Nobodies from the Rainforest (Anonimato) is a short documentary about the Hupda indigenous People from Alto Rio Negro, northwest Amazon (Brazil).

Produced last year by Orlando Lemos, the film reveals a precarious health situation among the Hupda — one that’s been caused by outsider contact and a lack of access to clean water — as they struggle day to day with little resources, assistance, or even hope.

As for the health problem, the film primarily looks at Trachoma, which is a leading cause of infectious blindness in the world (8 million people, mostly in so-called developing countries, are visually impaired every year by Trachoma). There are however, numerous other health problems facing the Hupda.

Underlying this “modern life” is a story of one Hupda Woman, Lucia, who, mistakenly stepped on a poisonous snake after going almost blind from Trachoma.

After being bitten, Lucia wasn’t sure what to do, so …

The short-lived trend of corporate social responsibility came to a grinding halt in April, reminding us yet again that they have no intention of changing voluntarily, atleast, not as long as their wants take precedence over rights and the needs of others.

And of course it was business as usual for Nation States - especially Canada, America and Bangladesh, who jumped at the chance to attack Indigenous people and illegally invade and usurp their lands.

Now for the depressing truth: In the coming months, there will be more invasions and offensives, more arrests and abuses, more displacement and land theft, more cultural and environmental destruction. And we’ll see it get worse. More aggressive, more invasive, more damaging.

Should we expect anything less? This is how it’s always been, and there’s no reason to think it’s going to change any time soon, providing, of course, that we …

Oxfam has an ongoing letter campaign in support of indigenous communities that border near the Prestea Mine in Southwest Ghana. The US-based company Golden Star Resources recently announced a plan to expand the mine. The plan jeopardizes the communities, and explicitly denies their right to free, prior, and informed consent.

There are also several injustices surrounding the mine which have yet to be adequately addressed, including two cyanide spills in 2004 and 2006, and a violent confrontation in 2005 between community members and security personnel guarding the mine. The guards shot seven people.

To send the letter, which is addressed to the newly-appointed CEO of Golden Star, Mr Tom Mair, you can head over to Oxfam’s campaign page for the communities. The letter reads,
I am writing to express my deep concern for the communities of Prestea, Himan, and Dumase that neighbor the …

Courtesy of Rights Action, here’s a story discussing a reparations plan for Genocide survivors and Mayan-Achi people who were massacred and forcibly evicted from their communities in the 1970s and 1980s - to make way for the Inter-American Development Bank- and World Bank-funded Chixoy hydro-electric dam.

CHIXOY DAM AGREEMENT

By Hugo Alvarado, www.prensalibre.com
Translated by Rosalind M. Gill, for Rights Action

The Government and communities affected by the construction of the Chixoy Dam have signed an agreement to set up a reparations plan. Diego Paz, representative of the OEA, Rafael Espada, Vice-president, and Juan de Dios García, sign the agreement. The Signatories agree that:

• within nine months a report will be submitted, detailing reparations for the communities affected by the construction of the largest hydroelectric dam in the country;
• besides financial compensation, productive programmes in the areas affected will form part of the …

On March 29, Traditional O’odham leaders and International Supporters gathered in the small village of Quitovac in Sonora, Mexico, to organize against a toxic waste dump that threatens one of the O’odham’s most sacred Ceremonial sites.

“The gathering in Quitovac represented yet another chapter in the fight to stop the building of the toxic dump proposed to be built by the Mexican company CEGIR,” wrote the O’odham Solidarity Project shortly after the gathering came to a close.

“Since early in 2006 the traditional O’odham residing in the occupied territories of Northern Mexico and the South Western United States (and their international supporters) have persistently and patiently organized, protested and petitioned to try to convince the Mexican government federal Environment and Natural Resources Secretariat (SEMARNAT) and the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to stop CEGIR from building this toxic dump. So far, …

Courtesy of the Angry Indian, who featured this on his website last week, here is a ten minute excerpt from a lecture given earlier this year by Tim Wise, author of “White Like Me: Reflections on Race from a Privileged Son.” The lecture was aptly titled The Pathology of Privilege: Racism, White Denial & the Costs of Inequality.

From the Producers: “For years, acclaimed author and speaker Tim Wise has been electrifying audiences on the college lecture circuit with his deeply personal take on whiteness and white privilege.

In this spellbinding lecture, the author of White Like Me: Reflections on Race from a Privileged Son offers a unique, inside-out view of race and racism in America.

Expertly overcoming the defensiveness that often surrounds these issues, Wise provides a non-confrontational explanation of white privilege and the damage it does not only to people of color, but to white people …

Presently, State troopers from South Dakota are illegally occupying Yankton Sioux Lands. They began doing so on April 15, after Yankton Sioux Tribal Members began protesting a Hog Farm being constructed on their territory without their consent.

According to the Atlantic Free Press, the Sioux Protesters were “met immediately with illegal law enforcement presence and arrest[s]. To date twenty-two people have been arrested on trumped up charges and there has been a total over reaction of law enforcement numbering up to 52 SD Highway Patrol Cars with 22 more Highway Patrol cars waiting in reserve. Some patrol cars from as far away as the state of Iowa. The Highway Patrol has set up snipers with rifles on top of two command posts they have established near the scene.”

Kansas Mutual Aid adds that atleast one person has been injured, after “he was …