guatemala (Goldcorp), on June 13th the police shot tear gas at local children and used force against women peacefully demonstrating their opposition to Goldcorp’s Marlin mine. Please see the full statement below for more information.
As an aside, Dawn Paley over at the Dominion reports some additional news. Guatemala’s Constitutional Court recently found 8 sections of the federal mining law to be unconstitutional. While this won’t bring an end to the mine, it should help mitigate the damage it will cause to the environment.
Photo by Keith Vass
PUBLIC STATEMENT IN FAVOUR OF COMMUNITIES AFFECTED BY OPEN PIT MINING
13th June 2008
San Miguel Ixtahuacán, Guatemala
To Human Rights Organizations, the Human …
The Anishinabek have launched a campaign to get rid of the term “Aboriginal.” According to a recent press release, the Chiefs of the 42 member-communities endorsed a resolution during their annual Grand Council Assembly that characterizes the word as “another means of assimilation through the displacement of our First Nation-specific inherent and treaty rights.”
“It’s actually offensive to hear that term used in reference to First Nations citizens,” said Grand Council Chief John Beaucage. “Our Chiefs are giving us direction to inform government agencies, NGOs, educators and media organizations that they should discontinue using inappropriate terminology when they are referring to the Anishinabek. We respect the cultures and traditions of our Metis and Inuit brothers and sisters, but their issues are different from ours.”
The resolution notes that “there are no aboriginal bands, aboriginal reserves, or aboriginal chiefs” and that the reference to “aboriginal …
Directed by Randy Vasquez, Something’s Moving tells the story of three Residential School Survivors in the United States, and their efforts to heal themselves, to restore what was taken from them, and to allow future generations to live a life that’s free from trauma, shame, fear, and self-loathing.
“A great general has said that the only good Indian is a dead one, and that high sanction of his destruction has been an enormous factor in promoting Indian massacres. In a sense, I agree with the sentiment, but only in this: that all the Indian there is in the race should be dead. Kill the Indian in him, and save the man.”
This is quoted from a speech given in 1892 by Captain Richard H. Pratt, founder of the Carlisle Industrial Training School - the first Indian Residential School in the United States (noting, …
From Beijing to Vancouver, governments have been bending over backwards to prepare for the Olympics. Both are doing everything they can to ‘clean up the streets’ and pack down anyone that threatens to tarnish the image they wish to portray for the games.
So many people have been forced out of their homes, so many children have been made into slaves, so much land has been taken and destroyed. It’s all done in the open for all to see and those responsible for it couldn’t care less.
The Olympics Committees’ are the same. They silence the athletes and demand their innocence. I’m not even sure they feel the slightest bit of remorse…. After all, such feeling infringes upon the spirit of the Olympics. There’s just no room to be weighted down by that pesky thing called conscience.
That couldn’t be …
On Wednesday, the Supreme Court issued a ruling that literally punishes Alaska Natives for the 1989 Exxon Valdez Oil Spill. The court told the company that they now only have to pay a tenth of the $5 billion in punitive damages that were awarded by a jury 14 years ago.
“Exxon knew this would happen,” writes Greg Palast. “Right after the spill, I was brought to Alaska by the Natives whose Prince William Sound islands, livelihoods, and their food source was contaminated by Exxon crude. My assignment: to investigate oil company frauds that led to to the disaster. There were plenty.” He continues,
But before we brought charges, the Natives hoped to settle with the oil company, to receive just enough compensation to buy some boats and rebuild their island villages to withstand what would be a decade of trying to survive in …
Last week, a group of indigenous Kofan expressed concern about a new base Colombia’s army is building at a site called “Finca Maravales” in the Guamués valley in Putumayo, reports the Colombian newspaper El Espectador.
The group had traveled to Bogota to take part in a press conference marking the creation of a 10,000-hectare bio-reserve for traditional medicines used by the Kofan and other Indigenous Peoples in the region.
When it came time for the Kofan to speak, they took the opportunity to read a statement concerning the new base. The Kofan explained that Finca Maravales “is Kofán ancestral territory, and is a part of the Shelter of Santa Rosa Guamués,” which was first occupied in the 1960’s.
For more than two years, the Kofan have been aware that the army wanted to permanently establish themselves in the region. …
After more than forty years, the U.S. government is finally moving to clean up the uranium waste on Navajo lands.
On June 13, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released a five-year plan to start cleaning the radioactive waste left by more than 40 years of mining uranium on Navajo lands.
From 1944 to 1986, companies grabbed more than 40 million tons of uranium, producing 996 pounds of radioactive waste for every 4 pounds of uranium extracted. A great deal of that waste has never been cleaned up.
As a result, for three generations now the Navajo “have been breathing uranium-laden dust from mine tailings and drinking from wells tainted with minute traces of radioactive mining waste,” explains tomdispatch.com
More than a thousand mines were abandoned on the reservation. For every 4 pounds of uranium extracted, 996 pounds of radioactive refuse was left …
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