For more than a decade, the cities of Chihuahua and Juarez, near the US-Mexico border, have been killing fields for young women. Over 400 women have been murdered and an additional 4000 women have gone missing since 1993.

As relayed on the Juarez Project website,

“A significant number of victims work in the maquiladora sector - sweatshops that produce for export, with 90% destined for the United States. The maquiladoras employ mainly young women, at poverty level wages. In combination with lax environmental regulations and low tariffs under the North …

The following is a trailer for the film Ever Decreasing Circles, a documentary that outlines the ongoing health crisis and human rights disaster that’s been thrown on the backs of one traditional farming community in Berezovka, Kazakhstan.

The situation is said to be an example of “the typical environmental and social exploitation occurring in the Caspian region at the hands of western oil consortiums and corrupt local officials. What is not typical about Berezovka is that the citizens are fighting back.”

Located nearly five-kilometers away from the fields, the community …

“All that Glitters is not Gold” is an informative and disturbing 6-minute video that looks at the Olympic Dam in Australia, the site of the world’s largest known uranium deposit.

Currently, BHP Billiton wants the federal and state government to approve a plan to bring 40 million tonnes of the radioactive ore to the surface every year for the next 50-100 years.

As relayed in the film, and in a press release for a related film, more than 80% of the radiation that will be brought up from deep within the earth will remain at the surface of the …

“Moving Mountains, ” is a film produced by the Philippine Human Rights Information Center (PhilRights) which examines the toxic legacy of large-scale mining in the Philippines.

The primary focus in the following 10 minute clip is on the region known as the Cordillera.

Home to over a million settlers and indigenous people, the Cordillera is a row of great mountain ranges occupying half of Northern Luzon in the Philippines.

Currently, there are more than 60 pending applications by mining companies to explore and exploit the minerals in the Cordillera–altogether covering more than half of the region (over 11,000 hectares).

There are …

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 …

December 13th marked the first anniversary of the Kgeikani Kweni’s (First People of the Kalahari) landmark victory in Botswana’s High Court. As relayed in the following video produced shortly after the victory, the court ruled the government’s eviction of the Kgeikani Kweni was ‘unlawful and unconstitutional’, and that they have the right to live, hunt, and gather on their ancestral land in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve.

After the court ruling, the government continued to deny their rights. In fact, they stepped up their persecution of those who try to hunt on the reserve. At least 53 Kgeikani Kweni have been …

In a passionate defense of real multiculturalism delivered back in 2003, National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence Wade Davis used his wealth of his experiences living and working with Indigenous People around the world to build a powerful argument in favor of cultural diversity:

The world in which we live in does not exist in some absolute sense but is just one model of reality, the consequence of one particular set of adapted choices that our lineage made albeit successfully many generations ago. And of course we all share the same adaptive imperative, we are all born, we all bring our children to …

The farmers of Daechuri and Doduri have long resisted the Korean government’s attempts to force their eviction in order to make way for the expansion of the “Camp Humphreys” (K-6) US Military Base. After years of legal battles, in December 2005, the Central Land Expropriation Committee approved a request for imminent domain acquisition of the two villages, instantly making the farmers criminals trespassing on federal property.

Three months later, the farmers marched to the local government office to declare that Daechuri and Doduri were autonomous from Korea. They renounced …

This ten-minute video, “Por el Territorio Wichi” (For the Wichi Territory) brings you to the heart of Indigenous struggle. It looks at the Wichi of northern Argentina, who’s land has been steadily invaded over the last 100 years.

Since then, loggers have felled their forest, and settlers have introduced cattle. These cattle not only turn the land already stolen from the Wichí into desert, but also break into the tiny plots of land which the Wichí have managed to hold on to, destroying their crops. The Wichí have been left almost landless and without their livelihood. The local Salta authorities have, …

This 12-minute video, produced by the Seventh Generation Fund, discusses the Defenders of the Black Hills, “a group of volunteers, without racial or tribal boundaries, whose mission is to ensure that all of the provisions of the Fort Laramie Treaties of 1851 and 1868 are upheld by the federal government of the United States.”

In doing so, these volunteers are also upholding the Constitution of the United States which, in Article Six, states that “treaties are the Supreme Law of the land.” Until the

Treaties are upheld, the actions of the Defenders are to restore and protect the …