With Thanksgiving coming up, I'm going to be asking my family to contribute to mutual aid to first nation/indigenous collective. I figured this is the best community to ask. I was thinking Chunka luta network among others, but they also haven't been active in a number of months. Any recommendations would be appreciated.

Israel’s onslaught since October 2023 has made the densely populated territory of Gaza – only 25 miles long and six miles wide – unlivable.

Despite the profound environmental impact and the implications for global climate stability, the destruction of Gaza’s environment, ecosystems and food production systems has not been answered with international action.

Independent experts have defined ecocide as “unlawful or wanton acts committed with knowledge that there is a substantial likelihood of severe and either widespread or long-term damage to the environment being caused by those acts.”

From the start, Israel was honest about its goal: the destruction of Gaza.

Israel’s indiscriminate attacks and use of weapons with wide-area effects are aimed at causing as much damage as possible. This has led not only to significant civilian casualties but the annihilation of entire ecosystems.

Israel has destroyed or damaged all five of Gaza’s wastewater treatment facilities, “contaminating beaches and coastal waters, soils and potentially the groundwater,” according to a UN environmental assessment published in June. Untreated sewage released into the Mediterranean Sea pollutes the marine environment and coastal habitats. It also will likely cause harm to Gaza’s fishing industry – fish being a key source of food and fishing a traditional vocation in the territory, where rates of food insecurity and unemployment are catastrophically high.

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In September, 2020, Elon Musk and a Tesla executive named Drew Baglino put on matching T-shirts and took the stage in a California parking lot. To mark what the company called Battery Day, Tesla had gathered an audience of shareholders, who were social distancing by sitting separately in gleaming electric cars. Some of the company’s new batteries, Musk and Baglino announced, contained far more nickel than previous models; as a result, they could travel farther, and at far less cost, on a single charge. “Increasing nickel is a goal of ours and, really, everybody’s in the battery industry,” Baglino said. The metal would accelerate the transition away from dirty combustion engines, the largest source of carbon emissions in the United States. “I actually spoke with the C.E.O.s of the biggest mining companies in the world and said, ‘Please make more nickel,’ ” Musk said. Throughout the presentation, attendees applauded by laying on their horns.

But one of the next largest producers is tiny New Caledonia, a French overseas territory in the Pacific which is less than a hundredth of the size of Indonesia. “I have never seen nickel deposits like we have in New Caledonia,” Miguel Ate, a geologist from the territory’s Indigenous Kanak community, told me. “My island is four hundred kilometres long by sixty kilometres wide. It’s all nickel.” Ate, who works for a mining company, was exaggerating—but not by much. About a third of the soil on the country’s main island, Grand Terre, contains the metal, giving New Caledonia, according to some recent estimates, more than a quarter of the world’s nickel resources.

In 2021, Tesla struck a five-year deal to buy up to a third of the nickel from Goro, one of New Caledonia’s largest mines. The New York Times touted the move as “a path to begin sidestepping China” and, in the best-case scenario, an opportunity to improve weak environmental and labor standards in the mining industry. At a time when the U.S. is penalizing electric automakers that buy Chinese nickel from Indonesia, and also negotiating a trade agreement with the E.U. which could extend generous subsidies to nickel from New Caledonia, the territory could play a crucial role in the green-energy transition.

The ecological richness of New Caledonia is one of the lasting mysteries of natural history. High concentrations of nickel are usually toxic to plants, but here evolution took an unusual path. In the course of tens of millions of years, the island’s infertile soils came to nurture a flora unlike any other in the world. In 1976, a paper in Science introduced a new term, “hyper-accumulator,” to describe a species of New Caledonian tree that produced mint-green latex; more than a quarter of the latex, by dry weight, was found to be nickel, “easily the highest nickel concentration ever found in living material.” Instead of killing plants, the metal seemed to be interacting with organisms and steering their development in curious ways. A 2009 study, which measured the number of unique vascular plants growing in different regions of the globe, gave New Caledonia “by far the highest value,” with thousands of species found nowhere else. Scientists still discover, on average, a new plant species there every month.

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It’s November and it’s unseasonably warm as John John Brown, a Muscogee elder, works to replant peach saplings. “I haven’t had much luck growing them from seed,” he says. The reason, he thinks, is because peaches need lower temperatures.

Around him, tiny peach trees the size of pencils stand above the browning grass underneath their parent tree. Brown harvested around 200 peaches this year from his small orchard — enough for his family and neighbors — but he had competition: A fox has been poking around. “The animals know when the peaches are ripe quicker than I do,” Brown laughs. “They start coming in and stealing my peaches.”

Brown’s peaches aren’t your everyday peaches, they’re heirlooms: direct descendants of peach seeds brought across the continent on the Trail of Tears. Brown calls them “Indian peaches” while other Muscogees call them “Trail of Tears peaches.” There has been little research on this particular variety, and it’s unknown just how many genes they share with commercial peaches. While grocery store peaches are soft and fleshy, Indian peaches don’t get much bigger than a lemon and are extremely firm but sweet.

The Indian peach is threatened by climate change. Where hurricanes, flooding, and higher temperatures have massive impacts on crops, including peaches, around the nation, heirloom varieties, like the Indian peach, are also threatened. This fruit, that crossed a planet, carried by traders and travelers, and eventually by a few Muscogees along The Trail before they found a new home outside Sapulpa, Oklahoma, is a connection to another time and place.

“One of the greatest gifts Creator gave me is these peaches and the ability to share these trees with our community and everyone,” Brown said.

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The political-military origins of the EZNL are found in the National Liberation Forces (FLN), a clandestine organization formed at the end of the 1960s in northern Mexico, inspired by the Cuban revolution, the FLN organized a guerrilla struggle with the aim of achieving the construction of socialism in Mexico. But some time later, in the early 1970s, they ended their activities abruptly when their structure in Mexico City was discovered by state security forces and many of their militants, both in Chiapas and Mexico City, were brutally assassinated. However, its survivors did not give up and managed to reorganize and settle in 1983 in Chiapas, pursuing the same objectives. However, in order to achieve their objectives, they formed the EZLN and a social base to sustain it.

The main social base of the EZLN is in the indigenous municipalities of the Cañadas region, the highlands and the northern zone of Chiapas. A large number of the commanders are indigenous and, at least since 1993, the military apparatus has been subordinated to a council of delegates from the Zapatista communities called the Clandestine Revolutionary Indigenous Clandestine Committee (CCRI). The indigenous communities in the country have a long history of exploitation, abandonment and exclusion from national political and economic life, and have strengthened their community organization, while historically leading various social movements in search of improving their living conditions, preserving their traditions and customs or for their self-determination and government; The jungle zone and the highlands of Chiapas are no exception, so the guerrilla group that arrived there found an already highly politicized indigenous society, with experience in mobilization and with permanent communication with diverse political and social organizations; The little or no response to their demands on the part of federal, state or local authorities, and the permanent violation of their fundamental rights, may explain, on the one hand, the reasons why they opted for the armed struggle in 1994. On the other hand, their growing participation in the Zapatista uprising reinforced the indigenous character of the EZLN, which quickly integrated their demands in its program and discourse, which generated that during the negotiations with the federal government, a process was initiated to establish a new relationship between the State and the indigenous peoples of the country. The EZLN, on behalf of the national indigenous movement, incorporated the demands and proposals of the various indigenous representations of the country.

Being the indigenous peasants “support bases” for the EZLN, we can highlight five forms of cooperation between these two groups: safeguarding the clandestinity of the insurgents; recruiting new combatants; guaranteeing supplies to sustain the guerrillas; participating in protest mobilizations; and carrying out collective infrastructure work and (inter)community services. These functions strengthen the bonds of (inter)community solidarity, increase social integration and strengthen a “Zapatista identity”.

In the 1994 uprising in Chiapas, the EZLN demanded the vindication of the ownership of the lands taken from the indigenous communities, a better distribution of wealth and the participation of the different ethnic groups in the organization of the state and the country; the reaction of the federal government was to send troops to Chiapas to quell the rebellion. The mobilizations of the civil society stopped the attacks and after 12 days of armed conflict, the federal government unilaterally declared a ceasefire.

The talks between the EZLN and the federal government ended with the signing in February 1996 of the San Andres Accords on “Indigenous Rights and Culture”, which committed the State to recognize indigenous peoples constitutionally and to grant them autonomy. The dialogues also gave rise to the foundation of the National Indigenous Congress (CNI) on October 12, 1996, a movement of indigenous peoples, neighborhoods, tribes, nations, collectives and organizations, with the slogan “Never again a Mexico without us” and with the objective of the integral reconstitution of the indigenous peoples. In March 1995, the Commission for Concord and Pacification (COCOPA), a bicameral legislative commission made up of the Mexican Chamber of Deputies and Senate, was formed to assist in the dialogue process.

Shortly after they were signed, the San Andres Accords were ignored by President Ernesto Zedillo. A policy of encirclement and siege, organized by the federal and local governments with the support of landowners and cattle ranchers, organized paramilitary forces trained by the army itself and allocated considerable resources to the cooptation of citizens and groups, while at the same time accentuating the expulsion of opponents from their lands and villages.

COCOPA, which was charged with drafting a proposal for constitutional reform that would include the main consensuses established in the San Andres Accords, presented its initiative to the parties in November 1996; the EZLN accepted the proposal; the President, although he accepted it at first, soon proposed modifications that substantially changed the proposal, without recognizing the rights of the indigenous peoples, and without recognizing any compromise. The peace process became bogged down.

In 2003, the EZLN announced the creation of Los Caracoles and the Good Government Councils, which reinforced the principle of “commanding by obeying”, -they listen, do, decide and command, obeying the communities and their territorial organizations-, and in the autonomy they allow to propose a strong project of networks with national and international possibilities. Since its creation, Zapatista teachers and doctors have been trained and schools and clinics have been built. In addition, a justice system has been developed which is used by both Zapatistas and other members of society, as it is more efficient than the institutional system.

The Caracoles, in the words of Pablo González Casanova, “open new possibilities of resistance and autonomy for the indigenous peoples of Mexico and the world, a resistance that includes all social sectors that fight for democracy, freedom and justice for all”.

• EZLN, 30 AÑOS DE RESISTENCIA

• Análisis de la fundación del EZLN en Chiapas desde la perspectiva de la acción colectiva insurgente

• Marcos: historia y palabra (propio)

• EZLN la Historia Continua

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Haka are a variety of ceremonial dances in Māori culture. A performance art, haka are often performed by a group, with vigorous movements and stamping of the feet with rhythmically shouted accompaniment. Haka have been traditionally performed by both men and women for a variety of social functions within Māori culture. They are performed to welcome distinguished guests, or to acknowledge great achievements, occasions, or funerals.

Kapa haka groups are common in schools. The main Māori performing arts competition, Te Matatini, takes place every two years.

New Zealand sports teams' practice of performing a haka to challenge opponents before international matches has made the dance form more widely known around the world. This tradition began with the 1888–89 New Zealand Native football team tour and has been carried on by the New Zealand rugby union team (known as the All Blacks) since 1905. Although popularly associated with the traditional battle preparations of male warriors, conceptions that haka are typically war dances, and the inaccurate performance of haka by non-Māori, are considered erroneous by Māori scholars.

Etymology

The group of people performing a haka is referred to as a kapa haka (kapa meaning group or team, and also rank or row). The Māori word haka has cognates in other Polynesian languages, for example: Samoan saʻa (saʻasaʻa), Tokelauan haka, Rarotongan ʻaka, Hawaiian haʻa, Marquesan haka, meaning 'to be short-legged' or 'dance'; all from Proto-Polynesian saka, from Proto-Malayo-Polynesian sakaŋ, meaning 'bowlegged'.

History and practice

According to Māori scholar Tīmoti Kāretu, haka have been "erroneously defined by generations of uninformed as 'war dances'", while Māori mythology places haka as a dance "about the celebration of life". Following a creation story, the sun god, Tama-nui-te-rā, had two wives, the Summer Maid, Hine-raumati, and the Winter Maid, Hine-takurua. Haka originated in the coming of Hine-raumati, whose presence on still, hot days was revealed in a quivering appearance in the air. This was haka of Tāne-rore, the son of Hine-raumati and Tama-nui-te-rā. Hyland comments that "[t]he haka is (and also represents) a natural phenomena [sic]; on hot summer days, the 'shimmering' atmospheric distortion of air emanating from the ground is personified as 'Te Haka a Tānerore'"

War haka (peruperu) were originally performed by warriors before a battle, proclaiming their strength and prowess in order to intimidate the enemy. Various actions are employed in the course of a performance, including facial contortions such as showing the whites of the eyes (pūkana), and poking out the tongue (whetero, performed by men only)

18th and 19th centuries

The earliest Europeans to witness haka described them as being "vigorous" and "ferocious". From their arrival in the early 19th century, Christian missionaries tried unsuccessfully to eradicate haka, along with other forms of Māori culture that they saw as conflicting with Christian beliefs and practice.

Modern haka

In modern times, various haka have been composed to be performed by women and even children. In some haka the men start the performance and women join in later. Haka are performed for various reasons: for welcoming distinguished guests, or to acknowledge great achievements, occasions or funerals.

The 1888–89 New Zealand Native football team began a tradition by performing haka during an international tour. The common use of haka by the national rugby union team before matches, beginning with The Original All Blacks in 1905, has made one type of haka familiar.

The choreographed dance and chant popularized around the world by the All Blacks derives from "Ka Mate", a brief haka previously intended for extemporaneous, non-synchronized performance, whose composition is attributed to Te Rauparaha (1760s–1849), a war leader of the Ngāti Toa tribe. The "Ka Mate" haka is classified as a haka taparahi – a ceremonial haka performed without weapons. "Ka Mate" is about the cunning ruse Te Rauparaha used to outwit his enemies, and may be interpreted as "a celebration of the triumph of life over death".

Specific legal challenges regarding the rights of the Ngāti Toa to be acknowledged as the authors and owners of "Ka Mate" were eventually settled in a Deed of Settlement between Ngāti Toa and the New Zealand Government and New Zealand Rugby Union agreed in 2009 and signed in 2012.

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Thousands of people have joined a nine-day march towards New Zealand’s capital over a contentious bill redefining the country’s founding agreement between the British and the Indigenous Maori people.

New Zealand police reported that about 10,000 people marched through the town of Rotorua in protest against the Treaty Principles Bill on Friday, greeted by hundreds waving the Maori flag as they headed south to the capital, Wellington, some 450km (280 miles) away.

The march – or hikoi in the Maori language – is expected to reach Wellington on Tuesday, with participants staging rallies on their passage through towns and cities across the country after the bill passed its first parliamentary reading on Thursday.

The measure overhauls the 184-year-old Treaty of Waitangi, a document granting Maori tribes broad rights to retain their lands and protect their interests in return for ceding governance to the British. The document still guides legislation and policy today.

The ACT New Zealand party, a junior partner in the governing centre-right coalition government, last week unveiled the bill, which it had promised during last year’s election, arguing that those rights should also apply to non-Indigenous citizens.

The Maori people and their supporters say the bill threatens racial discord and undermines the rights of the country’s Indigenous people, who make up about 20 percent of its 5.3-million population.

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The Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE) confirmed on Wednesday that they will mobilize nationwide on November 15 following the political situation that Ecuador is experiencing under the administration of Daniel Noboa.

By pointing out 11 fundamental points of struggle, the president of CONAIE, Leonidas Iza Salazar, pointed out that “Ecuador does not deserve a spoiled person as president. Ecuadorians need a president who works 24 hours a day for the Ecuadorians, Mr. Noboa, the first decision you should make is to decide if you are a candidate or do something for the Ecuadorian people”.

After the Assembly of Peoples and Social Organizations of Ecuador, held in the auditorium of CONAIE, the organization announced the first actions in response to the crisis facing the country, caused by the government of Daniel Noboa.

“Cancellation of the advertising contract of 5 million dollars, redirecting those funds to the payment of debts with dialysis clinics; immediate collection of outstanding debts with the IRS, amounting to 264 million dollars, including the Exportadora Bananera Noboa; guarantee transparency in the contracting of the electricity sector”, are among CONAIE's demands to the Government of Daniel Noboa.

CONAIE also demands the eradication of illegal mining to safeguard the environment and water sources; that the Armed Forces respect the Constitution and the payment of the social debt to the Ministry of Economic and Social Inclusion (MIES), which is facing a serious resource crisis.

Likewise, CONAIE insists on ensuring labor stability to protect workers from massive layoffs, respect for the fair price of milk and the immediate filing of the Integral Agrarian Code.

CONAIE also calls for a great national unity.

It also called to participate in the Counter Summit of the Peoples and Nationalities in Resistance this November 13, 14 and 15 in the city of Cuenca, a space that arises as a critical response to the Ecuador 2024

Article in spanish

New Zealand’s parliament has erupted into fiery debate, personal attacks and a haka over a controversial bill that proposes to radically alter the way New Zealand’s treaty between Māori and the crown is interpreted.

The treaty principles bill was tabled by the libertarian Act party – a minor partner in New Zealand’s coalition government – and passed its first reading on Thursday, amid scathing speeches and disruptions.

A vote on the bill was momentarily suspended, when opposition parties and people in the public gallery joined in a haka (Māori dance or challenge), led by the Te Pāti Māori MP Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke, who proceeded to rip up a copy of the bill.

The bill seeks to remove a set of well-established principles that has flowed from New Zealand’s founding document, the treaty of Waitangi – an agreement signed in 1840 between more than 500 Māori chiefs and the crown, and which is instrumental in upholding Māori rights.

The principles of the treaty have been developed over 50 years by courts, tribunals and successive governments to help guide the relationship between Māori and ruling authorities and iron out differences in interpretations over the English and Māori texts of the original treaty. Many principles have been developed and continue to evolve, but the most recognised are broadly defined as participation, partnership, protection, and redress.

They have been used in efforts to revitalise the Māori language, including making it an official language, and were used to establish a Māori health authority to reverse poor health outcomes for Māori, which the coalition government dismantled this year.

Critics of the bill say Act’s proposal undermines the treaty and its principles, which they believe threaten Māori rights and promote anti-Māori rhetoric.

Full article

here is the clip to the Haka

Māori members of New Zealand’s parliament disrupted the passage of a bill that would reinterpret the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi, which uplifts Indigenous peoples. The MPs performed a haka—a traditional Māori dance and chant—causing the session to be suspended.

A tomahawk is a type of single-handed axe used by the many Indigenous peoples and nations of North America. It traditionally resembles a hatchet with a straight shaft. In pre-colonial times the head was made of stone, bone, or antler, and European settlers later introduced heads of iron and steel. The term came into the English language in the 17th century as an adaptation of the Powhatan (Virginian Algonquian) word.

Tomahawks were general-purpose tools used by Native Americans and later the European colonials with whom they traded, and often employed as a hand-to-hand weapon

Etymology

The name comes from Powhatan tamahaac, derived from the Proto-Algonquian root *temah- 'to cut off by tool'. Algonquian cognates include Lenape təmahikan, Malecite-Passamaquoddy tomhikon, and Abenaki demahigan, all of which mean 'axe'

History

The Algonquian people created the tomahawk. Before Europeans came to the continent, Native Americans would use stones, sharpened by a process of knapping and pecking, attached to wooden handles, secured with strips of rawhide. The tomahawk quickly spread from the Algonquian culture to the tribes of the South and the Great Plains.

Native Americans created a tomahawk’s poll, the side opposite the blade, which consisted of a hammer, spike or pipe. These became known as pipe tomahawks, which consisted of a bowl on the poll and a hollowed out shaft.

General Purpose Tool

Many Native Americans used tomahawks as general-purpose tools. Because they were small and light, they could be used with one hand. This made them ideal for such activities as hunting, chopping, and cutting. Both the Navajo and Cherokee peoples used them in this way. The development of metal-bladed tomahawks expanded their use even more. Most Native Americans had their own individual tomahawks, which they decorated to suit their personal taste. As Native American artwork shows, many of these were decorated with eagle feathers, which represented acts of bravery.

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When Khalil Sayegh thinks back to his childhood in the Gaza Strip, the Greek Orthodox Church of Saint Porphyrius looms large in his memory.

Sayegh, now 29, remembers the weddings, the Sunday School classes, the music lessons and the visits to the tiny graveyard.

Trump’s political comeback has added a new layer of uncertainty for Palestinians – not just those inside Gaza, which Israel has subjected to near-relentless bombardment and ground assaults for the past 13 months – but also those who, like Sayegh, have family there and are watching helplessly from afar.

They have been deeply angered by the current Democratic Party administration’s failure to hold Israel to account for a war which has resulted in the deaths of more than 43,391 Palestinians – and thousands more who are missing and presumed dead under the rubble. More than 100,000 people have been injured and nearly all the enclave’s population of 2.3 million are displaced.

Sayegh’s homeland, which now lies largely in rubble and ruins, has been ravaged in the past year by this war, which has been largely funded by the US. Hundreds of thousands of homes have been destroyed while hospitals and schools have been targeted in Israeli strikes.

But Sayegh returns to memories of better times. A member of the Gaza Strip’s small but ancient Christian community, he recalls, particularly, the Divine Liturgy celebrated at St Porphyrius every Sunday – the lengthy, ancient rite blending chanting, incense and prayers in Arabic and ancient Greek.

The church and surrounding compound, parts of which date back to the 5th century CE, was a hub for Gaza’s Christian community.

Today, much of it lies in ruins. In October last year, an Israeli air strike destroyed one of the buildings in the compound, killing at least 17 people.

Full article

Kitaskeenan Kaweekanawaynichikatek, the land we want to protect: members of five Cree nations reflect as they seek to protect land devastated by hydroelectricity

Five First Nations in northern Manitoba’s Hudson Bay lowlands say an era of healing, hope and self-determination is on the horizon.

As the first brisk winds of fall arrived, members of York Factory, Shamattawa, War Lake, Tataskweyak and Fox Lake First Nations gathered at a cultural camp on the banks of the Nelson River northeast of Gillam, Man., for a landmark event.

After four years of patient work and community consultations, the five Cree — or Inninew — nations were ready to launch their proposal to establish an Indigenous Protected and Conserved Area (IPCA) across their shared homelands.

Called Kitaskeenan Kaweekanawaynichikatek, which translates to “the land we want to protect,” the proposal would recognize the nations’ long-time stewardship of the region and offer an historic opportunity to formally manage and protect the land and waters under Indigenous laws and governance.

More than 50 Indigenous-led conservation projects like this one have popped up across Canada since the federal government introduced funding in 2018, in an effort to preserve biodiversity and nudge the country toward its goal of protecting 30 per cent of lands and waters by 2030.

For the five Inninew nations, Kitaskeenan is about a lot more than meeting conservation targets. The nations were once a single community living along the coastline around York Factory, at the mouth of the Hayes River. But they have been separated from each other — and their homeland — as industrial developments expanded across the north.

Most impactful: a series of hydroelectric developments on the Nelson River that came with what Fox Lake’s leader, Morris Beardy, called “devastating” consequences.

Full article

Hector Hyppolite. The Congo Queen. by 1946. Enamel, oil, and pencil on cardboard. The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Walter Bareiss

Article

How have symbols embodied the resilience of Afro-Indigenous cultures for centuries?

The title of the newly opened Gallery 208: 500 Years at MoMA refers to the span between the year 1492—when Christopher Columbus and his three Spanish ships happened upon the shores of Caribbean islands—and 1992, when K’iche’ Guatemalan activist Rigoberta Menchú was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. The gallery gathers work by a generation of artists confronting legacies of colonialism in the Americas between the 1990s and 2010s. Their creative interventions embody a sentiment that artist Jaune Quick-to-see-Smith has used to describe her practice: “It’s about networking, trading intellectual ideas, bringing people together, being a catalyst to make things happen.”1

Recently, we asked scholar and curator Dr. Margarita Lila Rosa to reflect on the hemispheric impact of Columbus’s arrival and consider how, centuries later, artists responded to its aftermath.

I am currently visiting the island of Borikén, also known as Puerto Rico. At the top of a hill in the rainforest, I swing on a hamaka, a hammock, while smoking sacred tobacco. I can hear the coquís all around me, the small frogs singing coquí, coquí, coquí, coquí. It is not a coincidence that I, an Afro-Indigenous woman, am here, taking part in these native practices. Native Taino rituals, words, and material history have survived within me.

I was born in a region the Taino people of the Caribbean called Cybao, the north of the Dominican Republic. I would not be here, writing this, were it not for the Tainos. I would not be here without my African ancestors, either. They were enslaved in these islands by my European ancestors. And somehow, after all the pillaging, destruction, and enslavement, we have survived.

Black and Indigenous histories in the Americas are intimately connected. After all, the arrival of Columbus had a hemispheric impact: Europeans exploited the so-called New World for mineral and agricultural wealth, and exploited Black and Indigenous people for all they had. Black and Indigenous histories are tethered to each other, tied together by a legacy of premature death and miraculous survival.

Full article

This week, representatives of the Fort Yuma Quechan Indian Tribe and the Pit River Nation used the 16th United Nations Conference on Biological Diversity, or CBD, in Cali, Columbia to champion the creation of the Kw’tsán National Monument, the Chuckwalla National Monument, and the Sáttítla National Monument. The proposed move would protect around 1 million acres in California from extractive industries like mining, oil, and gas. With the U.S. presidential election less than two weeks away, California tribes are pushing the Biden administration to designate these three national monuments before a new, possibly unfriendly or uninterested administration, takes office.

Lena Ortega of the Fort Yuma Quechan Indian Tribe in the southern tip of California said that in the proposed Kw’tsán National Monument, animals like bighorn sheep and desert tortoises live amongst the Ocotillo, a cane-like semi-succulent, as well as sandfood, a fleshy parasitic plant that grows nowhere else.

“The motto for this year is ‘Peace With Nature,’” she said of the CBD meeting. “Well, we’ve always had peace with nature. We are one with the land and one cannot be separated from the other and still be healthy.”

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• In a unique model for Latin America, a council of Lickanantay people in northern Chile created an environmental unit made up of hydrogeologists, engineers and environmental monitors from the territory’s communities to monitor the territory.
• Their study with a national university shows that the La Brava lagoon, located on the edges of the Atacama salt flat, is fed in part by the salt flat’s brine, which makes it vulnerable to mining activities established in the heart of the salt flat.
• Findings from the study were key in a lawsuit brought by the state defense council against three mining companies for irreparable damage to the Monturaqui-Negrillar-Tilopozo aquifer, the main water source for these lagoons.

The town of San Pedro de Atacama in northern Chile’s Antoremovedasta region is surrounded by natural wonders such as volcanoes, colorful lagoons, geysers, salt flats, gigantic dunes and rock formations. Its main road, Caracoles, is visited by tourists worldwide who travel on foot or by bicycle, with their faces covered with scarves to protect themselves from the high plateau’s strong, sand-blowing winds.

Less than 500 meters (1,600 feet) away, in an adobe house, is the office of the Council of Atacameño Peoples, an Indigenous association that represents 18 communities of the Lickanantay people, which means “the inhabitants of the territory” in the local language.

The Council of Atacameño Peoples (CPA) was created to preserve the territories of the Atacama communities and ensure the well-being of the people who live there. The council thus found it necessary to inspect the impacts of mining activity that occur in the area, also home to fragile ecosystems and endangered species.

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It takes a village

HALCHITA, Utah (AP) — After a five-year wait, Lorraine Black and Ricky Gillis heard the rumblings of an electrical crew reach their home on the sprawling Navajo Nation.

In five days’ time, their home would be connected to the power grid, replacing their reliance on a few solar panels and propane lanterns. No longer would the CPAP machine Gillis uses for sleep apnea or his home heart monitor transmitting information to doctors 400 miles away face interruptions due to intermittent power. It also means Black and Gillis can now use more than a few appliances — such as a fridge, a TV, and an evaporative cooling unit — at the same time.

“We’re one of the luckiest people who get to get electric,” Gillis said.

Many Navajo families still live without running water and electricity, a product of historic neglect and the struggle to get services to far-flung homes on the 27,000-square-mile (70,000-square-kilometer) Native American reservation that lies in parts of Arizona, New Mexico and Utah. Some rely on solar panels or generators, which can be patchy, and others have no electricity whatsoever.

Gillis and Black filed an application to connect their home back in 2019. But when the coronavirus pandemic started ravaging the tribe and everything besides essential services was shut down on the reservation, it further stalled the process.

Their wait highlights the persistent challenges in electrifying every Navajo home, even with recent injections of federal money for tribal infrastructure and services and as extreme heat in the Southwest intensified by climate change adds to the urgency.

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Battery storage could help solve the electricity grid’s biggest climate hurdles. For a small Indigenous community on south Vancouver Island, it could also be a move toward self-sufficiency and welcoming people home

Light pushes through the cloudy October afternoon as George Harry walks up to Malahat Nation’s community freezer on southern Vancouver Island. Behind the silver padlock is a cherished supply of sockeye salmon that “you don’t really get that often,” he says of the red-fleshed fish whose populations fluctuate.

The freezer is just one of the nation’s tools for making future use of nature’s plenty.

Another will soon sit steps away in an unremarkable grey shed the size of a small kitchen. If all goes as planned, the shed will soon house the nation’s new battery storage system, built to store electricity from the community’s growing fleet of solar panels for darker days.

The battery system will be made in the community, a 10-minute walk up a footpath.

That’s where the nation plans to build a 9,000-square-metre battery storage assembly plant in partnership with the Vancouver-based technology company Energy Plug. The plant will import ready-made lithium iron phosphate battery cells to be manufactured into storage systems designed for electricity systems in B.C. and beyond.

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Millions of bison once roamed the grasslands, until colonialism nearly wiped them out. Now, Indigenous people are bringing them back and restoring balance to their homelands

My Métis ancestors hunted and lived relationally with Buffalo, and I can envision how the prairies must have looked hundreds of years ago when millions roamed freely from Alaska’s boreal forests to the western grasslands of Mexico, across the continent from Banff to the eastern Appalachian Mountains. Then colonizers nearly wiped them out, part of a deliberate genocidal effort to starve the Indigenous nations of the plains.

Now, there are far fewer Buffalo to be seen, but Indigenous communities are working to rematriate them to the grasslands. Rematriation, a concept advanced by the late Sto:lo author Lee Maracle, is the process of restoring lands and cultures, done with deep reverence to honour not only the past and present but also the future, and rooted in Indigenous law.

The Buffalo Treaty, signed in September 2014 by eight nations, now has more than 50 signatories and includes 11 articles emphasizing co-operation, renewal and the restoration of Buffalo populations. This cross-border collaboration aims to return Buffalo to their rightful wild status, as they are currently considered “domestic” due to their historical confinement, a word that hardly suits their ancestral legacy.

Buffalo don’t care about borders, and yet, there are rigid regulations in place that stop their movement. The treaty envisions ecological corridors that will allow Buffalo to migrate and roam freely, similar to elk, bears, deer and moose. These corridors are essential for maintaining genetic diversity, supporting the vast ecosystem dynamics of the plains, preserving cultural and spiritual connections for Indigenous peoples and ensuring the long-term viability of bison populations by preventing overgrazing and disease outbreaks.

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Nearly 100 Indigenous leaders from the seven socio-cultural regions of the world have reached unanimous agreement on defining a Just Transition with respect to impacted or potentially impacted Indigenous Peoples.

Indigenous Peoples Principles and Protocols for Just Transition, the culminating document from the JUST TRANSITION: Indigenous Peoples’ Perspectives, Knowledge, and Lived Experiences Summit, which took place in Geneva, Switzerland, October 8-10, defines what the transition to “clean” or “green” energy and development must do to respect the rights and protect the wellbeing of Indigenous Peoples. The document provides 11 principles that corporate and state actors must adhere to when designing and implementing projects in the name of just, sustainable, or “green” initiatives.

“Activities that are being proposed or carried out on our lands, ice, waters and territories in the name of just transition, green economy, green/clean energy, or emissions reduction, without the obtainment of our free, prior and informed consent or which threaten our sacred places, cultural practices, Indigenous Peoples’ food sources, and ecosystems, or otherwise violate our inherent rights, are not a just transition,” states the document.

“Two years ago, we began convening Indigenous leaders from around the world to address the increasing violence, harm, and negative impacts that the so-called ‘green’ or ‘clean’ energy transition is perpetuating on our lands and to our communities – the same impacts Indigenous Peoples experience from fossil fuel extractive practices,” said Rodion Sulyandziga, who chaired the Summit coordinating committee. “The culmination was our Indigenous Just Transition Summit and this outcomes document which provides unanimous agreement about the definitions, principles, and protocols that must be foundational for Just Transition. These are the first steps for anyone – be it corporate, State, or Indigenous-led enterprise – to build a truly just, sustainable, and inclusive economy for all people of the world.”

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With keys in hand and a team of coworkers and friends carrying belongings behind her, Carma Brown stepped inside her new home.

It’s the first she’s ever owned.

After about six years on a waitlist for lease-to-own housing, her turn had come. Over the 30-year agreement, she’ll pay $600 a month, including taxes and home insurance. This allows Brown to keep her current job — and not have to work extra hours or get a second job — to afford her home.

“I’ve been wanting my own home my entire life,” Brown, 60, said. “To know this is mine now, I’m just in disbelief.”

Brown is part of a wave of new homeowners on the Cherokee Nation reservation in Tahlequah, Oklahoma, which has for years increased its investments in housing for its citizens. Since the Cherokee Nation passed the Housing, Jobs and Sustainable Communities Act in 2019, and with a $120 million boost in 2022, the tribe has built more than 360 homes and rehabbed more than 900 others.

The latest permanent expansion of the housing law signed Sept. 27 allows the Cherokee Nation to dedicate $40 million to housing development and improvements every three years in perpetuity. Some of it will build new units. Some will go to programs like the one that helped Brown get her own home. About $6 million of those funds will be set aside for expanding community centers across the reservation.

Moments before signing the extension, Principal Chief Chuck Hoskin Jr. said the legislation “is going to make a big difference in the lives of Cherokee people now and into the future.”

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https://www.npr.org/2024/10/21/g-s1-29159/indigenous-australia-senator-yells-king-charles