Presna Latina reports that the Bolivian government has “ratified its recognition of indigenous autonomies, in accordance with a November 2007 ruling and the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.”

Making the announcement on Saturday, Vice president Alvaro Garcia explained that “the country’s new political Constitution guarantees Bolivian native people the right to free determination, self-governing and to manage their own financial resources.”

He also “questioned the autonomy referendums being promoted by authorities from the departments of Benu, Pando, Santa cruz and Tarija,” saying they are unnecessary because autonomies are already legal. “They just need to be implemented”.

According to Inside South America, “the move promises to raise already-high tensions in advance of the May 4 vote, which Santa Cruz leaders have sworn will not be put off. A militant indigenous group known as the Red Ponchos allied to Morales has promised to march in Santa Cruz against the referendum. Militant youth in the province have meanwhile promised to defend their autonomy by force if necessary.”

“While Morales has pledged not to send troops into the province to stop the autonomy referendum, the possibility …

Brenda Norrell informs us that the judge presiding over the Lipan Apache lands right case has ruled in favor of Homeland Security, giving them access to survey Eloisa Tamez land so they can decide on what they want to take for the infamous, ill-conceived, and ultimately redundant Border Wall.

“The action follows the Nazi-style action of Homeland Security in April, voiding all federal laws to build the border wall, including NAGPRA, American Indian Religious Freedom Act and all environmental laws that protect species such as the jaguar and Sonoran pronghorn,” Brenda comments.

“Under the Real ID Act, Homeland Security’s Michael Chertoff has waived 36 federal laws to build the border wall. Defenders of Wildlife, the Sierra Club and Congressmen are asking the Supreme Court to intervene, pointing out that Chertoff has overstepped his bounds and is outside the law, ” she adds.

As for the ruling itself, Reuters explains,
[Tamez] filed a suit against U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff in February in which she claimed the fence would [cause the] “virtually complete destruction of …

Earlier this month, the Ngobe of western Panama wrote an urgent appeal that asks the international community for immediate assistance. For some time now they’ve been struggling to stop the US-based company AES from building the Changuinola dam on their traditional lands.

In recent months, the situation has become hopeless for the Ngobe. According to the appeal, the National Police have taken over their community and they are “being subjected to cruel violations of our fundamental human rights.” On top of that, the government has un-communicated them from the world; and they are quite literally being forced to sign away their lands, rights, and livelihoods — “under threat of arms and death.”

Meanwhile, according to Cultural Survival’s latest newsletter, AES has started using lights to work on the Changuinola dam around the clock.

The Ngobe say, “We are desperate and abandoned. The government reiterates that we have no rights, and that they have the power to do as they wish… We ask, please do all in your power to stop this barbarism. Our lives and land depend on being able …

Can pigs fly? Well you may be surprised to know one skyrocketed passed the House of Commons on Tuesday. Amazingly enough, it happened just as the House announced their support of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

Courtesy of the Western Shoshone Defense Project (WSDP), here’s a joint statement on the matter (of the announcement by the House of Commons, that is)

Photo by abdallahh,
modified and republished here under a Creative Commons License

UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples: Canadian Parliament Calls for Implementation of Critical Universal Human Rights Instrument

News Release

April 9, 2008

Indigenous peoples’ organizations and human rights groups welcome yesterday’s decision by the Canadian Parliament to endorse the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

The Declaration was adopted by the UN General Assembly on September 13, 2007 in a historic vote by an overwhelming majority of member states. Canada was one of only four states to oppose the Declaration. The government of Stephen Harper has since claimed that the Declaration is not applicable …

While the Canadian Government takes great care to ensure its own safety against the dangers of asbestos, you’ll probably never hear them make too big a fuss about it — what with Canada being a leading exporter of the patient killer — it just wouldn’t be economical to draw too much attention to it.

So instead they seem to be using tax-payers dollars and their own embassies to actively promote the sale and distribution of abestos to countries like India and Pakistan. On top of that, at the moment the government is actively trying to sabotage the U.N. Rotterdam Convention, which aims to protect life and the environment by controlling the hazardous chemical and pesticide trade industry. You probably won’t hear about this in the news…

Well, to mark World Health Day, April 7, 2008, a handful of organizations from India wrote a letter (pdf) asking Canadians to help stop the government from exporting asbestos to India and the global south.

The letter reads,

We urgently request your solidarity with workers in India and the Global South. We appeal …

A small group of rice farmers illegally occupying indigenous lands in the Brazilian state of Roraima have recently turned violent in an effort to resist their eviction.

Survival International explains in a recent release that at least one person has been injured, a local Indigenous Leader in the community of Barro, after the farmers threw a home-made bomb into his home. The farmers have also set up roadblocks and burned at least three bridges leading into Raposa Serra do Sol indigenous territory.

Home to the the Makuxi, Wapixana, Ingarikó and Taurepang, the People have been struggling for the last 30 years to reclaim their land from the farmers, an effort that’s repeatedly turned violent. But in April 2005, as noted here last January, Brazil’s President signed a law ordering the removal of all non-indigenous people from Raposa Serra do Sol. However, the government never actually took any action — that is, until now.

According to Survival, “most of the illegal occupants have already left Raposa Serra do Sol and have been resettled and compensated,” but this group of rice farmers …

Kristin Bricker (mywordismyweapon.blogspot.com) reports that on Tuesday, April 1, “the Chiapas government freed thirty political prisoners in response to years of protests for their freedom, but not before giving some of them one last thorough beating.”

According to the recently released, while they were en route to a government press conference “the police beat them… until their heads and arms were purple and they were bleeding. Their wrists were bound tightly with tape, cutting off circulation to their hands. After the press conference, the police loaded them back into a government vehicle, beat some of them again, and told them they were going to be returned to jail, but then released them.”

Belonging to a variety of organizations,”including EZLN bases of support, adherents to the Zapatistas’ Other Campaign, an evangelical Christian organization, and the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD in its Spanish initials)” — at least two of the liberated spent the last twelve years in jail.

Seventeen more people are still incarcerated, however the government refuses to negotiate their release. As of April 1, thirteen of them have been on a …

Amnesty International warns that two human rights defenders, Georges Kapiamba and Prince Kumwamba, both from from Katanga, a southern province in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), have received several threats related to their human rights work since the evening of April 3.

Along with other activists, Georges Kapiamba and Prince Kumwamba have been planning to visit the town of Kilwa in Katanga province, the scene of a massacre by government troops in October 2004. Amnesty explains that “the visit [is] on behalf of an Australian legal firm pursuing possible compensation claims in the Australian courts against an Australian/Canadian mining company, Anvil Mining.”

For background and more information, visit www.raid-uk.org, and www.abc.net.au/4corners/ to watch the Kilwa Incident. Also see www.friendsofthecongo.org for general human rights news related to the Congo.

Amnesty asks you to send an appeal to authorities in the DRC, urging them to:

call on the authorities to ensure that George Kapiamba, Prince Kumwamba and other ASADHO/Katanga and ACIDH activists are protected against further threats and possible attack;
call for a prompt, impartial and independent investigation into the …

The Western Shoshone Defense Project (WSDP) informs us that a public comment period will close next week, April 10th, on a proposal by the U.S. Department of Energy to increase nuclear weapons development at the Nevada Test Site, said to be ‘the most heavily-nuked region on the planet.’ The Test Site is located within the Treaty-recognized territory of Western Shoshone lands and has long been protested by Western Shoshone and their supporters.

Please take a moment in the next few days to submit your comment. You can find out how to do so near the bottom of the WSDP Press Release…

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
NO PEACE OUT WEST - U.S. PLANS MORE NUCLEAR WEAPONS ON SHOSHONE LAND:
INDIGENOUS LEADERS, CITIZENS AND SCIENTISITS AGREE - NO NEW NUKES

Comment Period Nearing end

April 3, 2008, 22:42 p.m. (PST) (Newe Sogobe (Lee, Nevada)): With gold prices soaring sky-high and the general public watching Presidential candidate antics, there’s more than just gold rush fever threatening the air and water out West. Under the radar screen, a public comment period closes next week, …

Black Mesa Indigenous Support (BMIS) sends an update on the struggle of the Traditional Dineh residents of Black Mesa, reminding us that the US still intends to relocate the Dineh and destroy their homelands.

For more information and to learn how to help, please visit www.blackmesais.org, and www.blackmesawatercoalition.org

FIRST NATIONS, FIRST RESISTANCE—
SUPPORT THE STRUGGLE FOR SURVIVAL AT BIG MOUNTAIN, BLACK MESA, AZ.

On behalf of their peoples, their ancestral lands, and future generations, more than 350 Dineh residents of Black Mesa continue their staunch resistance to the efforts of the US Government– acting in the interests of the Peabody Coal Company—to relocate the Dineh and destroy their homelands. This land is the basis for the Black Mesa peoples’ traditions, livelihoods, and spirituality.

At this moment the decision makers in Washington D.C. are planning ways to seize tribal lands to extract mineral resources. The coal companies are funding both the Republican and Democratic parties because they have huge interests at stake. Presidential candidate John McCain recently sponsored forced-relocation legislation targeting these Dineh families; Peabody Coal, the world’s largest coal company, currently has plans to …