Tag Archive for 'Kumiai'

01
Apr

Underreported Struggles for March

In February we saw ‘civil society’ start to demand corporations abandon oppressive and destructive practices. Well, that trend continued through March; unfortunately, it seems to have been more chest pounding than anything… It was as if everyone sat around a campfire, talking about far off things while a fire raged a foot to their backside. Integrity what? Responsibility who? “No, no no. We’re not doing anything wrong. We’re not the problem. We’re not the enemy.”

And so, desperately clinging to myth and hypocrisy, the so-called business community pushed on, doing everything to ensure you can keep getting toilet paper, cheese puffs, and semi-automatic machine guns.

As for the enemy? Those said to be unworthy and in the way? From Tasmania to Alaska and Peru to China, we continued to call the lie for what it is, and doing our best to live our …

Published on
April 1, 2008
  0 Comments 856 views

24
Mar

Project of Autonomy and Self-Determination for Kumiai and Cucapa

Last month, the Cucapa and Kumiai Indigenous Communities of Baja California, Mexico, announced a multilateral project dedicated to making themselves autonomous, self-sufficient, traditionally-governed Peoples.

As explained in a project overview (see below), years of colonial policies on part of the Mexican government have produced “the almost complete loss of our autonomy, of our natural resources, and our culture, principally our native tongues, and the destruction of the social fabric within our communities and our forms of internal organization.”

Their situation is getting to the point now, they added, where “we will disappear as Indian Peoples and that in a not too distant future we will be talked about like we talk today about the extinct Pericues, Waycuras and Cochimies, who inhabited the peninsula, if now, at this very moment, we do nothing to prevent this.”

Rather than wait for their own …

Published on
March 24, 2008
  3 Comments 812 views

Video activism and the Chiapas Media Project

In the following presentation, Claudia Magallanes-Blanco from the University of Western Sydney talks about the role of video activism as a world-wide tool for empowerment and the Chiapas Media Project, a collaborative effort based in Mexico that provides indigenous Zapatistas in Chiapas and peasants in Guerrero with training and equipment to produce their own videos.

Since forming in 1998, CMP has distributed over 6000 videos, including: Zapata’s Garden, a film that looks at the society the Zapatista’s are building; …


I Am A Defender of the Rainforest

Known as ‘Soy defensor de la selva’ in Spanish, I am a Defender of the Rainforest is an award-winning documentary that was filmed, edited, and directed by members of the Sarayaku community in southern Ecuador.

The film shows how the …


Underreported Struggles #19, October 2008

In this month’s Underreported Struggles: 400,000 Guatemalans Reject Development Model, Philippines Indigenous People Unite for the Land, Riot Police Target Algonquin Blockade, Chagos Islanders Denied the Right of Return, and 17 other stories …


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