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It was pretty much ‘business as usual’ for the month of February. Corporations continued acting as innocent third parties while Governments continued to demand indigenous People allow the theft of their lands and destruction of their cultures without question. “It’s in your best interests,” we’re told. “It’s for the greater good.”

Amidst this however, there was one important shift in the world this month–one that we can only hope will catch on in greater force. Governments began pulling back the reins of development, and a few corporations and Shareholders started withdrawing from and speaking …

Things are getting worse for the world’s indigenous people. It’s no longer a matter of a few companies doing whatever they want to gut a region at the direct expense of a culture, or about some government that’s more than willing to crush down a people so the company can do it without interruption. The problem is that it’s being done more and more and more. It’s developmental genocide on a global scale and it won’t be letting up anytime soon.

And so I echo the Zapatista call for us …

Today, Survival International released an alert explaining that Kenya’s honey-hunting Ogiek are being targeted in the escalating post-election violence in Kenya.

“An Ogiek leader said today, ‘We the Ogiek people have suffered police shooting, intimidations and threats…. Currently five of our youth have been shot and injured as hundreds of families fled their homes…. We cannot access food, shelter or medicines.’

There have been allegations of rape of Ogiek women by police, and Ogiek houses have been burned down.”

One article posted on the Ogiek website explains that they …