by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Mar 1, 2016 | Indigenous Autonomy, Mining & Drilling
Featured image: The Dongria unanimously rejected the mining project and have vowed to protect the Niyamgiri hills © Bikash Khemka/Survival International
By Survival International
A tribe in eastern India are facing a new threat from mining on their ancestral land, despite having won a major “David & Goliath” legal battle in 2014.
The Dongria Kondh were originally threatened by international mining corporation Vedanta Resources, who tried to open a bauxite mine in their sacred Niyamgiri hills, but were prevented by the Indian Supreme Court, which ruled that the Dongria should decide whether to allow the mine to go ahead.
The tribe unanimously rejected Vedanta’s plans to mine their hills during a historic referendum in which all twelve villages that were consulted voted against the mine.
Now, however, the Odisha state is trying to re-open the issue, petitioning for the right to hold another referendum for the Dongria to pave the way for a large-scale mining operation, this time by state-run Odisha Mining Corporation.
British-owned Vedanta opened a bauxite refinery close to the Dongria’s hills without having secured permission to mine in the area. Even though the mine itself was quashed, the refinery has continued to operate at a loss.
Survival campaigned against Vedanta’s plans and will continue to advocate for the Dongria’s right to protect their sacred hills.
© M. Cowan/Survival International
Despite strong resistance to the project from the Dongria, who have lived in the Niyamgiri hills for generations, the state authorities are keen to keep the refinery open and expand mining operations in the region.
Last year Mukuna Sikaka, a Dongria tribesperson, said: “We are not going to allow mining over Niyamgiri at any cost – not for all the developmental efforts of the government.”
Survival International led a successful global campaign against Vedanta’s plans, and is now calling for the Odisha state authorities to respect the Dongria’s decision to reject the mine.
Survival Director Stephen Corry said: “It is bitterly disappointing to see that the Odisha state authorities have still not learned to respect the wishes of the Dongria Kondh. Tribal peoples have a right under Indian and international law to determine what happens on their lands, yet still governments and corporations insist on putting profits before people’s wishes. Attempts to resume this project after international outcry and stern resistance from the Dongria themselves are not only un-democratic and illegal, but also deeply immoral.”
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Feb 28, 2016 | Biodiversity & Habitat Destruction, Indirect Action
Featured image: Candelaria residents erect a fence around the Suyul Lagoon to help protect it from intruders. (Waging Nonviolence/Sandra Cuffe)
By Sandra Cuffe / Waging Nonviolence
The reeds and grasses are as tall as Sebastián Pérez Méndez, if not taller. The vegetation is so thick it’s hard to see the water in the Suyul Lagoon that he and other local Maya Tzotzil residents are working hard to protect. Pérez Méndez crosses the road to point out where aquatic plants serve as a natural filter for the water as it flows out the lagoon, located in the highlands of Chiapas, in southern Mexico.
“The water is under threat,” he said. Pérez Méndez is the top authority of the Candelaria ejido, a tract of communally-held land in the municipality of San Cristóbal de las Casas. “We’re not going to allow it.”
Communities in Chiapas are organizing to protect the Suyul Lagoon and communal lands from a planned multi-lane highway between the city of San Cristóbal de las Casas and Palenque, where Mayan ruins are a popular tourist destination. Candelaria residents continue to take action locally to protect the lagoon. They also traveled from community to community along the proposed highway route, forming a united movement opposing the project.
It all started back in 2014 when government officials showed up in Candelaria looking for ejido authorities, including Pérez Méndez’ predecessor. It was the first residents had heard about plans for the highway. The indigenous inhabitants had not been consulted and were not shown detailed plans.
“They realized that [the government officials] were only seeking signatures,” Pérez Méndez said.
No one person or group is authorized to make a decision that would affect ejido lands, however, and there are strict conditions in place to ensure elected ejido leaders are accountable to members, he explained. An extraordinary assembly was held to discuss the highway project.
The Candelaria ejido was established in 1935, a year after a new agrarian law enacted during the Lázaro Cárdenas administration led to widespread land reform throughout Mexico. More than 2,000 people live in the 1,600-hectare ejido, and more than 800 of them are ejidatarios — legally recognized communal land holders whose rights have been passed down for generations. Only ejidatarios as a whole have the power to make decisions on issues like the highway project.
Candelaria residents paint over graffiti to fix up a roadside sign proclaiming their opposition to the highway project. (Waging Nonviolence/Sandra Cuffe)
“The ejido said no,” said Guadalupe Moshan, who works for the Fray Bartolomé de Las Casas Human Rights Center, or FrayBa, supporting Candelaria and other communities in Chiapas. “They didn’t sign.”
Candelaria leaders sought assistance from FrayBa in 2014, after they were approached by government officials and pressured to sign a document indicating their consent to the highway project that would involve a 60-meter-wide easement through communally-held lands. Officials told community members that the highway was already approved and that they would be well compensated, but that there would consequences if they refused to sign, Moshan said.
“They told them they would suspend government programs and services,” she explained. In the days following the extraordinary ejido assembly rejecting the project, there was unusual activity in the area, according to Moshan. Helicopters flew over theejido, unknown individuals entered at night, and trees were marked, she said.
Protecting the Suyul Lagoon remains at the heart of Candelaria’s opposition to the planned highway. The lagoon provides potable water not only for Candelaria, but also for several nearby communities, said ejido council secretary Juan Octavio Gómez. Aside from the highway itself, project plans eventually shown to the community leaders include a proposed eco-tourism complex right next to the lagoon. That isn’t in the communities’ interest, Gómez explained.
“Water is life. We can’t live without it,” he said. “Without this lagoon, we don’t have another option for water.”
Fed by a natural spring, the Suyul Lagoon never runs dry. Local residents are careful to protect the water and lands in the ejido, where the majority of residents live from subsistence agriculture, sheep rearing and carpentry. They engage in community reforestation, but have plans to plant more trees, Gómez said.
The Suyul Lagoon is also sacred to local Maya Tzotzil. Ceremonies held every three years in its honor involve rituals, offerings, music and dance.
“It is said that it’s the navel of Mother Earth,” Pérez Méndez said.
Candelaria residents didn’t sit back and relax after rejecting the highway project in their extraordinary assembly. They have been organizing ever since. The Suyul Lagoon lies just outside the Candelaria ejido, but it belongs to ejidatarios by way of an agreement with the supportive land owner. Aside from the highway project and potential eco-tourism complex, the lagoon has caught the attention of companies, whose representatives have turned up in the area expressing interest in establishing a bottling plant.
It’s cold in February up in the highlands, but community members have been out all day, erecting a fence around the Suyul Lagoon to protect it from intruders. White fence posts are visible under the treeline across the sea of reeds. Like so many other local initiatives, fence materials are collectively financed by the ejido and the labor is all voluntary, communal work.
While residents continue stringing barbed wire from post to post, others take paintbrushes to one of their roadside signs. Locals have erected large signs next to roads in and around their ejido, announcing their opposition to the tourist highway.
A sign along the road leading to Candelaria informs passers-by of opposition to the planned super-highway. (Waging Nonviolence/Sandra Cuffe)
“We’re also already organized with the other communities,” Pérez Méndez said. “All the communities reject the super-highway.”
After they were approached by government officials, Candelaria ejido residents traveled from community to community along the entire planned highway route. Some communities hadn’t heard of the project at all, while others said they were pressured into signing documents indicating their consent, Pérez Méndez said. As a result of Candelaria’s visits, community organizing along the highway route led to the formation of a united front of opposition, the Movement in Defense of Life and Territory.
Candelaria also recently got together with other indigenous communities in the highlands to issue a joint statement rejecting the tourist super-highway and a host of other government and corporate projects and policies.
“Our ancestors, our grandfathers and our grandmothers have always taken care of these blessed lands, and now it’s our turn to [not only take] care of the lands, but also to defend them,” reads the February 10 communiqué.
“The neoliberal capitalist system, in its ambition to exploit natural assets, invades our lands,” the statement continues. “The government and transnational companies are violently imposing their mega-projects.”
Back along the edge of the Suyul Lagoon, Candelaria residents continue to string barbed wire from post to post. They’ve been at it for a while now, according to Pérez Méndez, but they’ve now stepped up their efforts and hope to finish the fence by the end of the month.
Pérez Méndez surveys the progress, protected from the unrelenting sun and icy wind by his hat and white sheep’s wool tunic. He becomes pensive when asked if he thinks communities will be able to defeat the highway project.
“Yes,” the ejido leader said, after giving it some thought. “We can stop it.”
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Feb 21, 2016 | Lobbying, Rape Culture
By Jhonathan F. Gómez / Upside Down World
All photos from Supreme Court trial by Jhonathan F. Gómez
Maya Q’eqchi’ women survivors recently entered the Supreme Court in Guatemala as part of the Sepur Zarco case to demand justice for sexual violence, sexual and domestic slavery, forced disappearances and murder, crimes committed during the internal armed conflict of 1960-1996. On February 1, 2016, Army Lieutenant Colonel Francisco Esteelmer Reyes Girón and military commissioner Heriberto Valdés Asij appeared before the court as another historic trial began.
The Sepur Zarco case is representative of the current state of justice for women in Guatemala. It serves as a reminder that the work towards bringing those responsible for genocide and crimes against humanity is an extensive and challenging process anywhere in the world.
The case goes back to 1982, when the army built a military outpost between the departments of Alta Verapaz and Izabal. Built by forced labor from men of the communities of Panzós and El Estor, it was designated as a resting area for the troops. Late in 1982, the army captured and disappeared Maya Q’eqchi’ men who were fighting for their rights to the land in the area. Consequently, the army took advantage of the widowed women and declared them “alone and available,” forcing them into domestic and sexual slavery. The women were subjected to inhumane conditions, repeatedly raped, gang raped and forced to cook and clean for the army.
These crimes occurred when retired general José Efraín Ríos Mont Ríos Montt was president. Part of his government’s policy was to eliminate the Mayan people by way of displacement, disappearances, murder or forced exile. (Ríos Montt is currently waiting retrial to face justice for his crimes.)
In 1993, the United Nation’s Historical Clarification Commission collected testimonies which allowed for an understanding of what happened. However, a broader understanding of what took place began to surface further in 2000 when the Community Research and Psychosocial Action Team (Equipo de Estudios Comunitarios y Acción Psicosocial, ECAP) conducted psychosocial work with women of the Sepur Zarco region.
The roots of this landmark case are part of a living history which Maya Q’eqchi’ women have been working for years at the community level in the pursuit of justice. In 2009, an independent psychosocial investigation, which led to the publication of a book called Tejidos Que Lleva el Alma (The Weavings that Our Soul Carry) was conducted by ECAP and the National Union of Guatemalan Women (Unión Nacional de Mujeres Guatemaltecas, UNAMG). The book’s aim was to bring the stories of Mayan women survivors into the public consciousness.
In 2010, a symbolic Court of Conscience (Tribunal de Conciencia) against sexual violence for crimes committed during the armed conflict was conducted as a public act by the women survivors. It signaled a breaking of the silence and promoted the sharing of stories with the clear objective that nothing of that nature should ever happen again. The event was organized by various community organizations and with the support of multiple embassies including those from Costa Rica, Spain, Germany Norway and Sweden. Following the symbolic act, the women took a step forward with strategic litigation within the Guatemala justice system.
The Breaking the Silence and Impunity Alliance (Alianza Rompiendo el Silencio y la Impunidad), which consists of three grassroots organizations, came together the same year to accompany the legal proceedings of the women survivors. The women survivors have waited over 30 years to see any inclination of justice, and this case can therefore have a large impact in Guatemala and around the world.
The significance of the case cannot be overstated. It is the first time in the world where a national court, in the context of a criminal trial will hear charges against sexual violence during war, as well as the first time a national court will hear charges against sexual and domestic slavery, also in the context of war. The case can set precedents on how sexual violence is judged at a national and international level. Ada I. Valenzuela López from UNAMG states, “In our society, no one else will position sexual violence as an issue in this context. It is a violence which has been silenced for many years. It is almost never at the forefront of any debate in the courts or our society.”
The case stands to move public opinion forward in the struggle for gender justice. It can serve as a step to strengthen trust in a justice system that is capable of hearing the voices of women, and not shaming nor stigmatizing them for speaking out as survivors of sexual violence. It is particularly important for an indigenous population that has been historically discriminated and marginalized to trust in due process. Fifteen women have already testified during the intermediate phase of the case. Many of them have faced threats because of their testimony, yet all of them continue to stand strong because they share a collective understanding of the importance of the trial.
On September 2011, criminal charges were filed in Puerto Barrios, Izabal against military officials Reyes Girón and Valdés Asij. On December, 2011, exhumations were performed at the military outpost. In July of 2012, the prosecutor’s office requested before the Supreme Court that the case be transferred to the High Risk Court. In September of that year, survivors and witnesses presented testimonies before Judge Miguel Ángel Gálvez Aguilar who precedes High Risk Court B.
Arrests were made for Reyes Girón and Valdés Asij in June 14, 2014. On June 23, the first hearing was held and in October, the intermediate phase began which prompted the judge to request a trial date. Immediately after the defense filed a writ of amparo, a legal remedy for the protection of constitutional rights, which was rejected by the Constitutional Court in April of 2015.
In March, April and May of 2015, hearings were suspended because the defense attorneys were not present and because of health problems by Francisco Esteelmer Reyes Girón. Esteelmer Girón had been hospitalized and the defense stated that he was in “poor health.” On June 23, the judge restarted the public debate and the case was sent to the High Risk Court A, comprised by judges Yassmín Barrios, Patricia Bustamante and Gerbi Sical.
On February 1 of this year, the trial began. It faces many challenges, both in the domain of public opinion, as well as in the trial itself. The defense continues to defame survivors’ organizations, witnesses and uses legal methods to delay the trial. Many organizations have denounced the defense’s methods as a way to evade justice and promote a culture of impunity. Jo-Marie Burt from the Washington Office on Latin America reiterates that “the challenge here is to prove that these types of crimes can be investigated, brought to trial and judged. And to seek to generate mechanism or protocols for the army understand that violence against women cannot be used as an instrument of war, and that women are not war trophies.”
On February 9, the plaintiffs presented over 30 boxes as evidence which contained the remains found in various exhumations which the Forensic Anthropology Foundation of Guatemala (Fundacion de Antropologia Forense de Guatemala, FAFG) conducted. As the contents of the boxes were presented, many people who attended the trial as observers and supporters walked out of the courtroom because of their graphic nature. Evidence of this nature has not always been used at such trials, making it an even more important method of illustrating the magnitude of the crimes.
As a show of support for the Maya Q’eqchi’ women who will be testifying, women from various regions across the country have been present through the trial. As the country watches another historic trial unfold, the survivors are clear on their position. They seek justice and will not rest in peace until justice is served. They want to bring the issue of sexual violence into the public conversation and to show that it is hard for women to speak out against this type of violence. They want their voices to be heard, their truth to be known. They want society to understand that what happened to them was not their fault, and most importantly, that no other woman in Guatemala, or anywhere in the world, experiences what they lived through.
Jhonathan F. Gómez, is a documentary photographer currently living in Guatemala City. He is commitment to documenting the subaltern and diasporic realities of Guatemala as they relate to historic memory, race, class, gender, sexuality, identity and justice.
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Feb 19, 2016 | Colonialism & Conquest, Indigenous Autonomy
Featured image: Maori protests on February 4th signing of the TPP in Auckland, New Zealand. Photo by Dominic Hartnett
By Cultural Survival
The Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement, if approved, would be the largest trade agreement in history involving 11 countries including the United States, Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, and Vietnam.
Cultural Survival staff caught up with the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, to discuss the trade deal’s implications for Indigenous Peoples in these countries, based on her recent research and report on this topic.
Vicky Tauli-Corpuz explains that the TPP agreement is about liberalizing the trade and investment regime in order to allow for more fluidity when trading among countries. However, she shared her concern that in this agreement investor’s rights may be more protected than the rights of the Indigenous Peoples; the investment clause would trump social and environmental rights, including human rights.
“You cannot have a situation where investor’s rights are more protected than Indigenous rights,” she explained.
Ms. Tauli-Corpuz also used the example of Bolivia, where the government had listened and acted upon Indigenous protests against a Canadian mine on their lands, by attempting to cancel the concession. Bolivia was then sued by the Canadian corporation that owned the mine. The mining corporation won and the Bolivian government was left to pay millions of dollars to the company for lost profits. She noted that most developing countries lose in arbitration with corporations because they simply do not have the lawyers to support them. Corpuz warned, these are the types of situations that occur when investors are prioritized over the local and Indigenous citizens.
The TPP was negotiated in secret, and its text was only released via Wikileaks until it was already negotiated by trade ministers of the respective countries. According to Tauli Corpuz, this secrecy is a violation of Indigenous Peoples right to Free, Prior, Informed Consent on policies that may affect them.
“In situations where Indigenous Peoples have the right to Free, Prior, Informed Consent before any company comes to their community to invest, that kind of right has to be respected and that has to be stated and pursued by the countries who are hosting this investment,” she warned.
She urges for deeper transparency in trade deals like the TPP, so that Indigenous Peoples can be aware of the content of these trade agreements so that they can participate and decide whether or not to consent. In order to achieve this there must be a call to action to create a more participatory negotiation process rather than the exclusive and secretive one that has occurred. If the TPP is passed within each country’s legislature, it would deregulate social standards that are put in place and can take states themselves to court for attempting to protect social conducts such as protecting the rights of Indigenous Peoples.
The Special Rapporteur also recommends that extra attention be made to Exceptions section of the trade agreement. For example, specifically naming FPIC and Indigenous Peoples rights in the stipulations of how the the trade agreement would play out within each country. It is the responsibility of each country to identify and present exceptions so that they can be held accountable during arbitration panels. For example, New Zealand did manage to include an exception in TPP article 29.6 that references the rights of the Maori people, however activists have argued that the wording of the exception allows too many loopholes to provide legitimate protection.
On February 4th, 2016, the TPP was signed by trade ministers of 11 countries, in a formal ceremony in New Zealand. But the deal must still be approved within the legislatures of each country for it to be put in place: The TPP will not come into effect until a requisite number of original signatories ratify the agreement.
Maori leaders in New Zealand held massive protests against the signing ceremony, saying that they do not give their consent to the deal and that the it violates the Treaty of Waitangi and the 1835 Declaration of Independence of New Zealand. Kingi Taurua, a prominent Nga Puhi elder at Waitangi’s Te Tii Marae, has sent a formal notice of veto of the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement to the embassies and trade departments of its proposed partner countries. They argued that the New Zealand government does not have “due authority” to sign the TPP without the agreement of Maori elders, “which [agreement] has not been given.”
In the United States, the next step is the drafting and consideration of a bill in Congress to implement the agreement, which will also serve as U.S. ratification of the international trade deal. Some anticipate this vote to take place after the 2016 elections in November.
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Feb 18, 2016 | Biodiversity & Habitat Destruction
By Deep Green Resistance
Wild Bison are an icon of what has been destroyed by civilization, and this species is now on the brink in the wild. Almost all bison left today are cross-breeds held in confinement. There are only a few wild, free ranging bison herds left on the planet, and their numbers are small. Every year, the Park Service — at the behest of ranchers — round up, quarantine, harass, and kill many of the wild bison who live in and around Yellowstone National Park. We stand with grassroots land defenders such as the Buffalo Field Campaign in calling for an immediate end to this atrocious treatment of wild bison. Instead of quarantine, these creatures need room to roam. Instead of harassment, they need our assistance in growing once again to their historical numbers.
From Buffalo Field Campaign:
Yellowstone National Park has released an Environmental Assessment (EA) for a fifty-year quarantine program which seriously threatens America’s last wild, migratory bison population. Unfortunately there is very little in this EA for bison advocates to support, as even the “no action” alternative maintains the Park’s ongoing capture-for-slaughter program. Comments are due by midnight MDT February 29, 2016. (This is a new, extended deadline.)
Quarantine domesticates wild bison, subjects them to artificial selection and commercial management practices and treats them like livestock. Quarantine is an insult to First Nations buffalo cultures with strong cultural, spiritual, and traditional ties to wild, migratory buffalo in and around Yellowstone. Quarantining wild, migratory bison and dooming them to a life behind fences ignores the critical keystone relationship between wild bison and their natural prairie and grassland communities. Migration is one of the buffalo’s strongest, most significant gifts to a healthy landscape. Quarantine reduces buffalo to a domesticated state, and is not appropriate for wildlife. Quarantine, which imposes a state of control and surveillance over wild bison, is the direct result of the livestock industry’s intolerance. Quarantine is a toxic mimic of natural restoration, a program in which humans manipulate the wild and free to suit their own selfish agendas. Quarantine does not end slaughter, it begins with it, ripping buffalo families apart and orphaning calves who spend the rest of their lives behind fences.
Yellowstone’s ongoing capture-for-slaughter and fifty-year quarantine plan will result in extremely adverse cumulative impacts, and we need to force the agency to seriously and honestly review the best available scientific information in a comprehensive Environmental Impact Statement (EIS).
Recent history has already shown that quarantine does not work for wild bison. The Quarantine Feasibility Study that began in 2005 resulted in wild Yellowstone buffalo being commercially owned for profit, while some of the buffalo who went to Ft. Peck died in a horrible fire because they could not escape their enclosure, and half of the herd that was transferred to Ft. Belknap died because they could not escape their enclosure to find fresh water. Wild bison do not belong behind fences, they are a nation unto themselves who evolved to migrate, wild and free!
TAKE ACTION! Please use the sample letter below only as an example, and in your own words, address the adverse impacts of quarantining wild bison and the Park’s ongoing capture for slaughter mismanagement scheme. Don’t allow Yellowstone National Park to domesticate wild, migratory bison!
HOW TO SEND YOUR COMMENTS: Respondents are encouraged to submit their comments online through the Planning, Environment and Public Comment (PEPC) website at www.parkplanning.nps.gov/BisonQuarantine. Comments may also be hand-delivered to the park administration building, or mailed to: Superintendent, Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming, 82190. Comments will NOT be accepted by fax, e-mail, or in any manner other than those specified above.
SAMPLE LETTER – Please edit with your own remarks! See above for instructions on how to submit your comments. Due by February 29, 2016.
Superintendent Dan Wenk
Yellowstone National Park
Attn: Bison Quarantine EA
P.O. Box 168
Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming 82190
RE: Comments on Yellowstone Bison Quarantine Program EA
Dear Superintendent Wenk,
Thank you for the opportunity to comment on Yellowstone’s quarantine environmental assessment (EA). I am strongly opposed to Yellowstone’s proposed fifty-year quarantine plan as well as the Park’s ongoing capture-for slaughter operations. As an advocate for wild, migratory bison, I find it impossible to support quarantine in Yellowstone or elsewhere, or your no-action alternative to continue capturing wild buffalo for slaughter.
Yellowstone’s proposed fifty-year quarantine plan, as well as the Park’s ongoing capture-for-slaughter operations have significant cumulative negative impacts, which requires your agency to seriously and thoroughly review the best available information in a comprehensive Environmental Impact Statement.
The U.S. Congress never intended for wild buffalo in Yellowstone to be declared “surplus” and did not authorize the Secretary of the Interior to remove wild buffalo as “surplus” for quarantine. By regulation, Yellowstone National Park is prohibited from removing “surplus” wild buffalo from the population in Yellowstone “when the animals are to be slaughtered, or are to be released without adequate protection from premature hunting.” 36 C.F.R. § 10.3(d) (2015).
Yellowstone’s fifty-year quarantine program is in direct violation of the Organic Act and National Park Service policies, as it includes capturing wild bison for quarantine with potential recipients including agricultural or commercial producers, reducing ecologically extinct wild bison to livestock.
Wild bison are further adversely impacted by Yellowstone’s proposed quarantine plan and ongoing capture-for-slaughter operations, which aim to reduce America’s last continuously wild herds to a mere 3,000 animals, and maintain this low population, making wild bison extremely vulnerable by threatening their natural immunity to introduced diseases from cattle and elsewhere, including brucellosis. Such poor management practices increase the risk of wild bison becoming more vulnerable to various diseases as strains become more virulent and persistent. Further, the population target of 3,000 is based on livestock industry politics and lacks scientific or ecological basis.
In recent history, Yellowstone’s participation in the state-federal Quarantine Feasibility Study resulted in the commercialization and privatization of wild bison, making a commodity of our nation’s valued wildlife. It resulted in the domestication of wild bison originating from Yellowstone. All of the wild bison who survived the quarantine feasibility study have been reduced to private livestock or meat behind fences, many of which died throughout the process, through transport to other quarantine facilities, or who suffered horrible deaths by fire and dehydration as a result of their confinement.
The recent quarantine program has been a failure. There is no indication that quarantine with the costly, restrictive, and burdensome requirements of the U.S. Department of Agriculture will in any way lead to the recovery of ecologically extinct wild bison as a wildlife species anywhere in the country. Quarantine domesticates. It harms and degrades the wild integrity of America’s last wild bison population and subjects wild bison to commercial management practices and artificial selection.
Indigenous people of North America have held strong cultural and spiritual ties to wild, migratory buffalo for tens of millennia. Some of these relationships are so deep that the people consider the buffalo to be actual relatives. “Offering” indigenous buffalo cultures the return of their relatives through quarantine and capture-for-slaughter can be viewed as a continuation of the U.S. government’s assimilation program, which aims to make cattle out of wild, migratory bison, and livestock producers out of traditionally nomadic indigenous buffalo cultures.
Ongoing capture-for-slaughter operations and the proposed quarantine program are a violation of the treaty rights held by more than twenty-five sovereign, indigenous nations. The harmful programs of hazing, quarantine, and slaughter prevent wild, migratory bison from restoring themselves on their native landscape, including open and unclaimed public lands. These nation-to-nation treaties, which the federal government has a legal obligation to honor, hold that these indigenous cultures have a sovereign right to hunt, gather, and hold ceremony on open and unclaimed lands. Sadly, wild, migratory bison are absent and unavailable on many of these lands due to these bison management practices.
Yellowstone’s fifty-year quarantine plan further harms wild, migratory bison because quarantine has adverse impacts on herd dynamics, social structure, and collective wisdom handed down through generations. Quarantine negatively modifies wild bison behavior in ways that are unnatural and harmful, including continuing pressures of domestication, conditioning to human manipulation, and artificial selection — all tools for managing livestock, not wildlife. Wild, migratory bison are able to take care of themselves, with no cost or need of interference from humans. Wild bison are able to create and manage their own habitat, while bison behind fences invoke restrictive, costly, and burdensome requirements by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Yellowstone National Park’s voluntary agreement to adhere to the highly controversial Interagency Bison Management Plan contradicts the mission of the National Park Service. The Park Service and other IBMP member agencies fail to operate using the best available science and information, falling back instead on expired information and misguided assumptions, in direct violation of the Park Service’s mandate.
Nearly 6,000 ecologically extinct, wild, migratory bison have been killed or eliminated from America’s last continuously wild population with direct and indirect participation from Yellowstone National Park, through capture-for-slaughter, quarantine, hazing fatalities, and the surrender of wild bison for scientific experiment. An independent population viability analysis must be conducted (and funded) by Yellowstone National Park to determine how management actions and consequent cumulative impacts threaten the long-term viability, diversity, integrity, and evolutionary potential of wild, migratory bison. It is also required that an impairment review be undertaken to determine the long-term and cumulative impacts of capture-for-slaughter operations and the proposed fifty-year quarantine program.
There is a win-win situation for wild, migratory bison and indigenous buffalo cultures that does not include the mass killing or domestication of wild bison: natural restoration through the simple and ancient natural phenomenon of migration. Migration corridors must be protected and made available to wild bison by federal, state, and public trust land management agencies, working with private landowners and tribal governments. The migration corridors in and around Yellowstone are a first priority, along with the protection of the bison themselves — both of which are denied under current management. When wild bison are protected and allowed to restore themselves throughout their native range, they will naturally return to the lands that are their birthright, lands they have been forcibly and lethally removed from, where indigenous buffalo cultures are ready to welcome them home.
Sincerely,
[Your name]
Read more at Buffalo Field Campaign. Help support BFC here.
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Feb 13, 2016 | Male Violence, Movement Building & Support, Strategy & Analysis, Women & Radical Feminism
This is the second part of a series. Read the first part at Toward Strategic Feminist Action.
By Tara Prema / Gender is War
Developing an effective response to the worldwide crisis of male violence
Strategic Feminism is a framework for collective action against patriarchal violence. The framework is based on acknowledging that the struggle for women’s liberation can – and must – adapt the lessons of asymmetric conflicts, such as guerrilla uprisings against occupying armies. We can apply the lessons of successful insurgencies to our aboveground organizing. And we must do so. It is a matter of life and death: every minute, men rape, abuse, abduct, and murder girls and women. Time is short – we must prepare for worse still to come.
Strategic Feminism draws on the excellent analysis of asymmetric conflict in Deep Green Resistance: A Strategy to Save the Planet. In Part One, we discussed the crisis of male violence against women and sketched a solution based on organizing for action in our communities. Here in Part Two, we look at more ways to begin and sustain our work for radical social change.
We call this model Strategic Feminism because it’s outcome-oriented and focused on creating a movement that addresses the material conditions affecting women’s lives.
Sustaining a movement: Feminism in collapse
How can we create a movement in a time of collapse? How do we come together as a force for change when individuals burn out, groups fall apart, and coalitions fracture? When feminists are fighting each other on questions of gender, motherhood, sexuality, and privilege?
And how to do we take these steps now, when every day brings more signs of cultural, economic, and environmental collapse? How do we adapt our strategies to a world order that is reeling from one crisis to the next? This is our challenge.
As radical women, we must pledge to protect each other and the places we love, just as women have done since the time they burned us as witches.
Keeping the spirit
At the core of this movement, there is an intangible force with a measurable impact. It’s an attitude, a mindset, a determination that compels us to push back against oppression. It’s the warrior mindset, the stand-and-fight stance of someone defending her home and the ones she loves.
Many burn with righteous anger. This is important – anger lets us know when people are hurting us and the ones we love. It’s part of the process of healing from trauma. Anger can rouse us from depression and move us past denial and bargaining. It is a step toward acceptance and taking action.
Rewriting the trauma script includes asserting our truth and lived experiences, and naming abuses instead of glossing over them. It includes discovering (and rediscovering) that we can rely on each other instead of on men. It’s mustering the courage to confront male violence. But it’s not going to be easy.
Acknowledge and #NameTheProblem
We can’t fight a problem we can’t identify, especially when it is deliberately obscured. It’s not surprising that naming the problem has become a political act. And the problem is male violence against women. We shouldn’t have to say “she was raped” when we know that “men raped her.”
Reclaim what was taken from us
- Learning (and re-learning and reminding each other) that our bodies and spirits belong to us, we deserve to be safe, and we have the capacity to defend ourselves
- Fighting isolation and connecting with other women who have a similar fighting spirit
- Creating a culture of resistance to male violence
Taking action
Strategies are the paths to the goal. Tactics are the means to implement strategies. Part of a strategy for sustaining a movement is networks of peer support, mutual aid, and solidarity. We start by coming together with our peers, women who share the same goals and principles.
Goal: Develop a thriving network capable of effective action
Strategy: Find women allies and start a group
Tactics:
Start with a small circle: each one invite one.- When you get an invitation, go!
- Use a petition or sign-on letter to gather potential recruits.
- Screen and interview volunteers.
- Discuss and write up a basis of unity
- Hold meetings, discussions, films, work parties, and benefit shows.
- Keep a signup sheet and a list of participants.
- Retain volunteers through appreciation and peer support.
- Raise money for projects and community campaigns.
Strategy: Start with an existing group
- Entryism – add members until your crew has a majority
- Headhunting – join in order to recruit members to your group
- Affinity group – organize an action team within the group
- Symbiosis – utilize the group’s resources and membership for your project
Strategy: Build a coalition
- Circulate a sign-on letter
- Organize against a common political enemy
- Host an event: A symposium, press conference, rally, or direct action
- Pledge to support and not publicly denounce each other
- Collaborate together on an ongoing project
Strategy: Keep each other safe and supported
- Have designated safe houses and emergency plans
- Set up a legal defence fund and legal team before they’re needed
- Create a mutual aid network so women activists can support each other
- Make and distribute an activist safety/security plan to stop online hackers and physical attackers
- Prioritize peer support and peer counseling, whether it’s formal or informal.
- Keep a “not wanted” list to weed out known disruptors
- Host group self-defense and security awareness trainings
Choosing our battles
How do we decide on a particular project, campaign, action or strategy? We can ask:
- Is it effective? What will it achieve?
- What are our goals (immediate and long-term )? How does this action lead there?
- Who is working with us?
- Do we have community support? From which communities?
- What decision-makers are we targeting?
- What are our strategies and tactics? (Legal, confrontational, revolutionary?)
- Do we have the resources? (People power, funds, vehicle?)
- How can we get the resources? (Recruiting, crowdfunding, direct appeals?)
- What are the possible negative outcomes? How can we mitigate the negatives?
Some actions and projects aren’t intended to lead to concrete results – they are symbolic in nature but still useful for boosting morale, getting media attention, and recruiting volunteers.
Male allies
Male allies can – and should – make substantial contributions to the movement. Consider asking women what we need to sustain our work, and then providing that without judgment or trying to exercise veto power. Men who take on ally roles should turn to other men for peer support and take time to debrief with them regularly.
Remember to regroup
Every campaign, project, and group will stall eventually. We invariably reach the point when it seems our efforts are going nowhere and our adversaries are dragging us down. This is when we must re-group and re-commit ourselves or fail. Every goal worth fighting for is going to face a serious backlash from those in power.
In spite of all our planning, our groups and coalitions still fall apart due to lack of unity, loss of commitment, burnout, and the divisive pressures of racism, classism, misogyny, and disruption from outsiders. Overall, things are not going to get better on their own. In the endgame of capitalism, the situation for women as a class worldwide is deteriorating at a fearsome rate. It’s up to us to prepare for the worst.
In the short term, this anti-feminist backlash is intensifying. Planning now is crucial. Some readers may not see the immediate need for this laundry list of tactics and strategies. But the day is coming when the need for community networks of trust will be urgent, because so much of what we rely on now has collapsed.
These notes come from unceded indigenous territory on the frontier of resistance to the western patriarchal invasion.
