by DGR News Service | May 19, 2021 | Biodiversity & Habitat Destruction, Colonialism & Conquest, Culture of Resistance, Direct Action, Indigenous Autonomy, Listening to the Land, Lobbying, Mining & Drilling, Movement Building & Support, Obstruction & Occupation, Repression at Home, Toxification, White Supremacy
In this statement, Atsa koodakuh wyh Nuwu (the People of Red Mountain), oppose the proposed Lithium open pit mines in Thacker Pass. They describe the cultural and historical significance of Thacker Pass, and also the environmental and social problems the project will bring.
We, Atsa koodakuh wyh Nuwu (the People of Red Mountain) and our native and non-native allies, oppose Lithium Nevada Corp.’s proposed Thacker Pass open pit lithium mine.
This mine will harm the Fort McDermitt Paiute-Shoshone Tribe, our traditional land, significant cultural sites, water, air, and wildlife including greater sage grouse, Lahontan cutthroat trout, pronghorn antelope, and sacred golden eagles. We also request support as we fight to protect Thacker Pass.
”Lithium Nevada Corp. (“Lithium Nevada”) – a subsidiary of the Canadian corporation Lithium Americas Corp. – proposes to build an open pit lithium mine that begins with a project area of 17,933 acres. When the Mine is fully-operational, it would use 5,200 acre-feet per year (equivalent to an average pumping rate of 3,224 gallons per minute) in one of the driest regions in the nation. This comes at a time when the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation fears it might have to make the federal government’s first-ever official water shortage declaration which will prompt water consumption cuts in Nevada. Meanwhile, despite Lithium Nevada’s characterization of the Mine as “green,” the company estimates in the FEIS that, when the Mine is fully-operational, it will produce 152,703 tons of carbon dioxide equivalent emissions every year.
Mines have already harmed the Fort McDermitt tribe.
Several tribal members were diagnosed with cancer after working in the nearby McDermitt and Cordero mercury mines. Some of these tribal members were killed by that cancer.
In addition to environmental concerns, Thacker Pass is sacred to our people. Thacker Pass is a spiritually powerful place blessed by the presence of our ancestors, other spirits, and golden eagles – who we consider to be directly connected to the Creator. Some of our ancestors were massacred in Thacker Pass. The name for Thacker pass in our language is Peehee mu’huh, which in English, translates to “rotten moon.” Pee-hee means “rotten” and mm-huh means “moon.” Peehee mu’huh was named so because our ancestors were massacred there while our hunters were away. When the hunters returned, they found their loved ones murdered, unburied, rotting, and with their entrails spread across the sage brush in a part of the Pass shaped like a moon. To build a lithium mine over this massacre site in Peehee mu’huh would be like building a lithium mine over Pearl Harbor or Arlington National Cemetery. We would never desecrate these places and we ask that our sacred sites be afforded the same respect.
Thacker Pass is essential to the survival of our traditions.
Our traditions are tied to the land. When our land is destroyed, our traditions are destroyed. Thacker Pass is home to many of our traditional foods. Some of our last choke cherry orchards are found in Thacker Pass. We gather choke cherries to make choke cherry pudding, one of our oldest breakfast foods. Thacker Pass is also a rich source of yapa, wild potatoes. We hunt groundhogs and mule deer in Thacker Pass. Mule deer are especially important to us as a source of meat, but we also use every part of the deer for things like clothing and for drumskins in our most sacred ceremonies.
Thacker Pass is one of the last places where we can find our traditional medicines.
We gather ibi, a chalky rock that we use for ulcers and both internal and external bleeding. COVID-19 made Thacker Pass even more important for our ability to gather medicines. Last summer and fall, when the pandemic was at its worst on the reservation, we gathered toza root in Thacker Pass, which is known as one of the world’s best anti-viral medicines. We also gathered good, old-growth sage brush to make our strong Indian tea which we use for respiratory illnesses.
Thacker Pass is also historically significant to our people.
The massacre described above is part of this significance. Additionally, when American soldiers were rounding our people up to force them on to reservations, many of our people hid in Thacker Pass. There are many caves and rocks in Thacker Pass where our people could see the surrounding land for miles. The caves, rocks, and view provided our ancestors with a good place to watch for approaching soldiers. The Fort McDermitt tribe descends from essentially two families who, hiding in Thacker Pass, managed to avoid being sent to reservations farther away from our ancestral lands. It could be said, then, that the Fort McDermitt tribe might not be here if it wasn’t for the shelter provided by Thacker Pass.
We also fear, with the influx of labor the Mine would cause and the likelihood that man camps will form to support this labor force, that the Mine will strain community infrastructure, such as law enforcement and human services. This will lead to an increase in hard drugs, violence, rape, sexual assault, and human trafficking. The connection between man camps and missing and murdered indigenous women is well-established.
Finally, we understand that all of us must be committed to fighting climate change. Fighting climate change, however, cannot be used as yet another excuse to destroy native land. We cannot protect the environment by destroying it.
Sign the petition from People of Red Mountain: https://www.change.org/p/protect-thacker-pass-peehee-mu-huh
Donate: https://www.classy.org/give/423060/#!/donation/checkout
For more on the Protect Thacker Pass campaign
#ProtectThackerPass #NativeLivesMatter #NativeLandsMatter
by DGR News Service | May 18, 2021 | Biodiversity & Habitat Destruction, Culture of Resistance, Education, Indigenous Autonomy, Indirect Action, Lobbying, Movement Building & Support, Repression at Home
- The Philippine government has suspended work on a bridge that would connect the islands of Coron and Culion in the coral rich region of Palawan.
- Activists, Indigenous groups and marine experts say the project would threaten the rich coral biodiversity in the area as well as the historical shipwrecks that have made the area a prime dive site.
- The Indigenous Tagbanua community, who successfully fought against an earlier project to build a theme park, say they were not consulted about the bridge project.
- Preliminary construction began in November 2020 despite a lack of government-required consultations and permits, and was ordered suspended in April this year following the public outcry.
This article originally appeared on Mongabay.
Featured image: The Indigenous Tagbanua community of Culion has slammed the project for failing to obtain their permission that’s required under Philippine law. Image by anne jimenez via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0).
by Keith Anthony S. Fabro
PALAWAN, Philippines — Nicole Tayag, 30, learned to snorkel at 5 when her father took her to the teeming waters of Coron to scout for potential tourist destinations back in 1995. One particularly biodiverse site they found was the Lusong coral garden, southwest of this island town in the Philippines’ Palawan province.
“Even just at the surface, I saw how lively the place was,” Tayag told Mongabay. “We drove our boat for so many times that I remember the passage as one of the places I see dolphins jumping and rays flying up the water. It has inspired me to see more underwater, which led me to my career as a scuba diver instructor now.”
Tayag said she holds a special place in her heart for Lusong coral garden. So when she heard that a government-funded bridge would be built through it, she said was concerned about its impact on the marine environment and tourism industry. Before the pandemic, the 644-hectare (1,591-acre) Bintuan marine protected area (MPA), which covers this dive site, received an average of 3,000 tourists weekly, generating up to 259 million pesos ($5.4 million) in annual revenue. Bintuan is one of the MPAs in the Philippines considered by experts as being managed effectively.
The planned 4.2 billion peso ($88.6 million) road from Coron to the island of Culion would run just over 20 kilometers (12.5 miles), of which only about an eighth would constitute the actual bridge span, according to a government document obtained by Mongabay.
Tayag said they’ve been hearing about the project for 20 years now. “[I] didn’t give much thought about it before, really.” Then, in March this year, Mark Villar, secretary of the Philippine Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH), posted the project’s conceptual design on his Facebook page.
Tayag said she was shocked that the project was finally going through. “I was even more shocked when I realized it’s so close to historical dive sites and to coral garden,” she said.
Part of President Rodrigo Duterte’s “Build, Build, Build” infrastructure program, construction of the Coron-Culion bridge was scheduled from 2020 to 2023. By November 2020, site clearing had already started in the area designated for the bridge’s access road. But on April 7 this year, the Philippine government announced it was suspending the project to ensure mitigating measures for its environmental impact are in place. This follows a public outcry from academics, civil society groups and nonprofit organizations that say the project is fraught with risks and irregularities.
“Without the concerned citizens and organizations who raised the alarm bell in this project, this would have gone in the way of so many so-called infrastructure projects, which are disregarding our sacred rights to a balanced and healthful ecology,” said Gloria Ramos, head of the NGO Oceana Philippines.
Cultural heritage collapse
Tayag is part of a group, Buklod Calamianes, that initiated an online petition seeking to stop the project. They warned of the damage that the bridge construction could pose to the marine environment, as it would sit within a 5-km (3-mi) radius of seven of the top underwater attractions in Coron and Culion. In addition to the Lusong coral garden, these dive sites include six Japanese shipwrecks from World War II.
“Heavy sedimentation from the construction will settle upon these fragile shipwrecks and potentially cause the collapse of these precious historical underwater sites,” said the petition, which has been signed by more than 19,000 people.
Palawan Studies Center executive director Michael Angelo Doblado said the shipwrecks need to be protected because they’re historically significant heritage sites of local and global importance. “These are evidence that important battles between the American and Japanese air and sea forces happened there.”
Doblado, who is also a professor of history at Palawan State University, said the occurrence of these shipwrecks also highlights that the Calamianes island group that includes Coron and Culion was important for the Japanese forces, whose weapons and other equipment relied on Coron as a source of manganese.
“For these wrecks and its local importance to Coron and its people, that would be left to them to decide,” he told Mongabay. “Is it really important for them historically as a municipality that they will be willing to preserve and protect it? Or will they be willing to sacrifice and give it up as a price for development?
“It also begs the question, if tourism is one of the major earners of Coron, and the proposed bridge … will boost its tourism, is it not ironic that the shipwrecks … will be directly affected by this infrastructure project that is supposed to boost tourism?”
The government had touted the bridge as improving connectivity between the islands to boost the tourism and agriculture sectors, among other benefits. But if it really wants to help the local tourism sector, Doblado said, the government “should have carried out a construction plan that skirts or avoids destroying or affecting these shipwrecks which are famous dive sites and considered as artificial reefs that promote aquatic growth and diversity in that area.”
This would swell the construction cost, he said, but would be vital to saving not only the historical underwater ruins but the marine environment and tourism industry in the long run.
Impact on marine ecosystems
The Philippines has around 25,000 square kilometers (9,700 square miles) of coral reefs, the world’s third-largest extent, and its waters are known for the highest biodiversity of corals and shore fishes, a 2019 study noted. However, the same study showed that the country, located at the apex of the Pacific Coral Triangle, lost about a third of its reef corals over the past decade, and none of the reefs surveyed were in a condition that qualified as “excellent.”
The bridge project added to concerns about the loss of hard-coral cover. Tayag’s group estimated that it would affect 334 hectares (825 acres) of corals, as well as 140 hectares (346 acres) of mangroves. It said the heavy sedimentation, runoff and silt from the construction could cloud the water, blocking the sunlight that’s essential for the growth of the algae that, in turn, nourish the corals.
Coral expert Wilfredo Licuanan from De La Salle University in Manila told Mongabay that the corals and the abundance of sea life they support are quite sensitive to water quality change due to sedimentation. “If you have sediments … their feeding structures are clogged, light penetration is hindered … and then there’s general smothering of life on the sea bottom.”
When corals are undernourished, he said, it can prevent the calcium carbonate accumulation that constitutes reef growth and that takes tens of thousands of years. “If the corals are not able to produce enough calcium carbonate, your reef is not able to continue to grow and … will start eroding,” Licuanan said.
Once that happens, the reefs will not be able to keep up with climate change-induced sea level rise, and will cease to protect the coastlines from big waves and to serve as habitat for many other species, including those that feed fishing communities. “So, all the ecosystem services of coral reefs are dependent on the position of calcium carbonate skeleton,” Licuanan said.
“Any construction activity, be it road building, resort construction, anything of that sort requires that you move earth,” Licuanan said. “You dig, you relocate soil, and so on. And almost always, that means a lot of the soil gets mobilized and is brought to the sea, causing sedimentation.”
That impact to the reef ecosystem will reverberate up to the residents who depend on it for their livelihoods, said Miguel Fortes, a marine scientist and professor at the University of the Philippines. “If you destroy one, you’re actually destroying the other,” he said in an Oceana online forum.
Fortes said it takes about 35 years for damaged coral reefs to recover. That compares to about 25 years for mangroves and a year for seagrass, both of which are useful in mitigating climate change, he said. In Coron and Culion, these ecosystems provide estimated annual economic benefits of 3.7 billion pesos ($77.2 million), on top of the 4.1 billion pesos ($85.2 million) generated by the islands’ recreation zones.
Coron Bay’s fisheries production is an important spawning and nursery ground, said Jomel Baobao, a fisheries management specialist with the nonprofit Path Foundation Inc., one of the partner implementers of the USAID Fish Right project. The five communities adjacent to the bridge project alone stand to benefit from a total estimated yield of 89 million pesos ($1.8 million) annually.
“A USAID-funded larval dispersal study showed that Bintuan area is the sink for larvae that come from different sources, making it a rich nursery ground,” Baobao told Mongabay. He added that Coron Bay serves to funnel larvae from the Sulu Sea and West Philippine Sea, and any disruption to that flow could affect fishing yields in Bintuan and other areas.
“The narrowest portion in the bay located in Bintuan where the bridge will be constructed is significant to water exchange between these two seas,” Baobao said. This might be affected if there will be ecosystem loss or destruction in the area because of the bridge.”
The area’s reefs are home to economically important species such as red grouper, lobster and round scad, as well as giant clams, according to the Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources. Among the coral species that flourish around the Calamianes island group are two endangered ones: Pectinia maxima and Anacropora spinosa. In the Philippines, the latter is found only in the Calamianes.
No green permits
Preliminary tree cutting and clearing of the road leading to the bridge entrance reportedly began in November 2020, raising fears that it could trigger siltation that could jeopardize the marine park.
In a 2020 paper, Licuanan said that management actions, such as enhanced regulation of road construction on slopes leading to the sea and rivers that open into the sea, and consequent limitations on government infrastructure programs that impinge on these critical areas, are crucial in conserving the country’s remaining coral reefs.
“Road building practices locally are particularly destructive because they [the DPWH and private contractors] rarely prioritize soil conservation,” he told Mongabay.
But despite the recent activity, the project has not received the green light from the Palawan Council for Sustainable Development (PCSD), a provincial government agency. PCSD spokesman John Vincent Fabello told Mongabay that no strategic environmental plan (SEP) clearance has been issued to the DPWH for the project. The clearance would essentially guarantee that the high-impact project is located outside ecologically critical zones like marine parks.
“They [DPWH] don’t have an SEP clearance yet,” Fabello said. “Government big-ticket projects still have to [go] through the SEP clearance system of the PCSD. Administrative fines shall be imposed if building commences without the necessary clearance and permits from PCSD and related agencies.”
The Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) said it will also require the DPWH to undertake an environmental impact assessment to obtain an environmental compliance certificate and tree cutting permit for the project. “Government projects will still go through the permitting; you have to follow the process … but it will be faster,” said DENR regional director Maria Lourdes Ferrer.
The DPWH confirmed it had not undertaken the required public consultations, feasibility study, or permit applications prior to the start of construction activities. DPWH regional director Yolanda Tangco said they fast-tracked the construction work because the initial 250 million pesos ($5.2 million) in project funding released to the agency in 2020 would have to be returned to the treasury if it was not spent within two years.
Fortes said this reasoning is unacceptable because projects should not only be politically expedient but also based on scientific evidence and actual user needs.
“To me, this means money still supersedes more vital imperatives [such as] cultural and ecological,” he said. “Poor planning is evident here because it entails huge sacrifices.”
Tangco said her office expects to receive additional construction funding for 2021 to 2023 from the national government. “But if we have decided not to continue it, we will remove it [in our proposal]. Most probably, we will revert the funding and terminate the contract,” she said.
She added that in the feasibility study expected to be completed in July 2021, the public works office is considering two more route options: “Our alignment isn’t fixed. If we can find an alignment with lesser impacts to the environment and Indigenous people, we will pursue that and issue variation and change orders [to the contractor].”
Indigenous communities fight back
The Indigenous Tagbanua community of Culion has slammed the project for failing to obtain their permission through a process of free, prior and informed consent (FPIC), required under Philippine law.
“We don’t want that bridge here because we fear that it will affect many — our seas, our livelihoods, our lands we inherited from our ancestors,” Indigenous federation chairman Larry Sinamay, who organized a rally on April 5, told Mongabay. “Where would we get our food when our place is destroyed by this project?”
“The social and sacred value of this traditional space to the Tagbanua should be respected by every member of the community, even us outsiders, tourists and developers,” said Kate Lim, an archaeologist who has conducted studies in the region. “The concept of ancestral domain is that it’s communal and utilized by everyone and not just by one sector only.”
In a letter dated March 31, the federation of 24 Tagbanua communities appealed to the national government to halt the project’s preliminary construction activities, pending impact assessments.
“If we receive no response to our plea, we will be forced to seek legal remedies to fight for our Indigenous rights provided under the Philippine Constitution, Indigenous Peoples’ Rights Act, and other laws related to environment and natural resources,” the federation said at the time.
The Tagbanuas have experience standing up to projects they see as imperiling their environment and culture. In 2017, they banded together to stop a proposed Nickelodeon theme park, which also lacked the necessary scientific studies, consultations and permits.
“Even if we are battling a pandemic, we can’t forget that our battle to protect Palawan’s natural resources must go on,” said Anna Oposa, executive director of Save Philippine Seas, who joined the Tagbanuas in fighting the Nickelodeon project. “The Tagbanua IPs have the experience and power to block or at the very least significantly delay this potentially destructive project and come to a consensus with other stakeholders.”
While the public pressure has prompted the government to suspend the project, the community says it isn’t dropping its guard.
“In a time of pandemic and lockdowns, projects are easily sneaked in and started out of the public’s eye who are confined in their homes,” Tayag said.
“We are closely monitoring these bateltelan [hard-headed] officials. We trust that the government offices looking into this project will do what is right and not just focus on its ‘good intention.’”
Citations:
Licuanan, W. Y., Robles, R., & Reyes, M. (2019). Status and recent trends in coral reefs of the Philippines. Marine Pollution Bulletin, 142, 544-550. doi:10.1016/j.marpolbul.2019.04.013
Licuanan, W. Y. (2020). Current management, conservation, and research imperatives for Philippine coral reefs. Philippine Journal of Science, 149(3), ix-xii. Retrieved from https://philjournalsci.dost.gov.ph/publication/regular-issues/past-issues/98-vol-149-no-3-september-2020/1225-current-management-conservation-and-research-imperatives-for-philippine-coral-reefs-2
by DGR News Service | May 14, 2021 | Biodiversity & Habitat Destruction, Colonialism & Conquest, Culture of Resistance, Defensive Violence, Direct Action, Indigenous Autonomy, Movement Building & Support, People of Color & Anti-racism, Repression at Home, The Problem: Civilization, White Supremacy
Editor’s note: The American Holocaust (a term coined by David Stannard) is the largest genocide in human history. The atrocities are ongoing and being reinforced by fascists like Jair Bolsonaro, providing another example that capitalism and fascism are two sides of the same coin.
Featured image: Indigenous protest, Brazil April 2018. ‘By painting the streets red, we’re showing how much blood has already been shed in the struggle to protect indigenous territories,’ – Sônia Guajajara, a spokeswoman for APIB (Brazilian indigenous organization).
© Marcelo Camargo/Agência Brasil
By Survival International
The land rights of the Xokleng, a tribe that was violently expelled from its territory in the 19th and 20th centuries to make way for European colonists, are now the focus of a landmark court case in Brazil.
The Xokleng were brutally persecuted and evicted by armed militias to make way for European settlers. The Supreme Court hearing into the so-called “Time Limit Trick” could now set the effects of these and subsequent evictions in stone, establishing a precedent which would have far-reaching consequences for indigenous peoples in Brazil.
Other Xokleng communities are also fighting to recover some of their territory. The Xokleng Konglui in Rio Grande do Sul state have launched a ‘retomada’ (reoccupation) of their land, which is now occupied by a national park. The government wants to make it an ‘ecotourism’ destination. © Iami Gerbase/Survival
The case centers around the demarcation of the “Ibirama La Klãnõ” Indigenous Territory in the state of Santa Catarina in southern Brazil. If they win, the Xokleng would be able to return to a significant part of their ancestral territory.
However, the official demarcation of the territory has been suspended following a lawsuit filed by non-indigenous residents and a logging company operating in the area. They argue that on October 5, 1988 – the date the Brazilian Constitution was signed – the Xokleng only lived in limited parts of the territory and therefore have no right to most of their original land. If this argument succeeds, it would legitimize centuries of evictions experienced by indigenous peoples throughout Brazil.
The Brazilian government encouraged Europeans to settle on indigenous land, and allocated them large parts of the Xokleng and other indigenous territories at the beginning of the 20th century. It also financed a so-called “Indian-hunting militia”, which accelerated the colonial land grab. This militia specialized in the extermination of indigenous peoples and hunted down the Xokleng.
“The Redskins are interfering with colonization: this interference must be eliminated, and as quickly and thoroughly as possible,” German colonists demanded at the time.
German settlers resented Xokleng attempts to defend their territories, and frequently subjected them to cruel “punitive expeditions.”
The Xokleng territory was continuously reduced over several decades. In the 1970s, a dam was built in the small part that remained.
Map of the current (Ibirama) and planned (Ibirama La Klãnõ) indigenous territory. The expansion of the territory is the cause of the legal dispute. © Marian Ruth Heineberg/Natalia Hanazaki based on data from FUNAI/IBGE/MMA.
If Brazil’s Supreme Court votes in favor of the “Time Limit Trick”, it would have devastating consequences for many other indigenous peoples, and their chances of reclaiming their ancestral territories. It could enable the theft of land that is rightfully owned by hundreds of thousands of tribal and indigenous people. The validity of existing indigenous territories could then also come into question.
Brasílio Priprá, a prominent Xokleng leader, said: “If we didn’t live in a certain part of the territory in 1988, it doesn’t mean it was “no man’s land” or that we didn’t want to be there. The “Time Limit Trick” reinforces the historical violence that continues to leave its mark today.”
Indigenous organizations and their allies, including Survival, began raising fears about the “Time Limit Trick” in 2017, calling it unlawful because it violates the current Brazilian Constitution and international law, which clearly states that indigenous peoples have the right to their ancestral lands.
President Bolsonaro is turning back the clock on indigenous rights, attempting to: erase their right to self-determination; sell off their territories to logging and mining companies; and ‘assimilate’ them against their will. Survival International and tribal peoples are fighting side by side to stop Brazil’s genocide.
Fiona Watson of Survival International said today: “The history of the Xokleng shows just how absurd the “Time Limit Trick” is: Indigenous peoples have been evicted from their lands, hunted down and murdered in Brazil for centuries. Those who demand that in order to have the right to their land now, indigenous lands had to have been inhabited by indigenous communities on October 5, 1988 – after the end of the military dictatorship – are denying this history and perpetuating the genocide in the 21st century.”
Note to the editor:
– More information on the Xokleng and their history can be found here.
– The case before the Court concerns only the Xokleng of Ibirama La Klãnõ indigenous territory. There are many other Xokleng communities.
by DGR News Service | May 12, 2021 | Alienation & Mental Health, Colonialism & Conquest, Human Supremacy, Indigenous Autonomy, Listening to the Land, Repression at Home, White Supremacy
This article, originally published on Resilience.org, describes the dangers of the modern, western conception of “untouched wilderness” and its drastic consequences for the last human cultures still inhabiting dense forests. Calling the forests their home for millenia, they are not only threatened by mining and logging companies, but by modern “environmental” NGO’s and their policies of turning forests into national parks devoid of human presence, pushing the eviction of their ancestral human inhabitants.
Featured image: Pygmy houses made with sticks and leaves in northern Republic of the Congo
One of the oldest myths impressed into the minds of modern people is the image of the wild, virgin forest.
The twisted, gnarled and dense trees, complete with ancient ferns, silent deer and patches of sunlight through gaps in the canopy. In this vision there are no people, and this is a striking feature of what we mean by ‘wilderness’. We have decided that humans are no longer a natural part of the wild world. Unfortunately, these ideas have real world consequences for those remaining people who do call rainforests and woodlands their homes. Approximately 1,000 indigenous and tribal cultures live in forests around the world, a population close to 50 million people, including the Desana of Colombia, the Kuku-Yalanji of Australia and the Pygmy peoples of Central Africa and the Congo. This is a story about those people of the Congolese forests, about how their unique way of life is threatened by the very people who should be defending them and how rainforests actually thrive when humans adapt to a different way of life.
The Democratic Republic of Congo has to be amongst modernity’s greatest tragedies.
Almost no-one knows that the ‘Great African War’, fought between 1998 and 2003, saw 5.4 million deaths and 2 million more people displaced. Very few can grasp the bewildering complexity of armed groups, of the ethnic and political relationships between the Congo and Rwanda or the sheer scale of the conflict, which at its height saw 1000 civilians dying every day. And yet this is also a country of staggering beauty, a sanctuary to the greatest levels of species diversity in Africa. It is home to the mountain gorilla, the bonobo, the white rhino, the forest elephant and the okapi. Roughly 60% of the country is forested, much of it under threat by logging and subsistence farming expansions. The Congolese Pygmy peoples have been living here since the Middle Stone Age, heirs to a way of life over 100,000 years old. A note here on naming – the term Pygmy is considered by some to be offensive and the different people grouped under the title prefer to call themselves by their ethnic identities. These include the Aka, the Baka, the Twa and the Mbuti. The Congolese Pygmy people are grouped under the Mbuti – the Asua, the Efe and the Sua. In general these all refer to Central African Foragers who have inherited physical adaptations to life in the rainforest, including shortened height and stature.
The Mbuti people are hunters, trappers and foragers, using nets and bows to drive and catch forest animals. They harvest hundreds of kinds of plants, barks, fruits and roots and are especially obsessed with climbing trees to source wild honey, paying no heed to the stings of the bees. In many ways theirs is an idyllic antediluvian image of carefree hunter-gatherers, expending only what energy they need to find food and make shelters, preferring to spend their lives dancing, laughing and perfecting their ancient polyphonic musical tradition. Of course, this is an edenic view and the reality of their lives is much more complex and far more tragic, but it is worth highlighting the key environmental role they play as stewards and denizens of the forests. The Mbuti have been in the Congolese forests for tens of millennia, living within the carrying capacity of the land and developing sophisticated systems of ecological knowledge, based on their intimate familiarity with the rhythms and changes of the wildlife and the plants. Despite other groups of hunter-gatherers eating their way through large herds of megafauna, the Mbuti can live alongside elephants, rhinos and okapi without destroying their numbers.
In spite of this, the Mbuti and other Pygmy peoples have been attacked and evicted from their forests for decades.
In the 1980’s, the government of Congo sold huge areas of the Kahuzi Biega forest to logging and mining companies, forcibly removing the Batwa people and plunging them into poverty. To this day, many of their descendents live in roadside shanties, refused assistance from the State, denied healthcare and even the right to work. Many have since fled back to the forests. Alongside the mining and logging companies, conservation charities have been targeting the Baka peoples for evictions. In particular the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) has been lobbying to convert the Messok Dja, a particularly biodiverse area of rainforest in the Republic of Congo, in a National Park, devoid of human presence. This aggressive act of clearance is rooted in the idea that a ‘wilderness’ area should not contain any people, thus rendering the original inhabitants of the forests as intruders, invaders and despoilers of ‘Nature’. The charity Survival – an organisation dedicated to indigenous and tribal rights – has been campaigning for WWF to stop their activities. In particular Survival has successfully documented numerous abuses committed by the Park Rangers, whose activities are funded by WWF and others:
“notwithstanding the fact that Messok Dja is not even officially a national park yet, the rangers have sown terror among the Baka in the region. Rangers have stolen the Baka’s possessions, burnt their camps and clothes and even hit and tortured them. If Baka are found hunting small animals to feed their families they are arrested and beaten”
Outside of the forest, the Baka and other Pygmy peoples face widespread hostility and discrimination from the majority Bantu population.
Many are enslaved, sometimes for generations, and are viewed as pets or forest animals. The situation is no better within the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), where the endless cycles of violence have seen the most shocking abuses against the Mbuti populations. Even in the most peaceful areas, park rangers regularly harass and abuse Mbuti hunters and villagers, illegally cutting down trees for charcoal or shooting animals for meat. In some places the Batwa people have formed militias, often armed with little more than axes and arrows, to defend themselves against slaving raids by the neighbouring Luba people.
The worst events for the Mbuti people in recent years began during the Rwandan genocide, where the Hutu Interahamwe paramilitaries murdered over 10,000 Pygmies and drove a further 10,000 out of the country, many of whom fled into the forests of the DRC. Later, between 2002 and 2003, a systematic campaign of extermination was waged against the Bambutis of the North Kivu province of DRC. The Movement for the Liberation of Congo embarked on a mission, dubbed Effacer le tableau – ‘cleaning the slate’, which saw them kill over 60,000 Pygmies. In part this was motivated by the belief that the Bambuti are subhumans, whose flesh possesses magical powers to cure AIDS and other diseases. Many of the victims were also killed, traded and eaten as bushmeat. Cannibalism against the Pygmy peoples has been reported throughout the Congolese Civil Wars, with almost all sides engaging in the act.
Unsurprisingly under these pressures, the Mbuti and other groups have been displaced, broken up and scattered throughout Central Africa. In part this has always been the intention of these campaigns, for the Congo region is not an isolated backwater of the modern world, but an integral part of the material economy of advanced modernity. In particular Central Africa has been cursed with an abundance of precious and important metals and minerals, including: tin, copper, gold, tantalum, diamonds, lithium and, crucially, over 70% of the world’s cobalt. The intensive push for electric vehicles (EVs) by the EU and the USA has seen prices for battery components skyrocket. Cobalt in particular reached $100,000 per tonne in 2018. Tantalum is also heavily prized, as a crucial element for nearly all advanced electronics and is found in a natural ore called coltan. Coltan has become synonymous with slavery, child labour, dangerous mining conditions and violence. Almost every actor in the endless conflicts in DRC have been involved in illegally mining and smuggling coltan onto the world market, including the Rwandan Army, who set up a shell company to process the ore obtained across the border. Miners, far from food sources, turn to bushmeat, especially large primates like gorillas. An estimated 3-5 million tonnes of bushmeat is harvested every year in DRC, underlining the central role that modern electronic consumption has on the most fragile ecosystems. In this toxic mix of violent warlordism, mineral extraction, logging, bushmeat hunting and genoicide, the Mbuti people have struggled to maintain their way of life. Their women and children end up pounding lumps of ore, breathing in metal dusts, they end up as prostitutes and slaves, surviving on the margins of an already desperate society.
In Mbuti mythology, their pantheon of gods are directly weaved into the life of the rainforest.
The god Tore is the Master of Animals and supplies them for the people. He hides in rainbows or storms and sometimes appears as a leopard to young men undergoing initiation rites deep in the trees. The god of the hunt is Khonvoum, who wields a bow made of two snakes and ensures the sun rises every morning. Other animals appear as messengers, such as the chameleon or the dwarf who disguises himself as a reptile. These are the cultural beliefs of a people who became human in the rainforest, adapted down the bone to its tempos and seasons. They are a part of the ecosystem, as much as the gorilla or the forest hog. Their taboos recognise the evil of hunting in an animal’s birthing grounds, or the importance of never placing traps near fresh water. Breaking these results in a metaphysical ostracism known as ‘muzombo’, a kind of spiritual death and sometimes accompanied by physical exile from the village. As far as their voice has counted for anything under the deluge of horror that modernity has unleashed upon them, they want to be left alone, to hunt and fish in their forests, to live close to their ancestors and to raise their children in peace and safety.
The expansion of the ‘Green New Deal’ and the rise of ‘renewable’ industrial technologies may be the death knell for these archaic and peaceful people.
Make no mistake, these green initiatives – electric vehicles, wind turbines, solar batteries – these are actively destroying the last remaining strongholds of biodiversity on the planet. The future designs on the DRC include vast hydroelectric dams and intensive agriculture, stripping away the final refuges of the world. Now, more than ever, the Mbuti and other Pygmy peoples need our solidarity, an act which can be as simple as not buying that next iPhone.
Editor’s note on the last sentence of this otherwise well-written article: Personal consumer choices are no means of political action and will not save the planet. If you don’t buy the next iPhone someone else will. The whole globalized industrial system of exploitation which makes iPhones possible in the first place has to be stopped.
by DGR News Service | May 10, 2021 | Indigenous Autonomy, Listening to the Land, Noncooperation, Repression at Home
In this article, originally published on Mongabay, Pirawan Wongnithisathaporn and Thomas Worsdell describe how the indigenous peoples of Thailand, like many across the world, find themselves navigating global climate agendas and national environmental laws that position human rights as antagonistic to achieving biodiversity targets. This misguided notion has resulted in conflicting and outdated forestry laws and an increasingly securitized conservation strategy, which are jeopardizing the possibility of creating solutions that benefit the climate as well as people.
by Pirawan Wongnithisathaporn and Thomas Worsdell
- Thailand’s legal frameworks for biodiversity conservation and international climate commitments omit the important role that its Indigenous Peoples play as stewards of the environment.
- A militarized conservation approach has seen Indigenous communities evicted from their ancestral lands, prosecuted for enacting traditional practices, and even assaulted and killed.
- At the heart of the problem is lack of legal recognition of Indigenous groups, and therefore a refusal to grant them tenure rights.
- This article is a commentary and the views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.
On Sept. 3, 2019, the remains of Porlajee “Billy” Rakchongcharoen, a Karen environmental and community rights defender who was disappeared in 2014, were found in an oil drum submerged under the Kaeng Krachan dam suspension bridge in Phetchaburi, Thailand. Billy was last seen by his community while being arrested by Kaeng Krachan National Park superintendent Chaiwat Limlikit-aksorn and his officers for allegedly collecting wild honey illegally.
Three years before Billy’s disappearance, under the same superintendent’s watch, 98 houses and rice barns were burned in the village of Baan Jai Phaen Din, also in Kaeng Krachan National Park. Charges filed by the community against the former superintendent and the officers were controversially dropped in early 2020. In the meantime, Thai authorities continue to claim the settlement is illegal.
Established in 1981, Kaeng Krachan National Park sits on Thailand’s central border with Myanmar. Before being evicted by the military in 1996, the Karen Indigenous Peoples lived sustainably for centuries inside the park in their original village of Baan Jai Paen Din, meaning “land of our heart.” Ever since the eviction, they have been systematically resettled into the lowlands.
Recently, Karen members began returning to Baan Jai Paen Din in the uplands. As a result, they once again face renewed threats of eviction from the military and the country’s conservation authorities. The ongoing conflict in Kaeng Krachan is perhaps Thailand’s most well-known conflict between Indigenous Peoples and conservation activities — but it’s far from the only one. The Kaeng Krachan conflict is a clear example of deeper issues embedded in Thailand’s legislative system.
The Indigenous Peoples of Thailand, like many across the world, find themselves navigating global climate agendas and national environmental laws that position human rights as antagonistic to achieving biodiversity targets. This misguided notion has resulted in conflicting and outdated forestry laws and an increasingly securitized conservation strategy, which are jeopardizing the possibility of creating solutions that benefit the climate as well as people.
In Thailand, as in other countries, the moral imperative of preserving Earth systems is being used as an avenue for continued rights abuses against already vulnerable and marginalized communities. Rather than recognize the rights of those who have traditionally managed lands, Thai environmental policy favors centralized approaches to conserving “strategic” resources. As biodiversity becomes increasingly scarce, combating biodiversity loss through increasingly militarized means seems to be less about conserving species populations and more about ensuring territorial control. The implications of these militarized approaches are militarized outcomes, conflict, abuse, displacement, disappearances and violence.
Indigenous relationship with land
Justifying the displacement of Indigenous Peoples from biodiverse areas for the purpose of conservation is a contradiction. Indigenous Peoples inhabit some of the most biodiverse and intact landscapes on Earth, and their knowledge and associated ways of life are widely recognized as being vital for conserving biodiversity. The acknowledgement of Indigenous knowledge is enshrined within the U.N. Convention on Biological Diversity. In national contexts, acknowledgement rarely translates to strategies that actually democratize decision-making or devolve leadership to Indigenous knowledge holders. Moreover, this knowledge cannot be treated the same as other knowledge systems. While Indigenous knowledge can be documented and shared, its conservation benefits are inextricably linked to the spaces in which it is enacted. Therefore, the displacement of communities leads to the assimilation of Indigenous ways of life into the wider realms of society, which ultimately results in a breakdown of their knowledge systems.
Highland Indigenous Peoples cannot simply relocate their culture and way of life to the different demands of a valley. When this happens, the loss of knowledge and identity central to locally applied environmental solutions become stories fondly shared by elders rather than strategies collectively enacted by communities to survive in their local environments. This is what the Indigenous Peoples in Thailand are fighting for: the right to continue their way of life in the “land[s] of their heart” that have supported them through generations.
Sadly, Thai laws and government conservation strategies have failed to recognize these relationships Indigenous Peoples have with their land, a relationship built on the notion that the nature being conserved and the Indigenous Peoples who live within it are both the community. This is, in part, the basis of many conflicts between Indigenous Peoples and their governing institutions across the world. What separates the plight of Indigenous Peoples in one country from another are the different national legislative mechanisms and political will (or lack thereof) to apply or redefine laws which recognize identities and promote the agency and self-determination of community-driven solutions.
Understanding Thai environmental laws
A country’s laws are intertwined with its history, and for Thailand these laws are embedded in its process of nation building. First, we must recognize that Thailand was never physically colonized by European states. However, due to close business ties with neighboring colonial governments, it adopted many similar land management and natural resource governance regimes.
Nation building also entailed building a Thai identity that was linked to the country’s dominant language and ethnicity, Buddhism, and the monarch. As a result, for most of Thailand’s history, its Indigenous Peoples have long been regarded as non-Thai, even outsiders or illegal migrants. This view has contributed to their systemic exclusion from Thai society all together. Last year, there were about 480,000 registered stateless people in Thailand, most of whom are Indigenous Peoples living in mountainous border areas. About 77,000 Indigenous elders in Thailand lack citizenship.
In the case of Baan Jai Phaen Din, park officials claim Indigenous Peoples to be migrants from Myanmar. This is a tactic used to justify their resettlement to the wider public. This view of Indigenous Peoples as outsiders by mainstream Thai society and within national laws has been a consistent struggle for the Thai Indigenous movement, despite data from a military Ordinance Survey Department showing that the Karen have lived in Baan Jai Phaen Din for more than 100 years.
In 1997, under the late King Rama IX, the hill tribes gained their current definition of Chao Thai Phu Khao (“Thai people who live in the Mountain”) from the government. While this definition finally recognized Indigenous Peoples as “Thai people,” it is a label that fails to acknowledge them as “Indigenous Peoples” in line with definitions in the U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP). As a result, Thailand has still not fully recognized the Indigenous identities (Indigeneity) of the peoples who live within its borders. This lack of recognition or a selective understanding of what it means to be Indigenous is a common challenge across Asia as well as Africa.
Indigenous Peoples are associated with having “historical continuity with pre-colonial and/or pre-settler societies” and a “strong link to territories and natural resources.” Using only this part of the definition, it is easy to see how governments in Asia and Africa argue that all of its citizens are Indigenous and equally protected to rights under a country’s constitution. But Indigeneity is a complex construction, linked also to languages, cultural manifestations, ancestral lands, the desire to uphold traditional ways of life, and a collective self-identification as Indigenous. Indigeneity is linked to a different set of relations with the surrounding world, with the land. As reflected in the name of “Baan Jai Phaen Din,” the land is their heart and supports the continuation of their Indigenous culture that they are fighting to preserve.
Thai law does not support the relationship Indigenous Peoples have with their lands, consequently ignoring their rights to lands and forests. Even while Thailand has adopted the UNDRIP, it has not created the required laws specific to Indigenous Peoples that support their ways of life. Thailand has also not ratified the Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention of 1989 (ILO 169). One of the strongest laws supporting Indigenous rights is one within the Ministry of Culture; however it is the very definition and understanding of culture that is called into question in the Indigenous debate. Government officials are happy to promote traditional song, dance and artisanal work — attractive to tourists and transferable to the city and valley — but they are reluctant to enforce the ownership of traditional lands that are the foundation for that culture.
Instead, terms like chao khao, meaning “hill people,” reflect notions of “backwardness” and being environmentally destructive. With climate change, forest fires in the north have become more severe as the dry season becomes drier and longer. Indigenous villagers have been forced to fight fires, amid zero-burn policies that restrict traditional fire management practices, while being simultaneously blamed by the state for causing them. These narratives of supposedly destructive Indigenous practices are used in union with outsider or illegal migrant discourses to justify their eviction to civil society. In Kaeng Krachan, when the Karen returned to Baan Jai Phaen Din and began clearing land for rotational agricultural practices (recognized in 2013 as a national item of intangible cultural heritage), park officials filed charges against the community for “destroying the watershed.” This is simply not true. In fact, felling trees and creating fallow plots for rotational agriculture benefits the soils and biodiversity in the area.
In protected areas, a saga of violence and injustice
Thailand’s protected areas cover 19% of its national territory and are home to 1.1 million people. All trees, unless planted on private property, belong to the king of Thailand, and so do the lands on which they grow. This centralized control is reflected in the management of these protected areas, 80% of which constitute “strict nature reserves” and “national parks” under the IUCN’s definitions, managed by either government or government-delegated organizations. This leaves Indigenous Peoples with no ownership or managerial rights.
Enforcing this managerial regime has caused violence. On May 2, 2020, Luan Yeepa, 55, a Lisu member who was collecting fallen branches for firewood at the edge of his arable plot in Chiang Mai province, was assaulted by eight uniformed Chiang Dao Wildlife Sanctuary patrol officers. It was not an isolated case. In neighboring Pha Daeng National Park, the Lisu villages of Rin Loung, Tung Din Dam and Pha Bong Namg, to name a few, have had parcels of agricultural lands seized and crops destroyed by the park due to a forest reclamation policy aimed at increasing forest cover to 40% of the country’s terrestrial area. This policy, pushed by the junta-led government that took power in 2014, is at the core of Thailand’s international climate commitments.
The forest reclamation policy criminalizes Indigenous Peoples for using their customary lands and enacting their traditional practices. Between 2014 and 2019, Indigenous and local people were sent to court in a record 29,350 cases involving 136,576 hectares (337,487 acres) of farmlands being “reclaimed” by national parks. In 2019, 2,851 people were charged with encroaching into protected areas and 17,341.6 hectares (42,852 acres) of their farmlands were appropriated. By June 2020, a further 1,830 cases against Indigenous and local peoples were recorded. A summary of these cases was presented to the U.N. Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) by the Network of Indigenous Peoples in Thailand.
What does the future hold for Thailand’s Indigenous Peoples?
Thailand’s forest reclamation policy is also connected to a string of amendments to environmental laws. One is the National Park Act B.E. 2562 (2019) amendment, aimed at resolving long-standing conflicts between communities and the state. As part of the amendment, 600,000 hectares (1.48 million acres) of non-forested lands were surveyed, and communities inhabiting these lands are now waiting to be granted 20-year use concessions from the government. Lands not recognized will be formularized as belonging to the government for the ostensible purpose of reforestation.
While this seems like a positive development, research shows that a further 1.6 million hectares (4 million acres) of Indigenous and local community lands lack legal recognition, almost three times those surveyed in official figures. These concessions do not translate to ownership nor do they secure tenure. The national park amendment also increases the fines, restrictions and penalties for using forested areas. Under the policy, conflicts will undoubtedly continue, if not get worse all together. As the international community promotes climate financing, a lack of tenure rights may lead to continued evictions to secure control of important carbon sinks.
For several years, Thai authorities have attempted to get Kaeng Krachan National Park recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. However, the committee has yet to add the park to the list, citing a lack of participation from local communities. But the government continues its attempts without amending its relations with the Karen community. In light of this, it is critical for the international community to create binding commitments for governments to recognize land rights and self-determination of communities as central to achieving their environmental commitments.
A recent study by the Rights and Resources Initiative showed that between 1.65 billion to 1.87 billion Indigenous and local peoples live in important biodiverse areas that require urgent conservation attention. In Thailand alone, these biodiverse spaces are home to 42 million people. As the future of the Karen conflict remains uncertain, what is certain is that if conservation strategies do not recognize local peoples’ rights to govern their lands, any efforts to prevent biodiversity loss will fail.
Pirawan Wongnithisathaporn is a Pgakenyaw Karen Indigenous person from Chiang Mai province, Thailand. She works in the Asia Indigenous Peoples Pact’s Environmental program integrating Indigenous knowledge and the rights of environmental defenders into climate change and biodiversity frameworks within the CBD and other international platforms.
Thomas Worsdell is a consultant for the Rights and Resources Initiative. His work focuses on the intersections between Indigenous Peoples’, local communities’ and Afro-Descendants’ rights with biodiversity conservation and environmental policy.
by DGR News Service | May 7, 2021 | Biodiversity & Habitat Destruction, Colonialism & Conquest, Direct Action, Indigenous Autonomy, Mining & Drilling, Movement Building & Support, Noncooperation, Protests & Symbolic Acts, Repression at Home, Toxification, White Supremacy
Original Press Release
Relatives,
Together we are powerful. Since the #DefundLine3 campaign launched in February, bank executives have received more than 700,000 emails, 7,000 calendar invites and 3,000 phone calls, demanding that they stop funding Line 3. There have been protests at bank branches in 16 states. Collectively, we’ve raised more than $70,000 for those on the frontlines.
Now, we’re pulling all of that energy together for one powerful, coordinated day of action.
There are already actions confirmed in more than 40 US cities ― in New York, DC, San Francisco, Chicago, Boston and more ― as well as in the UK, France, Holland, Switzerland, Costa Rica, Canada and Sierra Leone.
If there isn’t an action near you, organize one! Actions can be small. Going to a local bank branch with your friend to deliver a letter or petition can be a powerful action. Actions can be large. Think hundreds of people shutting down the streets outside of a bank’s headquarters.
On the frontlines, more than 240 people have now been arrested for taking bold direct action to stop the construction of Line 3.
Just a few weeks ago, Indigenous Water Protectors sang and prayed inside of a waaginogaaning, the traditional structure of Anishinaabe peoples, as allies locked to each other around the lodge, blocking Line 3 construction for hours.
After they were arrested, the Indigenous Water Protectors were strip-searched, shackled and kenneled ― for nonviolent misdemeanors. Meanwhile, Enbridge has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on riot gear, tear gas, and weapons for local militarized police forces that are regularly surveilling and harrassing nonviolent Water Protectors.
-Simone Senogles
P.S. Want to learn more about the #DefundLine3 campaign? Check out
this blog or
this blog from Tara Houska, founder of the Giniw Collective.
