A group of Penan from the Upper Baram region of the East Malaysian State of Sarawak have reported Headman Kelesau Naan has vanished without a trace. He was last seen on October 23, 2007.
According to a media release by Bruno Manser Fonds, “The Penan leader, who was in his 70s, was last seen on 23 October 2007 in the vicinity of his village in one of Sarawak’s last intact rainforests. After two months, the Penan have decided to break the silence and have lodged a police report.”
The Penan fear he may have been murdered because he “is one of four plaintiffs and a key witness in a major Penan land rights claim that has been awaiting trial since 1998. He was one of the leading figures in the Upper Baram Penan communities’ struggle against the …
Living in their Sierra Madre Mountains stronghold, for hundreds of years the Huichol People of Mexico successfully resisted the genocidal impact of the Spanish Conquest. Almost untouched, they were able to maintain their traditional culture, language and spiritual way of life.
“Today, the Huichol Indians are less isolated, increasingly vulnerable and exposed to inroads made by the Mexican Government, modern industry and tourism. Although in some areas of their homeland, their traditional co- operative way of life, intricate dress, diverse art forms and ancient shamanic ceremonials remain strong; elsewhere they have become only haunting echoes of the past.
Huichol culture is now in a transitional melting pot, grappling with alcoholism, cultural alienation, suicide and extreme poverty. Huichol Indian communities are some of the most disenfranchised within Mexico, and the Mexican Government’s insidious programme of ‘educating’ them and introducing them to “profitable industry” has led to widespread decline in traditional agricultural practices …
At a press conference this morning, Aboriginal Affairs Minister Michael Bryant along with Natural Resources Minister Donna Cansfield announced Ontario will be returning Ipperwash Provincial Park lands to the Chippewas of Kettle and Stony Point First Nation.
“As the first step in the process to transfer Ipperwash Provincial Park from the province to the Chippewas of Kettle and Stony Point First Nation, both parties will work together with the local communities to develop an interim co-management plan,” said Cansfield. “Through these discussions we will determine how the park lands will be used and managed until the transfer is completed.”
This announcement comes in the wake of the Ipperwash Inquiry, which was concluded on May 31, 2007. Among other things, the final report called for a resolution of the Ipperwash Provincial Park lands.
A day after the …
Today, a group of Lakota calling themselves the Lakota Freedom Delegation are in Washington DC to announce their Nation’s withdrawal from all U.S. Treaties.
Information is fairly short at the moment, but they sent out a press release last week, explaining:
“For far too long our people have suffered at the hands of the colonial apartheid system imposed on the Lakota Sioux. Our treaties with the United States government are nothing more than worthless words on worthless paper – repeatedly violated in order to steal our culture, our land and our ability to maintain our way of life.
The devastation this has wrought is clear:
[NB: this is just a fraction of what the Lakota, like all Indigenous People are faced with]
Lakota men have a life expectancy of less than 44 years, lowest of any country in the World (excluding AIDS) including Haiti.
The Lakota infant mortality rate is 5x the …
In response to the increased aggressions of Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI)-affiliated armed groups against the community of Bolom Ajaw in the region of the Agua Azul river, civil organizations and members of the Other Campaign in Chiapas have set up an observation camp in the Zapatista community.
The armed group wants to evict/displace the community from their land, because they say it used to be a privately owned tourist and resort area. In 1994 the Zapatista reclaimed the land…
To assist the community, “the Center for Political Analysis and Social and Economic Investigations (CAPISE) has [also] called on international civil society and organizations to address their ministries or Departments of tourism and the travel agencies in their countries, to “inform them about the incidents at the Agua Azul waterfall and to carry out a campaign with the demand: No visits to …
The state of Michigan on Friday handed a huge defeat to Indigenous People, environmental groups and others who have actively opposed a controversial sulfide mine that the Kennecott Minerals Company - an international mining company with one of the worst environmental records in the world - wants to build in the pristine Yellow Dog Plains near Lake Superior.
Kennecott plans to tunnel below a prime trout stream (the Salmon-Trout River - that feeds Lake Superior) and use an acid-leaching process to extract nickel and other minerals - leaving in its place hundreds of thousands of tons of acid-leached waste rock (sulfuric acid, aka battery acid).
It’s readily possible the mine will cause the river to collapse into the mine, thus polluting Lake Superior and possibly all the Great Lakes. Legally speaking, this should have been enough to deny the …
Last Monday, the Klabona Keepers won a temporary injunction against Shell Canada, forcing them to halt road construction for the coalbed methane project their pushing on Klabona Territory (Tahltan).
The injunction will only be in effect for about a week, when a Canadian court will can hear the application for a second injunction against Shell; but Rhoda Quock, a Tahltan elder and spokeswoman for the Klabona Keepers says “we are treating this injunction as a significant victory and the best way we can celebrate the 10th Anniversary of the Landmark Delgamuukw/Gisday’wa Decision that was handed down on December 10, 1997.”
Since 2005, the road has been the site of roadblocks by the Klabona Keepers Elders Society. Aside from it being on Tahltan lands, the area that Shell threatens to destroy has been used for generations by …
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