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By Michelle Chen, Sept. 14 - After a long campaign by indigenous-rights and public-interest groups, the federal government has dismissed corporations’ plans to create a nuclear-waste dump on an Indian reservation in Utah.

The decision by the US Department of the Interior (DOI) all but ends a decade-long controversy that divided an indigenous community and threatened to turn native land into a repository for deadly radioactive waste.

Last Thursday, DOI’s Bureau of Land Management and Bureau of Indian Affairs concluded that the plan to establish a major storage facility for irradiated nuclear waste on the Skull Valley Goshute Reservation had failed to …

This item comes from Weekly News Update on the Americas, No. 856, 8/27/06. www.americas.org

During the week of Aug. 14, some 500 indigenous Guarani people began an occupation at the Parapeti station of the Yacuiba-Rio Grande gas pipeline (GASYRG) near Charagua, in the eastern Bolivian department of Santa Cruz, to demand that the Transierra company pay the Guarani people $9 million in exchange for allowing the pipeline to operate on their land. Transierra agreed in a 2005 accord to provide that amount to benefit the Guarani people; the company says the funding was to be distributed over a 20-year period, …

On Aug. 22, the government of Chaco province in northeastern Argentina signed a broad accord with representatives of the Chaco Indigenous Institute (IdACH) on land and budget issues in an effort to end a nearly three-month-old indigenous protest. Since June 6, some 500 indigenous people from rural areas of the province have been camped out in front of the provincial government building in the provincial capital, Resistencia, to demand land distribution, education and health care for Chaco’s indigenous communities, among other demands. Chaco, Argentina’s poorest province, is home to 60,000 indigenous people of the Toba, Mocovi and Wichi ethnic groups.

The …

Published in: Legalbrief Today, Issue No: 1642

A remote northern Ontario Aboriginal community has won the first stage of a controversial legal battle that could have major repercussions for mining and resource extraction operations throughout the province, according to a report on the minesandcommunities site.

In May, Kitchenuhmaykoosib Inninuwug (KI) launched a lawsuit to counter a $10bn case filed against them by an Ontario mineral exploration company, Platinex, that wants to exploit platinum deposits located within KI’s traditional territory. The landmark decision from Judge GP Smith of the Ontario Superior Court represents one of the most important victories empowering Aboriginal communities in …

Indigenous Protesters Set to Starve to Death for Land
By Marcela Valente, IPS News
August 10, 2006

BUENOS AIRES (IPS) - A group of indigenous people in the Argentine province of Chaco have been on a hunger strike for 21 days, in the provincial capitol building. They are in a windowless hearing room furnished only with a table and eight chairs, with the electric lights switched on day and night, and surrounded by police.

“Imagine what it’s like for us, accustomed as we are to our forests and rivers, to be cooped up here like prisoners, escorted by guards even to the bathroom, sleeping …

By Kate Harries, www.theglobeandmail.com - A Toronto junior mining-exploration company has suffered a stunning setback in its legal battle with a remote Ontario native band.

Platinex Inc. is suing Kitchenuhmaykoosib Inninuwug (KI, formerly Big Trout Lake First Nation) for $10-billion and sought to have band members prohibited from protesting at its drilling site.

Instead, Mr. Justice Patrick Smith of the Ontario Superior Court has found in favour of the band’s counter-injunction application and ordered Platinex not to work at the site for five months while the company and the provincial government hold talks with KI.

Judge Smith also wrote that mandating consultation by …

Phra Supoj Suvacano, a Buddhist monk, was killed for challenging the efforts of businessmen to take control of forest lands belonging to the temple and his local community. One year after his death, there have been no signs of progress. He is one of more than 20 defenders killed in the last five years.

This month, Human Rights First released a report documenting these attacks on defenders as well as arbitrary arrests and disappearances in the conflict area of southern Thailand. It’s called Losing Ground: Human Rights Defenders and Counterterrorism in Thailand.

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End Impunity for the Murder of Thai Rights Defenders

One …