The Past, Present, and Future of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples

The Past, Present, and Future of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples

     by Rawiri Taonui / Cultural Survival

This month marks the 10th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP 2007). Indigenous Peoples have come a long way. Our individual struggles coalesced during the 1970s in the Indigenous-initiated World Council of Indigenous Peoples. A decade of consultation and negotiation through the United Nations culminated in a first draft. Some of those who had worked on the draft lost their lives in struggles at home.

Consultation with states followed. On one side, the will of Indigenous representatives to craft a document worthy of the aspirations of first nation communities; on the other side the reservation of states.

The chair of the first Intergovernmental Working Group refused Indigenous representatives the right to speak. Silence incompatible with a voice seeking freedom, a walk out followed, the rules were changed and discussion proceeded. A New Zealand representative once described the Declaration as constituting discrimination – an easy allegory for an uneasy conscience.

The Declaration
On 13 September 2007, the UN General Assembly passed the Declaration – 143 countries in support, 4 against and 12 abstaining. The culmination of 500 years of struggle against colonisation, racism and neo-liberalism, every passage in the Declaration is a response to injustices suffered by Indigenous Peoples.

The preambulatory paragraphs and articles affirms the collective and individual human rights of First Nations as Peoples and human beings and in doing so proclaims our equality with all other members of society. The Declaration provides a framework for reconciliation with nation states by mapping a pathway to overcome the historical denial of our rights and established the minimum requisite standard for our advancement and the restoration of our dignity.

Our Place as Indigenous Peoples
The Declaration reminds us that the sovereignty of the States that came to wield power over us was not attained through “free and intelligent consent”, but through the trickery or absence of treaties, through warfare the coloniser called conquest, victory and the Christian mission, which today we understand to have been cultural genocide, the unjust alienation of our territories, the suppression of our languages, forced cultural assimilation, the inter-generational marginalisation of our societies at all levels, including the taking of our children through Residential Schools in North America, the Stolen Generations in Australia and in New Zealand through what were “State Care Homes.”

The Declaration has lifted the confidence of Indigenous Peoples. Our rights are more visible. We are important. We are the descendants of the first arrivals or earliest surviving occupants of a land. We number between 350 to 500 million people living in up to 90 countries. We comprise 5,000 distinct cultural groups speaking 4,000 of the world’s 7,000 languages. We are home to 90% of the world’s cultural diversity.

We live upon 22 per cent of the Earth’s land mass harbouring 80 per cent of its remaining biodiversity. Our cultures, ancestral knowledges and philosophies are deeply embedded within the environment; the Skyfather, the Earthmother and their children are our relations. Once belittled, our epistemologies are integral to the survival of the planet.

Progress on the Declaration
Several of the original abstentions, such as Colombia and Samoa, now support the Declaration; 182 States at the Durban World Conference on Racism endorsed the Declaration. Having overcome the self-inflicted trauma of their previous hesitation, the governments of the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand now support the Declaration.

God may also be on our side, Pope Francis’ 2015 encyclical on meaningful climate action declaring that Indigenous Peoples “should be the principle dialogue partners” on matters concerning the environment and that when our land rights are protected we are the best guardians of the world’s forests and biodiversity. 

Guided by the principle that “no one is left behind”; Indigenous Peoples are a priority under the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. 

From the Waitangi Tribunal and courts in New Zealand where the Declaration reinforces the 1834 Declaration of Independence and the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi, to Belize, Bangladesh and the African Commission on Human and People’s Rights the international judiciary is increasingly citing the Declaration. Many more cases are going before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and Court of Human Rights, and the rulings and decisions are supporting the protection of Indigenous rights.

Indigenous rights are being recognised in new laws and/or being enshrined in constitutional instruments. South America has been an important leader, in particular Bolivia under the leadership of President Evo Morales.

In Asia, Myanmar and Japan are considering greater recognition. In Europe, Denmark has granted greater self-government to Greenland where 90% of the 56,000 population is Inuit.

In Africa, the Republic of the Congo, the Central African Republic, Kenya, Namibia and Burundi have taken steps to recognise Indigenous Peoples. Others have processes in place. 

Where once the killing of Indigenous People was conducted with impunity – the historical massacres in Australia, the Trail of Tears and Wounded Knee in the United States, and Handley’s Woolshed, Rangiaowhia, Ngā Tapa in New Zealand – there is increasing accountability. The leader of a militia that massacred Mbuti Peoples in the Ituri forest was sentenced to 18 years in prison. There have been arrests in Honduras for the killing of the distinguished Lenca leader Berta Caceres shot dead in 2016.

Challenges
Many challenges remain. Even where the countries have adopted the Declaration, most have not been able to implement it effectively.

Compromises in the Declaration from discussion with states will be difficult to overcome. States objected to Article 3 the Right to Self-determination. The compromise in Article 46, essentially that Indigenous Peoples cannot form new states, reinforces uncertainty and dislocation for Indigenous Peoples straddling the borders of nation states. The Karen spanning the river border between Thailand and Myanmar, the Guarani spread between countries across the Amazon, and 30 million  Kurds, the largest nationality in the world without a country, are divided between Iran, Iraq, Syria and Turkey.

We are losing one Indigenous language every two weeks. We remain the world’s most vulnerable peoples. At 6% of the world’s population we are 15% of the world’s poorest peoples. Wherever we live, we are the poorest of the poor.

It is unlikely that we will realise the goal of equality under the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development because it does not prioritise the right to self-determination or the principle of free, prior and informed consent and therefore will not prevent the avarice of development that threatens many Indigenous Peoples. Every year were hear  submissions at the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues and the Expert Mechanism on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples echoing the words “we may not survive.”

Extractive Industries
The majority of new extractive industry projects, including mining, drilling, hydro-electric, forestry and agribusiness, are in Indigenous areas from the Artic to the Amazon, from West Papua to Africa. Drilling and fracking quench an insatiable thirst for oil. Agribusiness feeds a gluttonous demand for beef burgers. Environmentally friendly biofuels have unfriendly impacts on first communities. Coltan, tin and tungsten build our cell phones, laptops and flat screens.

The extractive industries cost many lives. It is sobering to apprehend that in the ten years since the signing of the Declaration the annual number of individual Indigenous human rights advocates being killed has doubled to 600 per year.

Directly and indirectly, these industries have cost 100,000 West Papuan lives since 1963. From 1998 to 2003, 10,000 to 70,000 Indigenous peoples lost their lives in the conflict mineral regions of central Africa. Alongside gorillas and elephants some were eaten as bush meat supplying militias.

The Struggle for Identity
Many Indigenous Peoples struggle for recognition. China supported the Declaration, an official once stating because there are no Indigenous people in China. There are 10 million Uighur, 2 million Tibetans and 13 million Yao-Mein and Miao-Hmong.

India recognises 400 groups numbering 84 million people as Scheduled Tribes; over 600 groups numbering at least the same are not recognised. Russia recognises ‘northern groups’ as Indigenous but only if their population is smaller than 50,000.

The San, Khoi, Mbuti, Mbenga, Twa and Batwa are the earliest African Indigenous Peoples and oldest cultures on Earth. Botswana, Zimbabwe and Zambia do not recognise their indigeneity.
Racism, Violence and Suicide
Indigenous Peoples continue to face grave racism. In developed countries this has a “new colourism.” Dominant institutions prefer indigenes if we are compliant, middle class, fair skinned and have European features.

Indigenous women and children continue to endure significant violence. There is an emerging world-wide crisis in Indigenous suicide.

New Zealand acknowledges the UNICEF Building the Future report saying that at 15.6 per 100,000 we have the worst adolescent suicide rate in the developed world. What is not recognised is that the national figure is elevated by a high Māori youth suicide rate, often double or more than for non-Māori, in conjunction with their higher proportion of the national population proportion (35% under 15 years old; 27% between 15 and 40) when compared with other Indigenous situations. The crisis is Māori suicide.

Comparative figures demonstrate that the Indigenous suicide rates in Canada, Australia, the United States, and among the Nenets of Russia, the Guarani of Brazil and the Sami of Scandinavia are equal to, or higher than Māori. However, they do not lift their national average in the same way because the Indigenous demographic is a significantly smaller proportion of the national population than that of Māori.

If we do not understand the problem then we miss the best solutions. Mainstream approaches to suicide focus on mental health, bad parenting, drug addiction, crime and poverty. These approaches have their place, however, they are also driven by underlying deficit assumptions about the inferiority of first cultures.

In the case of Māori, historical research shows that pre-European Māori were good parents; before 1900 when the language was intact Māori were just 3% of prisoners – today they are 50%; before the mass urbanisation of the 1950s every Māori knew their marae and subtribe and suicide was half that of Europeans. A Canadian study has shown that where 50% or more of an Indigenous community speaks their language suicide is between half that of other communities and zero.

Cultural alienation as anomie is a causal factor so too its relation racism and discrimination. They compress Indigenous youth between two worlds and a past they do not understand, a present that does not understand them and a future without hope.

The Future
The Declaration is not perfect. A lack of action by governments is the greatest impediment to progress. Nevertheless, the journey has begun. We live in a new world.

Standing Rock has taught us of the power of social media in the fight to raise consciousness.

New allies may benefit the cause of Indigenous Peoples. North America and Europe require 100 million new immigrants each by 2050 to support ageing European populations.  Many immigrants suffered oppression in old countries and confront racism in new lands. In a country like New Zealand the combined Māori, Pasifika and immigrant community will equal and then surpass the European population somewhere around 2050. We are natural allies and will be the majority of the work force, the parliamentarians and the decision makers.

There is a changing of the guard between the West and the developing world. Alt-right and the American presidency are a reaction to that. In 2050, 27 of the fastest growing economies in the world will be formerly oppressed brown colonies. Those who can work with other cultures as equals will be a force for change.

There are risks. We need to stay grounded with the lowest common denominator in our communities and the realities of other Indigenous Peoples, use our proven resilience and capacity to fight for our rights and survive in the face of great difficulties to take all our people forward in emancipatory praxis.

We need to be cognisant of the risks of building a self-serving middle class, confining power to small elites or suffering rigid cultural nationalism lest the formerly oppressed becoming the new oppressor. For those who survive the next generation there is a future.

–Rawiri Taonui is a professor at the College of Humanities and Social Sciences & Global Centre for Indigenous Leadership at Massey University in New Zealand.

This paper was presented at the Conference on the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples on 5-6 September 2017 at Te Papa Tongareva – Wellington Museum, New Zealand.

 

Amazon Indians Plead for Help After Massacre

Amazon Indians Plead for Help After Massacre

Featured image:  A still from aerial footage from 2011 of an uncontacted Amazon tribe in Brazil near the Peruvian border. © BBC/FUNAI/Survival

     by Survival International

Brazilian Indians have appealed for global assistance to prevent further killings after the reported massacre of uncontacted tribespeople, and have denounced the government cuts that left their territories unprotected.

Paulo Marubo, a Marubo indigenous leader from western Brazil, said: “More attacks and killings are likely to happen. The cuts to FUNAI’s funding are harming the lives of indigenous people, especially uncontacted tribes, who are the most vulnerable.” (FUNAI is Brazil’s indigenous affairs agency).

Mr. Marubo is the leader of Univaja, an indigenous organization defending tribal rights in the Uncontacted Frontier, the area with the highest concentration of uncontacted tribes in the world.

Paulo Marubo, leader of a Javari Valley indigenous organization from the Uncontacted Frontier.

Paulo Marubo, leader of a Javari Valley indigenous organization from the Uncontacted Frontier. © Amazonas Atual

COIAB, the organization representing Indians across the Brazilian Amazon, denounced the massive cutbacks to FUNAI’s budget that has left many tribal territories unprotected:

“We vehemently condemn these brutal and violent attacks against these uncontacted Indians. This massacre shows just how much the rights of indigenous peoples in this country have been set back [in recent years].

“The cuts and dismantling of FUNAI are being carried out to further the interests of powerful politicians who want to continue ransacking our resources, and open up our territories for mining.”

Unconfirmed reports first emerged from the Amazon last week that up to 10 uncontacted tribal people had been killed by gold miners, and their bodies mutilated and dumped in a river.

The miners are reported to have bragged about the atrocity, whose victims included women and children, in a bar in a nearby town. The local prosecutor’s office has opened an investigation.

These Sapanawa Indians made contact in 2014. They reported their community had been attacked, and so many members of the village killed that they could not bury the dead.

These Sapanawa Indians made contact in 2014. They reported their community had been attacked, and so many members of the village killed that they could not bury the dead. © FUNAI/Survival

The alleged massacre was just the latest in a long line of previous killings of isolated Indians in the Amazon, including the infamous Haximu massacre in 1993, in which 16 Yanomami Indians were killed by a group of gold miners.

More recently, a group of Sapanawa Indians emerged in the Uncontacted Frontier, reporting that their houses had been attacked and burnt to the ground by outsiders, who had killed so many members of the community that they had not been able to bury all the bodies.

All uncontacted tribal peoples face catastrophe unless their land is protected. Survival International is campaigning to secure their land for them, and to give them the chance to determine their own futures.

Survival’s Director Stephen Corry said: “The decision by the Brazilian government to slash funding for the teams that protect uncontacted Indians’ territories was not an innocent mistake. It was done to appease the powerful interests who want to open up indigenous lands to exploit – for mining, logging and ranching. These are the people the Indians are up against, and the deaths of uncontacted tribes won’t put them off. Only a global outcry can even the odds in the Indians’ favor, and prevent more such atrocities. We know public pressure works – many Survival campaigns have succeeded in the face of similar odds.”

Gold Miners “Massacre” Uncontacted Amazon Indians

Gold Miners “Massacre” Uncontacted Amazon Indians

Featured image: Evidence of an attack? Burnt communal houses of uncontacted Indians, seen in December 2016, could be signs of another massacre in the Uncontacted Frontier. © FUNAI

     by Survival International

Public prosecutors in Brazil have opened an investigation after reports that illegal gold miners in a remote Amazon river have massacred “more than ten” members of an uncontacted tribe. If confirmed, this means up to a fifth of the entire tribe have been wiped out.

Two miners have been arrested.

The killings allegedly took place last month along the River Jandiatuba in western Brazil, but the news only emerged after the miners started boasting about the killings, and showing off “trophies” in the nearest town.

Agents from Brazil’s indigenous affairs agency, FUNAI, confirmed details of the attack to Survival International. Women and children are believed to be among the dead. FUNAI and the public prosecutor’s office are currently investigating.

The area is known as the Uncontacted Frontier, as it contains more uncontacted tribes than anywhere else on Earth.

Several government teams who had been protecting uncontacted indigenous territories have recently had their funding slashed by the Brazilian government, and have had to close down.

Uncontacted Indians in the Brazilian Amazon, filmed from the air in 2010.

Uncontacted Indians in the Brazilian Amazon, filmed from the air in 2010. © G.Miranda/FUNAI/Survival

President Temer’s government is fiercely anti-Indian, and has close ties to the country’s powerful and anti-indigenous agribusiness lobby.

The territories of two other vulnerable uncontacted tribes – the Kawahiva and Piripkura – have also reportedly been invaded. Both are surrounded by hundreds of ranchers and land invaders.

Uncontacted tribes are the most vulnerable peoples on the planet. However, when their rights are respected, they continue to thrive.

All uncontacted tribal peoples face catastrophe unless their land is protected. Survival International is doing everything it can to secure their land for them, and to give them the chance to determine their own futures.

Survival’s Director Stephen Corry said: “If these reports are confirmed, President Temer and his government bear a heavy responsibility for this genocidal attack. The slashing of FUNAI’s funds has left dozens of uncontacted tribes defenseless against thousands of invaders – miners, ranchers and loggers – who are desperate to steal and ransack their lands. All these tribes should have had their lands properly recognized and protected years ago – the government’s open support for those who want to open up indigenous territories is utterly shameful, and is setting indigenous rights in Brazil back decades.”

New Park City Witness: The Problems With “Open Space”

New Park City Witness: The Problems With “Open Space”

Featured image: Bonanza Flats

Editor’s note: This is the second installment in a multi-part series. Browse the New Park City Witness index to read more.

     by Will Falk / Deep Green Resistance

Before murdering millions during the Holocaust, the Nazis referred to Jews as rats. After murdering 17 people and lobotomizing some of his victims in an attempt to preserve them, alive but in a catatonic state, serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer explained, “…I tried to create living zombies…I just wanted to have the person under my complete control, not having to consider their wishes, being able to keep them there as long as I wanted.” In vivisection labs, scientists commonly cut animals’ vocal cords, so the scientists don’t have to listen to the animals scream.

These examples illustrate a common psychological phenomenon: In order to commit atrocities, humans characterize their victims as sub-human, objectify and silence them. It is, after all, much easier to destroy the less than human and the voiceless.

Civilized humans are currently destroying the natural world. Water continues to be polluted, air is poisoned, soil is lost faster than it can be replaced, and the collapse of every major biosphere across the planet intensifies. This destruction is made possible through the objectification and silencing of the natural world. The American legal system defines nature as property. Capitalism calls nonhumans “natural resources” and only values them as profits. The Abrahamic religions remove the sacred from the natural world and give it to an abstract, patriarchal God who somehow exists beyond the natural world.

It’s no wonder, then, that many in Park City participate in the silencing of nature, too. Many Parkites, for example, celebrate the existence of thousands of acres of land designated as “protected open space.”

There are several problems with this. First, the term “open space” is dishonest and works to objectify nonhumans while silencing the natural world. Objectification and silencing pave the way for exploitation. Second, as long as runaway climate change threatens snowfall, creates droughts, and contributes to wildfire intensity, no natural community in Park City can truly be considered “protected.” To call endangered natural communities protected leads to complacency, and we cannot afford complacency while the world burns.

The “Save Bonanza Flats” Campaign, which raised $38 million to protect 1,350 acres of high-altitude land from development, was a beautiful expression of the community’s love for life. Do not mistake me, I am deeply glad that Bonanza Flats is safe from hotels and multi-million dollar homes. But, Bonanza Flats is not safe, and will never be safe, as long as the dominant culture’s insatiable appetite for destruction is ensured by humans who believe the natural world is nothing more than lifeless matter for humans to use.

***

While working on this essay, I decided to head up Guardsman Pass to ask those who live in Bonanza Flats what they think about “protected open space.” Hiking is contemplative for me. I was asking myself just how, exactly, I thought the nonhumans in Bonanza Flats would express their feelings about being “open space” when I rounded a bend to find myself face to face with a bull and cow moose grazing among the aspen.

The aspen were mature, many of them boasting trunks eighteen and twenty-four inches in diameter. They grew closely together, creating an ancient silvan atmosphere with dappling silvers, golds, and greens. The afternoon sunshine mixed with aspen leaves to give me the slight, pleasant sense of existential vertigo that accompanies the timelessness of life’s original joys.

I met the bull moose’s gaze. My bones recognized their nearness to a greater collection of their kindred. My muscles, observing the moose’s, remembered their first purpose and tingled with excitement. His eyes, browns in brown, reflected all the different woods he’d ever strode through. I’m not sure how long we considered each other, but when he finally looked away, his wisdom was undeniable.

And, I had my first answer: To share an aspen grove with a bull moose in Bonanza Flats, is to know this space is anything but open.

I continued on to find a stone to sit on and watched the lazy orange flutter of butterfly wings. I listened to the soft hum of bees, the breeze through quaking aspen leaves, and the hypnotic click of grasshoppers in flight. I saw mule deer bounding over a fence, a red-tailed hawk riding wind pockets, and squirrels tossing pine cones to the ground, narrowly missing human heads (for the squirrels’ winter caches). All these beings confirmed the lesson the bull moose taught me. Bonanza Flats is not open, it is filled with countless living beings.

An approaching rain cloud brought tidings of the radical interconnectedness of all life and proved that Bonanza Flats is not truly protected. When the cloud arrived to give its water, the rain evaporated well before it reached us. I was reminded that Bonanza Flats, like all communities along the Wasatch Range, depend on snowpack for life-giving water. Simple arithmetic tells us that as long as total snowpack diminishes decade after decade, as it has been since the 1950s, sooner or later there won’t be enough water left.

While Bonanza Flats is safe from the developers’ bulldozers and chainsaws, many threats, just as deadly, still exist. Marssonina fungus spores, aided by climate change, could spread over aspen leaves until they no longer quake. Shorter winters allow the tiny pricks of too many tick bites to suck moose lives away. The worrisome scent of wildfire smoke haunts the wind. And, the asthmatic cough of children brought to the mountains by their parents to escape the Salt Lake Valley’s terrible air quality ring across Bonanza Flats’ trails.

***

Not all humans have objectified and silenced the natural world. For the vast majority of human history, humans lived in balance with the natural world we depend on. We lived in this way, in part, because we developed cultures that taught the sacredness of the natural world.

I’m writing this from the eastern edge of the Great Basin where the Western Shoshone, Paiute, Goshute, Washo and others lived sustainably for millennia. Much of my work in the region has been to protect pinyon-juniper forests from government-sponsored clearcuts. The forests make poor livestock grazing and ranchers make more money when the forests are replaced with grasses, so the forests are demonized. And, just like the demonization of Jews led to the Holocaust, the demonization of pinyon-juniper forests leads to millions of acres of clear-cuts.

Food from pinyon pine nuts and medicine from juniper trees were staples in many of the Great Basin’s traditional cultures. Pine nuts and juniper berries can be harvested without damaging the forests, so native peoples lived on what the land freely gave. In my research, I stumbled upon the transcript of a presentation[1] Glenn E. Wasson, a Western Shoshone man, gave at a pinyon-juniper conference hosted by the University of Nevada-Reno, the United States Forest Service, and the Bureau of Land Management. His words describe his people’s spirituality and represent a healthy relationship with the natural world.

Wasson said, “Each living entity constitutes a link in the chain of life. All those seen and unseen, all who grow from the ground, all those who crawl, all those who swim, all those who walk on legs, all those who fly, are all intertwined in the chain of life. Each plays a vital role in the keeping of a strong, healthy, and living Mother Earth, who provides each and every entity with all the necessities for life.” Contrast Wasson’s worldview with the dominant culture’s conception of nature as property, as resources, as objects and we begin to see why we’re in the mess we’re in.

While criticizing the Forest Service and BLM’s treatment of pinyon-juniper forests, Wasson described the mindset all of us must embrace. He said “…the cutting down of a single living tree is sacrilegious – the cutting down of a forest – UNTHINKABLE!” Until we begin to see individual nonhumans as sacred and natural communities worthy of our utmost respect, the destruction will continue.

Simply changing our language will not stop the destruction and I am not criticizing anyone’s efforts to protect Bonanza Flats from development. We need much more than better words and any land that stands free of development today, has a chance to stand free of development tomorrow. Land developed today may take decades to recover.

It’s not just Bonanza Flats. Park City boasts 8,000 acres of so-called protected open space. These are not protected open spaces. These are living natural communities where countless nonhumans live with lives as valuable to them as yours is to you. And, their lives are under attack.

I’m not writing anything you don’t already know. Most people in Park City are concerned about the natural world. Unfortunately, it appears that most Parkites are more interested in using the natural world, than in saving it. Why do I say this? Well, ask yourself, do most people in Park City spend more time confronting the forces destroying snow, or more time skiing on it? Do most people spend more time working to protect threatened Canada lynx, or more time mountain biking through Canada lynx’ homes? Do most people spend more time trying to save Colorado Pikeminnows, or more time flying fishing the waters Colorado Pikeminnows swim through?

There’s nothing wrong with enjoying the natural world. But, nonhumans do not exist for human enjoyment, they exist for themselves. It is only through centuries of cultural conditioning, teaching us to see the natural world as full of objects for our use, that some humans find nothing wrong with spending more time riding bikes than fighting for our nonhuman kin.

Life is created by complex collections of relationships formed by living creatures in natural communities. Water, air, soil, climate, and the food we eat depend on natural communities. The needs of these communities are primary; morality, the efforts of our daily lives, and our cultural teachings must emerge from a humble relationship with these natural communities. True sustainability is impossible without this.

Not long ago, all humans lived in humble relationships with natural communities. We developed traditional cultures that were rooted in the connectedness of all living beings. These cultures insisted upon the inherent worth of the natural communities who gave us life. Members of these cultures did not know “open spaces,” they knew places filled with those who grow from the ground, those who crawl, those who swim, those who walk on legs, and those who fly.

The dominance of a culture that objectifies and silences nature and calls natural communities “open space” enables its destruction. This culture has pushed the planet to the verge of total collapse. To avert collapse, the destruction must stop. We must create cultures where the exploitation of individual nonhumans is sacrilegious, and wholesale environmental destruction is unthinkable. We must stand in solidarity with all those – human and nonhuman – who share this living community we call Park City.

 

[1]Wassen, G.E. 1987. The American Indian response to the pinyon-juniper conference. In: Everett, R.L., comp. Proceedings: Pinyon-juniper conference. Gen. Tech. Rep. INT-GTR-215. Ogden, UT: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Intermountain Research Station: 38-41.

To repost this or other DGR original writings, please contact newsservice@deepgreenresistance.org

Survival International–WWF OECD talks break down over tribal consent

Survival International–WWF OECD talks break down over tribal consent

Featured image: This Baka woman and her husband are among many tribal people in Cameroon who have been beaten by WWF-funded wildlife guards. They were attacked and had their belongings taken from them while they were collecting wild mangoes. © Survival International

     by Survival International

The landmark mediation talks between Survival and the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) over breaches of Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD) guidelines for multinational corporations have broken down over the issue of tribal peoples’ consent.

Survival had asked WWF to agree to secure the Baka “Pygmies’” consent for how the conservation zones on their lands in Cameroon were managed in the future, in line with the organization’s own indigenous peoples policy.

WWF refused, at which point Survival decided there was no purpose continuing the talks.

Survival lodged the complaint in 2016, citing the creation of conservation zones on Baka land without their consent, and WWF’s repeated failure to take action over serious human rights abuses by wildlife guards it trains and equips.

It is the first time a conservation organization has been the subject of a complaint under the OECD guidelines. The resulting mediation was held in Switzerland, where WWF is headquartered.

WWF has been instrumental in the creation of several national parks and other protected areas in Cameroon on the land of the Baka and other rainforest tribes. Its own policy states that any such projects must have the free, prior and informed consent of those affected.

A Baka man told Survival in 2016: “[The anti-poaching squad] beat the children as well as an elderly woman with machetes. My daughter is still unwell. They made her crouch down and they beat her everywhere – on her back, on her bottom, everywhere, with a machete.”

Another man said: “They told me to carry my father on my back. I walked, they beat me, they beat my father. For three hours. Every time I cried they would beat me, until I fainted and fell to the ground.”

Conservation has been used as a justification for forcibly denying Baka access to their land, but the destruction of the rainforest by logging companies – some of whom are WWF partners – has continued.

Conservation has been used as a justification for forcibly denying Baka access to their land, but the destruction of the rainforest by logging companies – some of whom are WWF partners – has continued. © Margaret Wilson/Survival

Background briefing
– Survival first raised its concerns about WWF’s projects on Baka land in 1991. Since then, Baka and other local people have repeatedly testified to arrest and beatings, torture and even death at the hands of WWF-funded wildlife guards.
– The OECD is the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development. It publishes guidelines on corporate responsibility for multinationals, and provides a complaint mechanism where the guidelines have been violated.
– The complaint was lodged with the Swiss national contact point for the OECD, as WWF has its international headquarters in Switzerland. Talks took place in the Swiss capital, Bern, between representatives of WWF and Survival.
– The principle of Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC) is the bedrock of international law on indigenous peoples’ rights. It has significant implications for big conservation organizations, which often operate on tribal peoples’ land without having secured their consent.

Tribes like the Baka have lived by hunting and gathering in the rainforests of central Africa for generations, but their lives are under threat.

Tribes like the Baka have lived by hunting and gathering in the rainforests of central Africa for generations, but their lives are under threat. © Selcen Kucukustel/Atlas

Tribal peoples like the Baka have been dependent on and managed their environments for millennia. Contrary to popular belief, their lands are not wilderness. Evidence proves that tribal peoples are better at looking after their environment than anyone else. Despite this, WWF has alienated them from its conservation efforts in the Congo Basin.

The Baka, like many tribal peoples across Africa, are accused of “poaching” because they hunt to feed their families. They are denied access to large parts of their ancestral land for hunting, gathering, and sacred rituals. Many are forced to live in makeshift encampments on roadsides where health standards are very poor and alcoholism is rife.

Meanwhile, WWF has partnered with logging corporations such as Rougier, although these companies do not have the Baka’s consent to log the forest, and the logging is unsustainable.

Survival’s Director Stephen Corry said: “The outcome of these talks is dismaying but not really surprising. Conservation organizations are supposed to ensure that the ‘free, prior and informed consent’ of those whose lands they want to control has been obtained. It’s been WWF’s official policy for the last twenty years.

“But such consent is never obtained in practice, and WWF would not commit to securing it for their work in the future.

“It’s now clear that WWF has no intention of seeking, leave alone securing, the proper consent of those whose lands it colludes with governments in stealing. We’ll have to try other ways to get WWF to abide by the law, and its own policy.”

Watch: Baka father speaks out against horrific abuse

“Pygmy” is an umbrella term commonly used to refer to the hunter-gatherer peoples of the Congo Basin and elsewhere in Central Africa. The word is considered pejorative and avoided by some tribespeople, but used by others as a convenient and easily recognized way of describing themselves.