by Deep Green Resistance News Service | May 23, 2016 | Colonialism & Conquest
By Survival International
Featured image: Many Baiga have already been evicted from their forest homes, and now face lives of poverty in resettlement camps © Survival International
Several tribal villages in central India face annihilation as they are being forced to leave their ancestral land in Achanakmar tiger reserve, close to the area which inspired Rudyard Kipling’s Jungle Book.
The Baiga tribespeople have been repeatedly harassed and told that they will have to move from their villages to a muddy clearing outside the reserve, even though there is no evidence their presence in the reserve is harming tigers. Such evidence is required if the tribe’s eviction is to be lawful, but in fact the number of tigers in the reserve reportedly rose from 12 to 28 between 2011 and 2015.
One Baiga man from Rajak village said: “We don’t want to go, we can’t go. What should we do?”
A local witness told Survival: “There is nothing around the new site for them, nothing will grow in the land, there is no water and they won’t be able to take anything from the forest. That’s why they are so adamant that they won’t leave, because if they go they will just die out.”
Some have been told that if they don’t leave their ancestral land, guards will release bears and snakes into their villages. Others have been arrested and harassed – in 2009 one man was jailed for three months for eating a squirrel he had found dead on the forest floor.
Those who have already been evicted from Achanakmar now live in inadequate government camps and face lives of poverty on the fringes of mainstream Indian society.
One Baiga person from Chirahatta village, which is facing eviction, said: “They’ve been placing restrictions on us for two or three years. They don’t let us live. They take us to jail and threaten us. They are harsh and strict. They put us in jail for nothing. If we say anything they threaten to put us in jail. They are making it difficult for us to live.”
Elsewhere, Baiga people do back-breaking manual labour in bauxite mines in terrible working conditions.
Across India, tribespeople are being illegally evicted from tiger reserves, despite there being no evidence that their presence harms tigers. They face arrest and, in some places, beatings, torture and even summary execution for trying to re-enter their ancestral land, while large-scale tiger-spotting tourism is encouraged.
Baiga work in terrible conditions in the Bodai-Daldali bauxite mine, Chhattisgarh. Having once lived sustainable lives in the forests, they now endure exploitation and poverty after eviction from their land. © Sayantan Bera/Survival
Last year, Survival learned that tiger numbers had increased at well above the Indian national average in BRT, the one reserve in India where tribes have been formally allowed to stay on their land, demonstrating that tribal villages within wildlife reserves do not pose a substantial threat to tigers or their habitat.
Survival has written to WWF, the world’s largest conservation organization, which equips and trains the forest guards in the region.
Evidence proves that tribal peoples are better at looking after their environment than anyone else. Despite this, they are being illegally evicted from their ancestral homelands in the name of conservation. The big conservation organizations are guilty of supporting this. They never speak out against evictions.
Survival’s director Stephen Corry said: “It’s illegal and immoral to target tribes, who have coexisted with the tiger for centuries, when industrialization and mass-scale colonial-era hunting are the real reason the tiger became endangered. It’s also ineffective, because targeting tribespeople diverts action away from tackling the true poachers – criminal gangs. Big conservation organisations should be partnering with tribal peoples, not propping up the Forest Departments that are guilty of brutalizing them. Targeting tribal people harms conservation.”
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | May 22, 2016 | ACTION, Protests & Symbolic Acts
By Sacred Water Sacred Land
Sacred Water Sacred Land is sponsoring a tar sands awareness walk through Wisconsin along Enbridge’s proposed Twin Line #66 starting with a kick-off event in Delevan or Walworth on June 8th.
33 Days on Twin #66, a Sacred Water Sacred Land sponsored walk, begins at the entry point of the Enbridge pipeline system, just south of Walworth, WI and follows the route northwest to Superior, raising awareness about the existence of, and proposed expansion to, the Enbridge crude and dilbit pipeline corridor along the way.
33 Days on Twin#66 will consist of consecutive daily 10-15 mile segments with community engagement talks in a revival type setting at overnight encampments at many points along the way. The 420-mile pipeline route is broken into four major sections: northern, upper central, lower central and lower.
Winona La Duke, who has fought tirelessly against the Sandpiper expansion in Minnesota, and her sister Lorna, will be riding with us on horseback along several sections of the walk.
Affected communities and landowners will be engaged by representatives of SWSL – Sacred Water Sacred Land, CELDF – Community Environmental Defense Fund, and WiSE – Wisconsin Safe Energy Alliance, through an ecological forum where the impact of the expansion and a broader conversation about the adverse effects of Canadian tar sands extraction and transport will be explained. Guest speakers will also address climate change and traditional ties to the land while local residents will be encouraged to share their stories and efforts towards healing it.
Through this effort, SWSL endeavors to not only draw attention to the tremendous hazards of tar sands/Bakken oil transport but also help communities imagine and co-create a more sustainable, health conscious society with an emphasis on renewables and non-toxic food systems.
We are looking for additional sponsors to lend credence and build support for the Walk. Sponsorship is welcome in many forms. We encourage you to share the Walk with your membership and follow us on Facebook where specific details will be posted as they solidify. If you wish to participate in greater measure, please contact SWSL directly.
It is past time to unify our efforts and promulgate ecological systems literacy. We hope you will join us as we work together towards a paradigm shift of social and environmental justice for the natural world and the next seven generations.
Cosponsored by WiSE, CELDF, and SWSL
Schedule:
1 ~ June 8th – Walworth*, Kick-off!
2 ~ June 9th – Delavan*
3 ~ June 10th – Richmond
4 ~ June 11th – Whitewater*
5 ~ June 12th – Fort Atkinson*
6 ~ June 13th – Lake Mills*
7 ~ June 14th – Sun Prairie*
8 ~ June 15th – Columbus*
9 ~ June 16th – Wyocena
10 ~ June 17th -Portage*
11 ~ June 18th – Oxford*
12 ~ June 19th -Westfield
13 ~ June 2oth – Adams/Friendship*
14 ~ June 21st – Cottonville
15~ June 22nd – Lake Arrowhead
16 ~ June 23rd – Nekoosa*
17 ~ June 24th – Vesper
18 ~ June 25th – Marshfield*
19 ~ June 26th – Spencer
20 ~ June 27th – Riplinger
21 ~ June 28th – Owen/Withee*
22 ~ June 29th – Lublin
23 ~ July 30th – Gilman
24 ~ July 1st – Sheldon
25 ~ July 2nd – Ladysmith*
26 ~ July 3rd – Imalone
27 ~ July 4th – Meteor
28 ~ July 5th – Hauer-Stone Lake
29 ~ July 6th – Hayward
30 ~ July 7th – Gordon*
31 ~ July 8th – Salon Springs
32 ~ July 9th – Hillcrest
33 ~ July 10th – Superior*, Renewable Energy Independence Day!
* Denotes Revival
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | May 16, 2016 | Alienation & Mental Health
By Will Falk / Deep Green Resistance
Another episode with anxiety knocks me to my bedroom floor. Rational thought forsakes me. My body shakes with the strangled sobs of a man ashamed of his tears. Alicia bends over me. Her dark brown eyes – normally calm with the consistent rationality characterizing her personality – are wide with concern and weariness. We’re only several nights removed from the last episode. She must think, “Oh god, not again.”
Alicia seeks to hold me. I find a deep comfort in her touch – and a deep revulsion. It’s not her. The contradiction is born from the lies fear instills in me. Somewhere in the darkness, a voice reminds me that I am unlovable. I crave love but the voice whispers my lack of reasons to be loved. The closer Alicia gets to me, the closer she’ll get, I fear, to hearing those whispers, too. The closer she’ll get to realizing a man who cannot love himself should not be loved by anyone.
I crawl towards the space between the ground and the bed seeking to hide in the shadows offered there. A burn forms on my face where I grind it into the carpet. The pain provides a strange relief in its reality. The rash, the swollen skin, the heat pulsating on my forehead are sensations I can understand. The mental anguish exists nowhere that can be touched and yet hurts everywhere. This is a pain I cannot understand. I cannot locate the pain’s source to alleviate it. My only meagre power is the power of transformation. I force the emotional pain to materialize as physical pain on my face.
Memories, threatening to cross the boundary into hallucinations, condensate in my senses. I see my mother’s face, streaming tears, when she visited me in the psyche ward at a hospital in Milwaukee, WI after I tried to kill myself. I see her face again, this time in a psyche ward in San Diego after I tried to kill myself a second time. I see my father’s shoulders slumped as he sinks into the plastic of a hospital chair as I attempt to explain what I’ve done. I wonder if he’s given up on me.
I see the troubled glimpses my loved ones give me when they think I am not looking. It’s a look of bewilderment and exasperation. It’s a look that asks, “When will he try to kill himself again?” I see the twitches in my loved ones’ faces when they think I am going to explode into a mess of fear, worry, and despair.
How long can anyone love a human they perceive as a ticking bomb? Everyone would be better off without me, I imagine. If I could just disappear, they could get on with their lives. If the ground would swallow me up or an ocean wash me away, everyone would be relieved.
Eventually, I exhaust myself sobbing. The anxiety subsides. My mind quiets down. The tears slow and stop. I am still alive. The fear has not killed me.
The next morning, I rise from bed to brush my teeth. I cannot avoid my own gaze in the mirror. My loved ones tell me my blue eyes always betray the truth of my emotions. Some days the blues of my eyes are soft and accepting like warm waters to swim in. Today, the blues I see in the mirror are frozen and sharp. They are steely in their resolve.
I do not want to live like this. I am sick of being afraid. I am sick of anxiety. I am sick of cycles of worry stealing my life from me. Personal civil war makes a battlefield of my mind. I’ve been getting my ass kicked. But, that stops now.
***
My friends recently invited me to an event, Extraction Resistance: A 3-Day Direct Action Training in Eugene, OR over the Fourth of July weekend. The event will focus on developing skills related to all aspects of a direct action and will teach land defenders how to engage in the effective confrontation of those in power.
I almost said no. The whispers reminded me that it would be expensive to travel all the way to Eugene. They asked me if I wouldn’t prefer to stay home and relax on the Fourth of July. They recalled the depressed exhaustion I sometimes experience and they pointed out how fighting the anxiety takes much of my energy.
I could have used these whispers as excuses. My friends are deeply compassionate, and I’m sure they would not have pressured me. The whispers are lies, though, and I refuse to let them rule my life.
***
We are running out of time. Polar bears, coral reefs, and North Atlantic cod are all running out of time. Kiribati ran out of time. So did Golden toads. So did Monteverde harlequin frogs.
Climate change set the clock. It is ticking. If we do not stop climate change right now, we’re all finished. The good news is we know how climate change is caused, so we know how it can be stopped. Humans burning fossil fuels cause climate change. To stop climate change, to ensure the planet’s survival, we must act quickly and decisively to stop the burning of fossil fuels.
So far, most of the tactics used to stop the burning of fossil fuels have proven inadequate. We sold our cars, started biking to work, and bought city bus passes. We voted. When we learned the lesser of two evils was still evil, we signed countless petitions begging governmental leaders to take action. We sent checks to non-profits and then wondered what happened to our money. We boycotted Shell, Chevron, and British Petroleum. We bought into the idea that so-called green technology would allow us to continue our current lifestyles free of the guilt accompanying environmental destruction.
But, it hasn’t worked. Achieving personal net zero, reducing our individual carbon footprint, has done little to slow the worldwide consumption of fossil fuels. Focusing too much of our energy on personal consumption habits has reduced each one of us to single consumers. Playing by the government’s rules leaves each one of us only the meagre power of a single vote.
Too many of our tactics rely on someone else to stop climate change for us. Voting and petition signing relies on politicians to do the right thing. Boycotts rely on corporations to voluntarily halt fossil fuel development. Even if every individual American achieved carbon neutrality, the US military would still be the largest institutional consumer of fossil fuels in the world, burning over 100 million barrels of oil a year. This means that changing our personal habits is only a tiny piece of the solution.
We have learned that we cannot trust others to stop the madness for us. If we’re going to stop climate change, we’re going to have to do it ourselves. We can remove others’ ability to burn fossil fuels if we prevent oil, gas, coal, etc. from ever leaving the ground. Once fossil fuels have been extracted we can preserve them in unburned states by blocking their transportation to worldwide markets.
We must re-evaluate our tactics and recognize that escalation is needed. We must physically intervene to stop the destruction of the planet. We must place our bodies between the destroyers and those we love. We must cut the destroyers off from the fuels they require.
So, what’s stopping us?
Fear is stopping us. The processes destroying the planet are destroying our strength of heart. While ice sheets melt so quickly that rising sea levels sink entire nations, while intensifying storms destroy coastal communities, and while salt water poisons freshwater sources, climate change floods the world with fear.
The island nation of Kiribati, which may be inundated by rising sea levels
The murder of species is coupled with the murder of hope. Whole species are being murdered at a rate the planet has not seen since an asteroid crashed into Earth 65 million years ago. Over the last 40 years, half of all animals have been killed including 75% of all freshwater species. Scientists predict that if present trends continue 41% of all amphibian species and 26% of all mammals will disappear into the eternal night of total extinction. If drastic changes are not made quickly, humans might be one of those lost mammalian species. In fact, some scientists already doubt that humanity will survive the end of the century.
We have seen what happens to those who effectively resist. Effective resistance often brings confrontation with police and soldiers. This confrontation can be understandably terrifying especially when you know 4,800 Americans suffered arrest-related deaths from 2003-2009. We know, too, that at least 116 environmental activists were murdered in 2014. We’ve heard the clack of batons on bones, watched crowds scatter before the thud of rubber bullets, and seen faces swollen with terror and pepper spray.
There is so much to fear that too many of us have become paralyzed. Too many of us are stuck in the knowledge of the atrocities too terrified to act. We must overcome this fear. The continuation of life on Earth depends upon it.
***
As you might have guessed, I experience the debilitating kind of fear diagnosed by psychologists as general anxiety disorder and major depressive disorder. For most of my adult life, I have felt too much fear, for too long that it developed into an illness. This summer, I plan on keeping this Direct Action Journal chronicling my experiences struggling to overcome fear while striving to participate in effective actions. I hope the narration of my experiences will help others.
I was diagnosed with mental health disorders while I practiced as a public defender in Kenosha, WI. I was under constant stress. I worked under the fear that my mistakes would send my clients to prison. The State of Wisconsin mandated that we accept close to 3 new cases a day. I often worked 12-hour days and brought my case files home. When I woke up at 3 AM horrified that I missed a detail in a case scheduled for the next morning, I jumped out of bed, put on some coffee, and worked some more.
At the same time, I lived three blocks from Lake Michigan’s shore and I watched in horror as climate change drove the Lake’s water levels to ever deeper lows. Walking the beach trails, I saw countless bass and perch carcasses – their homes destroyed by the Lake’s recession. I followed global environmental news and knew the scene was similar everywhere.
Eventually, a constant sense of dread dominated my consciousness, even when rationality recognized no threats existed. I became exhausted and tried to kill myself twice. I have not tried to kill myself in 3 years, but I still experience extended cycles of anxiety.
***
Psychiatry teaches the best antidote for despair is action. Doctors now understand that the brain is flexible and malleable. Experiences literally form the brain’s structure. Experiencing intense fear or stress for a long time or at frequent-enough intervals can cause malfunctions in the parts of the brain responsible for responding to threats by releasing hormones to support defensive, physical actions like fighting for our lives or running away.
With too much fear, too much trauma, the brain can develop a hypersensitivity to anything that might be a threat causing the brain to more-or-less constantly release the fight-or-flight hormones. The greater this hypersensitivity becomes, the more likely a person is to exist perpetually in the fight-or-flight mode. This can be paralyzing. People suffering from general anxiety disorder often hesitate at the verge of action because they see potential threats in every course they could take.
Climate change and the possible destruction of the planet is a constant, serious threat. In fact, it is the most serious threat confronting us today. It follows that living with this ever-present nightmare is producing the symptoms of general anxiety disorder across the human species.
To live in this fight-or-flight mode constantly, to live perpetually in fear, becomes exhausting. A person can forget that there was ever a time she existed outside of the exhaustion. She could develop the belief that her life will forever be exhaustion. Despair sets in. Where there was once only fear, there is now an absence of hope and a belief that bravery in the face of fear is impossible. This is major depressive disorder.
Depression is the inability to envision a future worth living in. While water is being poisoned, air polluted, and species eliminated, the building blocks of life are being pulled from under us. While our future is being stolen by environmental destruction, is it any wonder more and more people are being neutralized by despair?
The good news is the brain’s malleability allows new habits to form. If, instead of reacting to fear with hesitancy and paralysis, a person chooses to act and creates a habit of action, the brain will reform itself to support that habit. Anxiety and depression, then, can be reversed. Fear’s domination can be undermined.
***
The invitation to participate in the Direct Action Training event coincides with my commitment to release the grip mental illnesses sometimes take over me. I believe there is significance in this. I have prayed for help and Life is answering.
What is Life suggesting? My personal fear threatens to destroy me just like our cultural fear threatens to destroy the planet. My struggle to overcome fear is bound up with the struggle to return the planet to true peace. Winning my struggle and bringing all my power to bear will benefit Life.
Engaging in direct action terrifies me. The old whispers stir. I hate their lies. I refuse to let the lies terrify me. The more often I resist their lies, the closer I come to silencing the whispers, forever.
Climate change terrifies me. Despair rises as I confront the global situation. I hate despair. I refuse to let it’s exhaustion overcome me. The more often I resist despair, the closer I come to ridding myself of it, forever.
I know that anxiety and depression are emotions. I know from my experiences that emotions by themselves cannot kill me. Physical action can kill me. I can swallow a whole bottle of pills, jump from a bridge, or put the gun to my temple. But, in each case, it would be the physical action – and not the emotion – that would actually kill me.
If it is true that only action can kill me, then it is true that only action can save me. It is not enough to hope the anxiety will go away. It is not enough to pray for the depression to disappear. If I want to get better, I have to act. It is armed with this knowledge that I’ve started seeing a therapist again for the first time in 2 and a half years. I’m being treated by a psychiatrist and have started a medication regimen that is helping. I will pair personal therapy with the therapy of direct action.
Climate change causes a cultural anxiety disorder and widespread despair, but these emotional states by themselves are not what is destroying the planet. Real, physical processes – like fossil fuel combustion – are destroying the planet. To survive, we must act in the real, physical world. To survive, we must make fossil fuel combustion impossible. This will be scary, but we must overcome our fear. When we overcome our fear and end this nightmare of climate change, we will overcome the greatest fear of all: planetary destruction.
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | May 13, 2016 | Biodiversity & Habitat Destruction
By Buffalo Field Campaign
Government hazers descended upon our soon-to-be national mammal this Monday, marking the season’s first forced removal operation west of Yellowstone National Park. Agents with the Montana Department of Livestock (DOL) and Fish, Wildlife & Parks (FWP) disturbed and chased forty-four buffalo with about twelve newborns from lands west of the South Fork of the Madison, in the Denny Creek area, a place buffalo love. Unfortunately, this is one of the last strongholds for the few seasonal private and public lands ranchers in the Hebgen Basin. However, no cattle occupy these lands until mid to late June. They are gone by October. Because of the short-term presence of cattle, these lands were excluded from the Governor’s year-round buffalo habitat designation. Ranchers like to use the excuse of brucellosis, but the real reason buffalo are chased out of this area is because the ranchers don’t want to share grass with the native buffalo.
BFC patrols were out in force documenting from multiple angles. The buffalo were chased across the South Fork of the Madison, then down a long power line trail which eventually led to the Madison Arm Road, where they hazed them further down the dusty gravel road, bullying them across the Madison River, and over to the bluffs that lead to Horse Butte, where buffalo are now safe from such abusive harassment. The buffalo were pushed at least ten miles, the tiny calves trying desperately to keep up with their moms and the rest of the herd. Our bike patrols followed, documenting everything, and tried to appeal to whatever compassion the hazers might have had to give these baby buffalo a rest and chance to nurse. When buffalo are left alone, newborn calves will take naps every five minutes, getting up to nurse for a few moments, maybe romp around for a bit, then quickly bed down for another nap. While the hazers went at a slower pace than usual, it was still too much for those little buffalo. Hazing, no matter the pace, is always abusive — that is the nature of it, to make wildlife uncomfortable or frightened enough to leave the place of their choosing to escape the danger.
The calves were growing more exhausted by the second. Their little legs were tiring, they were hungry, confused, and sticking close to their mothers. But the hazers wouldn’t relent. Nursing breaks and naps, which they sorely needed, were entirely out of the question. Surprisingly, a couple of hours into the haze, the hazers did stop for a moment. Did they actually hear our concerns? Did the buffalo reach a soft spot in their hearts? Of course not. The reason they stopped is because a couple of Yellowstone park rangers came through to observe. The rangers just drove through saying “nice and slow, that’s what we like to see,” and went on their way. As soon as they were out of sight, the cowboy tactics resumed. The rangers will likely report that the haze was “going well” but our footage will be able to show the truth of what really took place. It’s hard to know, but we hope that this first haze will also be the last of the season.
The buffalo hazed this week were part of the first large group to venture to this part of the basin this spring. In past years we have seen many more. In fact, there are very few buffalo in the entire Hebgen Basin right now, which is a source of concern. It’s also ironic, as this is the first time they are permitted to be here without the threat of hazing. In years past it was not uncommon to see between 400 and 600 buffalo, while currently there are barely 200. On a recent trip into the park we counted only forty buffalo between West Yellowstone and the Madison Junction, making us wonder if the hunt, slaughter, and winter kill had combined to severely impact the central herd, which migrates both north into the Gardiner Basin and west into the Hebgen Basin.
Fearing the worst, I called Yellowstone’s bison biologist who confirmed that management actions and winter kill had taken a heavy toll on the central herd, but he indicated that there were also some unusual weather patterns this year that may have contributed to so few buffalo being in the Hebgen Basin, changes that lead the buffalo to use the landscape differently than we normally see. Changing weather patterns are just a small piece of it, though. While natural forces are formidable enough, when combpounded with annual kills through indiscriminate boundary hunting and capture-for-slaughter, the population becomes increasingly vulnerable to collapse. Without understanding how their management decisions and climate change are combining to affect the health and viability of these herds, the agencies are threatening the future of America’s last wild bison.
Being on the ground, with the buffalo, observing them in their habitat, learning how and when they use the areas they choose to use, observing their behavior, family structures, and dynamics allows us to see the patterns and subtle changes that may hold significant meaning, and it puts BFC in an extremely unique position to be the strongest and most educated advocates for the country’s last wild buffalo.
