In their plans to build a jumbo pipeline across unceded Lubicon territory, TransCanada’s failure to consult and address the concerns of the Lubicon Cree has begun ricocheting back at the company.

According to a Press Release by the Friends of the Lubicon dated February 26, TransCanada shareholders have learned of the failure and are now “taking the company to task for mismanaging the issue of aboriginal land rights and rightly raising the possibility of delays and/or cancellation of the project if Lubicon land rights are not properly addressed by the …

A popular consultation (referendum) was held in Peru last week, drawing out some 7500 people from the Province of Candarave to vote on whether or not they would support the initiation of new mining activities in the region—and if they would agree to the use of underground water resources for those mining activities.

Despite an effort by one mining company (Southern Copper,a subsidiary of Grupo Mexico) to illicit a YES vote, the People of Candarave made their voice abundantly clear. 90 percent of the participants voted “NO” to both questions… …

On January 1st of this year, the government of India took a major step toward respecting Indigenous Rights. They enacted the Tribal Forest Rights Act, a law which has been often said to correct the “historical injustice” where India’s forest dwelling indigenous population has been systematically excluded from having rights, and forced to abandon their lands, cultures, and livelihoods under the guise of forest preservation and the protection of wildlife.

The Forest Rights Act brings an end to this, it is said, through giving India’s forest-dwelling Peoples authority …

In early January, five leading Tibetan organizations announced the launch of the “Tibetan People’s Uprising Movement”, a coordinated Tibetan resistance effort leading up to the 2008 Beijing Olympics. The Games will take place just months before the 50th anniversary of the 1959 Tibetan National Uprising against China’s invasion of Tibet. Since then, more than 1 million Tibetans have died as a direct result of China’s occupation.

As stated in a Press Release, even now, China continues an “unrelenting war on Tibetan religion and culture.” They are displacing …

The Mining Advocacy Network reports that indigenous people in Kanaky, more commonly known as New Caledonia, began mobilizing over the weekend to stop a waste pipe that Inco is hurriedly laying for its Goro nickel mine.

A little over a week ago, the company won an appeal case filed by the indigenous concern group Rheebu Nuu in November 2006. The groups says the waste pipe is an imminent threat to the environment.

Kanaky is one of the world’s top biodiversity hotspots. The majority of species are endemic, …

A few months back there was a story about a company that plans to use megaphones if they come across any uncontacted tribes while working in the Peruvian Amazon. Repsol YPF, the company calls itself.

Well, the stage is now set for those indigenous People to be aurally assaulted by megaphones. In December, the government of Peru gave Repsol along with Barrett Resources permission to go ahead with their oil exploration plans. Incidentally, Barrett also plans to contact any people they come across, but rather than use megaphones they’re choosing to …

On January 31, the government of India gave South Korean multinational Pohong Steel Corporation (POSCO) permission to go ahead with a huge iron mining, manufacturing and export project in Orissa state. As a result, villagers in the region along with anyone opposed to the project are now at high risk of being violently suppressed.

Friends of the Earth International explains that, “already, on 29 November, 2007, fifty villagers were injured as 100 armed men bombed, beat and sexually molested protesters (mostly women). The police watched the attack, then proceeded to occupy …

A Fight Against Time is a documentary filmed in 1995 that examines the plight of the Lubicon Cree Nation.

In 1971, the Province of Alberta declared the Lubicon were “squatters on Crown land,” and started building a road so companies could exploit the resources in the area. After the road was finished, companies firmly rooted themselves within the Lubicon’s traditional land base. This proved to be drastic for the Lubicon.

For nearly 15 years, they pursued legal action against the government, but every attempt for justice seemed to have been blocked by the courts. Meanwhile, both the Provincial and Federal governments …

This past Monday, Swedish Television aired “Historiens Fångar” (History’s Prisoners) - an anti-indigenous propaganda film that claims there are no traditional Indigenous cultures left in the world, and that the only chance of survival for the remaining ‘drunk and pathetic few’ is through assimilating into colonial society.

“The most notable voice in the program,” Jim Barrett explains, is Keith Windschuttle, author of “the Fabrication of Aboriginal History, a controversial book that attempts to resurrect an array of colonial fallacies toward indigenous people: that colonization was justified, …

An indigenous Bororo community in the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso is on edge after land invaders threatened to destroy their village and attack children, adults and elderly people.

In a recent article on BrazzilMag, Maria Aparecida Toroekure, chief of the indigenous community explains that the invaders have been threatening them for 20 days now.

[…] but since January 28 they began to act more aggressively. Twenty of the 28 indigenous people who lived in the indigenous area left after these threats.

Aparecida believes that threats like these are made because people …