A windmill blade knocks the head off a Cooper’s hawk interrupting the late afternoon peace in Spring Valley, just outside Ely, Nevada.
The blade tosses the hawk’s body onto yellow gravel the power company spread, over living soil, in circles around their windmills.
The ever-present Great Basin breeze, who usually whispers with a soothing tone through pinyon needles, juniper branches, and sage tops, becomes angry. Grazing cows pause their chewing and look up to consider the scene.
Heads of cheat grass poke through the gravel, only to droop with sorrow for the splayed feathers and twisted wings at their feet. Taller than cheat grass and crowding around the gravel’s edge, crested wheatgrass shakes and shutters with horror in the wind.
The collision’s suddenness and the sickening sound of the blade striking the hawk’s small skull breaks my awareness open with a pop. I seep across the valley floor. I mingle with the wounds on the land and recognize pain in places I previously overlooked. The windmills, the invasive plants, the cows, and the empty scars on the foothills marking pinyon-juniper clearcuts are all evidence of violence.
The gravel at my feet is the remains of stones and boulders that were exploded and crushed, loaded into trucks, and transported to Spring Valley as part of Pattern Energy’s Spring Valley Wind Farm project. Windmill construction means so much involves land clearances, building maintenance roads, and operation of fossil-fuel intensive heavy machinery.
Before the gravel was dumped and the construction project started, the ground I stand on was covered in a complex mosaic of lichens, mosses, microfungi, green algae, and cyanobacteria that biologists call a “biological soil crust.”
Across the Great Basin, biological soil crusts are integral to protecting soil surfaces from erosion. They are also vulnerable to disturbance by construction projects like the one that brought the windmills here. The lichen components of these disturbed crusts can take 245 years to recover. Far worse, soil losses due to erosion following mechanical disturbances can take 5,000 to 10,000 years to naturally reform in arid regions.
The windmills that tower above me fill the air with a buzzing, mechanical sound. Built only four miles from a colony of millions of Mexican free-tailed bats at the Rose Guano Cave, the windmills killed 533 bats in 2013, triple the amount allowed by federal regulations. The majority of these bats are killed by barotrauma. Rapid or excessive air pressure change, produced by windmills, causes internal hemorrhaging. In less abstract language, the bats’ lungs explode.
Both cheatgrass and crested wheatgrass are invasive species. Global shipping routes, which have long been tools of colonialism, brought cheatgrass to North America through contaminated grain seed, straw packing material, and soil used as ballast in ships. Cheatgrass outcompetes native grasses for water and nutrients. It drops seeds in early summer before native grasses and then drys out to become highly flammable.
When wildfires rip through areas cheatgrass has invaded, native grasses are destroyed without seeding. In the fall, after native grasses have burned, cheatgrass seeds germinate and cheatgrass dominance expands. This dominance has been disastrous for the Great Basin. Fire return intervals have gone from between 60-110 years in sagebrush-dominated systems to less than 5 years under cheatgrass dominance.
While cheatgrass was imported by accident, crested wheatgrass was imported from Asia in 1898. By the 1890s, Great Basin rangelands were depleted of water, soil, and economically useful vegetation. Ranchers needed cheap feed for their livestock and crested wheatgrass provided it. It outcompetes native grasses, grows in tight bunches that choke out other species, quickly forms a monoculture, and reduces the variety of plant and wildlife species in places it takes hold. Worst of all, crested wheatgrass supports a destructive ranching industry that should have collapsed decades ago.
Ranching is one of the most ecologically destructive activities in the Great Basin. Livestock grazing depletes water supplies, causes soil erosion, and eliminates the countless trillions of small plants forming the base of the complex food web supporting all life in the region. Ranchers have nearly killed off all the top carnivores on western rangelands and jealously guard their animals against the re-introduction of “unacceptable species” like grizzly bears and wolves.
Ranchers, always searching for new rangeland, encourage government agencies like the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and the US Forest Service (USFS) to clear-cut forests and remove sagebrush to encourage the growth of graze for their livestock. In the hills north of the wind farm, pinyon pines and junipers lie in mangled piles where they were “chained.”
Chaining is the preferred method for destroying forests here. To chain a forest is to stretch a US Navy battleship anchor chain between two crawler tractors which are then driven parallel to each other while ripping up every living thing in their path.
Ship chain used to clear forests. Photo: Wikimedia Commons
Nevada Highway 893 runs to my left along the west side of the valley. If I followed the road north a few miles, I would run into one of the Southern Nevada Water Authority’s (SNWA) test wells. SNWA installed these wells in the preparation of its Clark, Lincoln, and White Pine Counties Groundwater Development Project that would drain Spring Valley of water and, then, transport the water by pipeline to support Las Vegas’ growing population.
Fortunately, the project has been successfully stalled in court by determined grassroots activists. But, if SNWA eventually prevails, Spring Valley will quickly dry up and little life, endemic or invasive, will survive here.
***
The reminders of violence I encounter in Spring Valley reflect global problems. Windmills are a symptom of the dominant culture’s addiction to energy. The roads here will carry you to highways, highways to interstates, and interstates to airports.
There is virtually nowhere left on Earth that is inaccessible to humans with the privilege, power, and desire to go wherever they will. To gain this accessibility, these humans are so thoroughly poisoning the atmosphere with greenhouse gas emissions global temperatures are rising.
Invasive species – cows, cheat grass, crested wheatgrass, European settlers – are colonizers. They each colonize in their own way. The cows replace elk, pronghorn, wolves, and bears. The grasses eliminate natives by hoarding nutrients and water. They reproduce unsustainably and establish monocultures. When that doesn’t work, they burn the natives out. And, the settlers do the same.
The violence of civilized life becomes too obvious to ignore and the land’s pain threatens to overwhelm me. Despair accompanies these moments. When all I see is violence, it is easy to conclude that violence is all there is, all there ever was, and all there ever will be. Claims I’ve heard repeated countless times echo through my mind.
Humans are selfish. This is just what we do. We will kill ourselves, but the planet will recover…eventually. Humans have been butchering each other for centuries and we’ll butcher each other for centuries more if we don’t destroy the world first.
I stand paralyzed under a windmill, with a decapitated hawk at my feet, struggling through my thoughts for who knows how long, when the blue feathers of a pinyon jay catch my eye. At first, it’s the simple beauty of her color that attracts my attention. But, it’s the strangeness of the phenomenon that keeps my attention.
Rows of windmills form the wind farm. I stand under the northernmost row and about one hundred yards separate the rows. The jay lands on a barbed wire fence post about halfway between the row I’m standing under and the first row south of me. Her presence is strange for two reasons. First, pinyon jays prefer to live in pinyon-juniper forests and there are no trees for a mile in either direction. Second, pinyon jays are very intelligent, and she must have known that to brave the circling windmill blades is to brave the same death the Cooper’s hawk just experienced or the barotrauma so many bats experience.
The despair I felt a few moments ago is fading. As I approach the jay I see her picking through a pinyon pine cone. She picks deftly at it before she pulls a pine nut from the brown folds of the cone. It’s not until she lifts her head, with the pine nut in her beak, that I understand.
She flew down from the forests, through dangerous windmill blades, to show me a pine nut.
Pinion Jay – Photo: Wikimedia Commons
***
Pine nuts represent the friendship humans and pinyon-juniper forests have shared for thousands of years. Pinyon charcoal and seed coats have been found in the 6,000-year-old Gatecliff Shelter in central Nevada. Pinyon seed coats have been found with 3,000-year-old artifacts in Hogup Cave in northwestern Utah. Many of the Fremont culture’s ruins (circa 1000 AD) in eastern Utah also show pinyon use.
Pine nuts are symbols of true sustainability. I’ve heard many traditional, indigenous people explain that sustainability requires making decisions with the succeeding seven generations in mind. When the health of the seventh future generation guides your relationship with the land, overpopulation, drawdown, pollution, and most forms of extraction become unthinkable. European settlers arrived to find indigenous peoples in the Great Basin, like so many indigenous peoples around the world, living in cultures that existed for centuries in balance with the land.
And, the pine nut made these cultures possible.
The Washoe, Paiute, and Shoshone all developed cultures centered on pine nuts. Pinyon pine expert, Ronald Lanner notes, “Just as life on the plains was fitted to the habits of the buffalo, life in the Great Basin was fitted to the homely, thin-shelled nut of the singleleaf pinyon.” Pinyons give their nuts freely and harvesting them involves no damage to the trees. In fact, pine nuts are seeds. Animals who collect and gather the seeds – like pinyon jays, rats, mice, and humans – help the trees reproduce.
It’s a beautiful relationship: pinyon pines offer animals food, and animals offer pinyon pines regeneration. At a time when the survival of life on Earth depends upon humans embracing their role as animals, the relationship the Washoe, Paiute, and Shoshone built with pinyon pines serves as a model for the world.
Relying on the research of American Museum of Natural History archaeologist David Hurst Thomas, Lanner describes the central role the annual pinyon festival played in Western Shoshone life. He writes, “…when pinyon harvest time arrived, Shoshone bands would come together at a prearranged site. There they would harvest nuts, conduct communal rabbit drives, and hold an annual festival. The pinyon festival was the social highlight of the year and was often attended by several hundred people. At night…there was dancing…There was gambling among men and courting among the young. Marriages were arranged and sexual liaisons conducted.”
Pine nut crops, like all natural processes, are subject to variation. There are good yields and bad yields. Human cultures dependent on the land are constantly confronted with a choice. Either humans can tighten their belts and reduce their populations voluntarily. Or, they can exploit the land, stealing resources from the future to meet the needs of the present.
Lanner describes how Western Shoshone sustainability was maintained, “…the pinyon festival was used as an opportunity for regulating the future size and distribution of Shoshone populations. If at the festival the intelligence from all areas foretold a failure of next year’s crop, then measures could be taken to avoid mass starvation…Births could be limited by sexual abstinence or abortion. One or more twins could be killed at birth, as could illegitimate children…The sick and the old could be abandoned. A widow might be killed and buried beside her husband.”
Some of these measures may seem harsh to us today. But, when we consider the violence necessary to sustain today’s civilized, human populations, we will realize that some of these difficult decisions are what true sustainability looks like. Killing a twin or abandoning the sick is small violence compared to the mass violence of deforestation, anthropogenic desertification, and climate change.
***
The pinyon jay in Spring Valley shows me both a pine nut and the history of human sustainability. Even though Spring Valley, with the rest of the world, currently reflects too much human violence, the vast majority of human history reflects true sustainability. Modern humans have existed for 200,000 years. For the vast majority of that time, most of us lived in cultures similar to the Western Shoshone. We must not forget where we come from.
Meanwhile, ecological collapse intensifies. Violence against the natural world is so pervasive it must be considered a war. Perceiving this war hurts. The pain offers us two choices: endurance or cure. Either the pain is inevitable, an unavoidable fact of life that must be endured. Or, the cause of the pain can be treated and healed.
The pervasiveness of violence tempts us to conclude that it is inevitable. When everywhere we look, we are met with human destruction, it is easy to believe that humans are inherently destructive. This is one reason why the dominant culture destroys the natural world so zealously. If violence is inevitable, there is no reason to stop it.
This is also why the dominant culture works to destroy those non-humans we’ve formed ancient friendships with. If the dominant culture eradicates bison, it destroys our memory of how to live sustainably on the Great Plains. If the dominant culture eradicates salmon, it destroys our memory of how to live sustainably in the Pacific Northwest. If the dominant culture eradicates pinyon-juniper forests, it destroys our memory of how to live sustainably in the Great Basin.
There is a war being waged on the natural world and wars are fought with weapons. The pinyon jay brings me a weapon against the despair I feel recognizing pervasive violence in Spring Valley. She shows me that the violence is not inevitable. She shows me the path to true sustainability, and in doing so, shows me the path to peace.
To learn more about the effort to protect pinyon-juniper forests, go to Pinyon Juniper Alliance. You can contact the Alliance here.
There is a crisis erupting in Nicaragua’s North Caribbean Autonomous Region that spans across all social and economic boundaries, affecting everything from human rights to ecosystem preservation to climate change. The Indigenous Miskitu and Mayagna Peoples, whose traditional cultural practices are inseparably linked to the environment and who exist at the forefront of imminent climate shifts capable of displacing entire communities, are under attack. The situation is one that world doesn’t yet know about. It is incumbent upon all of us to change that–to do what we can to empower the Native Peoples of Nicaragua, and stop the destruction.
Settlers are attacking Indigenous communities with automatic firearms, killing, plundering and forcing residents to flee their ancestral lands. Foreign companies have entered the territory illegally and are burning the region’s precious stronghold of biodiversity and natural resources at an alarmingly rapid rate.
Disturbing reports continually come to light of dozens of killings and kidnappings, particularly of Miskitu Indigenous men and women. Thousands of Indigenous refugees have been forced to flee their communities to the relative safety of more urban areas. With no support services intact to deal with the influx of refugees in the already strained resources of the urban regions, those fleeing the violence continue to suffer a lack of food and lack of medical attention upon arrival. The murderous ‘colonos’ operate with complete impunity. As a result, the attacks continue unrestrained by Nicaraguan law enforcement, contributing to a climate of escalation. There is a real and valid concern regarding the virtual media blackout, in both local and international spheres, where little to no reporting focuses on the critical situation unfolding.
Inhabitants of the Atlantic Coast, or Costeños as they are collectively known to the rest of Nicaragua, represent a unique diversity of ethnic groups including Indigenous Miskitu, Mayagna, and Rama, Garífuna (descended from African slaves and Carib Indians), English-speaking Creoles (descendants of African slaves), and Mestizos (mixed race Latin Americans descended from European colonizers and Native peoples).
The region was deeply impacted – scarred even – by the revolutionary war of the 1980’s, when US-backed counter-revolutionaries mounted attacks against the Sandinistas from military bases in Honduras, just across the Coco (Wangki) River.
In 1987, with the war raging, the Autonomy Statute for the Atlantic Coast was enacted and amended to the Nicaraguan Constitution. The new law recognized the multi-ethnic nature of the communities of the Atlantic coast; and in particular, noted Indigenous peoples’ rights to identity, culture and language. The new Autonomous Regions were divided between the North and the South.
In 2003 the Nicaraguan National Assembly finally passed the Communal Property Regime Law 445 and the Demarcation Law to address Indigenous concerns regarding land demarcation and natural resources after much pressure from international institutions.
Indigenous people have legal ownership to significant portions of their ancestral lands as assured by Nicaraguan law, in addition to the Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention 169 ratified by Nicaragua in 2010 and the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People. Yet realities have differed from legalities. Although the Autonomy Agreement recognized collective land holdings, Indigenous people did not actually hold the legal title to their lands for a long time. In recent years, while Indigenous people have been waiting for formal title to be issued to their lands, false titles have been issued in Managua or elsewhere, selling land illegally to settlers from outside the region. It is a sad reality that although Law 445 calls for the removal of illegal settlers from Indigenous lands, it is increasingly undeniable that the exact opposite has taken place.
Violent conflicts over Indigenous land rights have been increasingly erupting in the remote areas of the Northern Caribbean Autonomous Region. Since September 2015, the Miskitu settlements of Wangki, Twi-Tasba Raya, and Li Aubra, have come under especially heavy attack. Reports indicate as many as 80 Miskitu men have been killed or kidnapped from these regions alone; while as many as 2,000 refugees fled their homes and communities in fear for their very lives. These particular villages have been hit especially hard by the violent conflict and, despite pleas for help at municipal and national levels, have received no measure of protection or even investigation, much less prosecution.
Transnational lumber companies siphoning profits from the region’s natural resources have been operating out of nearby Honduras. They are carrying out sophisticated lumbering operations utilizing helicopters and cargo boats to facilitate the rapid export of extracted wood. Nicaragua is home to the Bosawas Biosphere Reserve, one of the largest tropical rainforests in the Americas, second only to the Amazon. The world can no longer stand by while this stronghold of biodiversity and climate-stabilizing carbon-mitigating forest is sacrificed to next quarter’s profits.
Pleas for help have seemed to fall on deaf ears in the capital city of Managua. The Nicaraguan government has not officially acknowledged any of the most recent and most egregious killings, illegal land occupation or deforestation issues. The socialist central government has not offered any plan for addressing this escalating humanitarian crisis, for providing any gestures of protection to the Indigenous communities under attack nor assistance to the refugees. Many Indigenous to the region cannot help but suspect that human rights violations and land rights violations may be happening with the silent consent of the central Nicaraguan government.
While much attention has been given to the Nicaraguan government’s sale of a concession to a Chinese investment firm for an ill-conceived canal to run through the Southern Caribbean Autonomous Region, virtually no media attention has focused on the current urgent crisis in the Northern Region.
Thousands of illegal settlers have clear cut precious rainforest – indifferent to immediate or long term impacts – and have begun to establish cattle ranches and lumber operations that are completely inappropriate to the ecology of the region. The environmental impact mirrors the destructive patterns playing out in the Amazon Basin.
The Bosawas Biosphere Reserve is located in the North Caribbean Autonomous Region in an area historically occupied by Indigenous Mayagna and Miskitu people. The reserve has been designated a UNESCO World Heritage site due to its unique ecological and biocultural significance. The negative impacts on this vulnerable area in particular have consequences not only for Nicaragua, but also for the whole planet. Tropical rainforests hold 50 percent more carbon than trees elsewhere. To this end, deforestation of tropical forests actually causes much more carbon to be released. The problems associated with illegal human migration to the region and its effect on the natural ecology and rates of deforestation are grave, with worldwide ecological consequences.
Although there are differences among settler groups, what they have in common is an environmentally destructive cultural mentality. It is not a coincidence that the settler groups who have inflicted the worst environmental destruction have simultaneously inflicted the worst violence against Indigenous Miskitu and Mayagna.
The critical cultural differences between the Native populations and the non-Indigenous settlers can result in vastly different outcomes for the natural environment. These key cultural differences include: property regimes, expansion patterns, agricultural practices and long-term economic strategies. Indigenous communities hold land in common, meaning that they have collective ownership of their territories. Mestizo settlers, on the other hand, exercise a private property model and parcel out land that they have settled and/or seized.
Significant differences in the use and care of livestock can have a major environmental impacts. On average, only 10 percent of Indigenous families have cattle, whereas mestizo settlers average one cow per family. The low cattle count among Indigenous families, along with their nucleated communities, means that cattle are kept within the limits of the village, along with other livestock like pigs. The Indigenous people of the region contain their animals within the perimeter of their communities, whereas crops are planted in wooded areas up to a two-hour radius from community centers.
When mestizo settlers move into the region they re-shape and redistribute the land with the driving purpose of raising cattle and in anticipation of obtaining even more cattle in the future. After clear-cutting invaluable rainforest land, they immediately begin sowing grass seed and other crops. Within one season, their crop fields are converted into more pasture land. Indigenous farmers, on the other hand, will cut back specific plots of rainforest but will only use these plots for a year or two. They then allow them to grow back and move on to another area to develop communal plots. This traditional Indigenous practice of land management allows the rain forest to regenerate and recover — a sustainable method the Indigenous biostewards of the region have practiced for thousands of years.
On the other hand, mestizo settlers often cause irreversible damage to the rainforest. Settler occupations seem bent on developing as much pasture as possible. If they have the economic means, they raise more cattle and continually increase the herd size. If they do not have the means for raising cattle, they sell this land to settlers who do have cattle. This is the way in which mestizo settlers illegally appropriate traditional Indigenous territory and cash in on the destructive practices they inflict on it soon after. This type of land speculation and ‘economic development’ is almost nonexistent among Indigenous groups, and many view it as a direct challenge to their inherent values. Ironically, many mestizos use this conservative approach to concoct a false narrative that Indigenous people are lazy and undeserving of their vast quantities of land.
Even with growing populations, indigenous communities have a relatively low environmental impact compared to their mestizo non-Indigenous counterparts. The differences in environmental impact and lifestyles between Indigenous and mestizo communities put land tenure and environmental conservation in perspective.
Significant progress towards honoring Indigenous land rights must be a crucial component in the creation of a multi-stakeholder enforced strategy to protect the environmental integrity of the Autonomous Region of Northern Caribbean. It becomes especially critical when considering the overarching role tropical rainforests play in regulating the Earth’s climate.
The two factors of tropical deforestation and human-induced global warming are inextricably connected. There is a definite consensus in the scientific community that deforestation is one of the innate causes behind global warming. According to the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations, “… Between 25 to 30 percent of the greenhouse gases released into the atmosphere each year —1.6 billion tons — are caused by deforestation.” Contributing to deforestation is by definition contributing to global warming.
It’s important to really drive home the compounding effects of the destruction of tropical rainforest: is it is even more damaging to the environment than destruction of other types of forest because of the unique ecology of rainforests. Compared to boreal forests, which are much more expansive, each square hectare of tropical rainforest holds nearly 50 percent more carbon.
The carbon within tropical rainforests is split pretty evenly between soils and flora. When tropical rainforests are clear-cut,massive amounts of carbon are released. Warmer temperatures cause soil to more rapidly decompose.
Tropical forests sequester more carbon because they grow year round and faster than other forest types. When protected and preserved, tropical rainforests are able to actually take in more carbon than they release into the atmosphere, critically reducing the adverse effects of fossil fuel emissions. To put things in clear perspective, tropical rainforests produce 20 percent of the world’s oxygen and 30 percent of the world’s freshwater.
When tropical forestland is transformed into pasture and overused, it leads to a steady cycle of desertification. Rainforests hold together the soil and ensure that it is saturated with rich nutrients. Over time, cattle grazing on pasture land created by clear-cutting forest will quantifiably weaken the soil. Monsoon seasons that are prevalent in Eastern Nicaragua steadily wash away any topsoil that no longer has forests holding it together or nourishing it. Without trees this lower-level soil cannot adequately absorb water. This further leaves areas more susceptible to flooding and landslides. Manure, fertilizer and pesticide runoff are contaminating and acidifying nearby waterways, killing off flora and fauna that are critical to the integrity of intact forests. During the summer months, this lower-level soil bakes and cracks, slowly developing into desert.
Lest it seem the many and crucial challenges facing the Indigenous people of Nicaragua are insurmountable in the face of such great adversity, Native Miskitu and Mayagna continue to defy the odds and act as trailblazers. Their actions set a prime example of what can be accomplished, even with minimal resources.
Although many of the Native people of Nicaragua are not familiar with the Pan-Indigenous American movement known as Idle No More, their actions are living embodiments of the mantra. They have consistently and repeatedly sought assistance and protection from local and national authorities, yet their pleas for help have fallen on deaf ears. No meaningful action has been taken by any government authority. The problem of Indigenous land rights violations and removal of the settlers has been presented to the OAS (Organization of American States) and the IACHR (Inter-American Court of Human Rights). The issue has even been formally raised at the United Nations Permanent Forums on Indigenous peoples.
NGOs played a supportive role in pressuring the Nicaraguan government to institute necessary jurisprudence in protecting environment and Indigenous land rights; the problem is that the laws are not being respected or enforced. The government continues to ignore the laws both at the national and local level. Mounting anecdotal evidence points to the possibility of corrupt officials contributing to the problem, at virtually every level of government. Through their inexcusable silence and inaction in the face of the escalating crisis, government at all levels is complicit at least in actively undermining Indigenous Peoples’ rights to their legal territories.
This is an ongoing crisis in the Autonomous Region of Northern Caribbean Nicaragua. The Indigenous cultures of the region are inseparably linked to the natural environment. The legal protections for Native people and the rain forest are being flagrantly violated by increasingly violent mestizo colonists (‘colonos’). Government at all levels has proven ineffectual in the face of the crisis. There has been no media coverage of this crisis, the escalation of violence, or the plight of refugees fleeing the areas of conflict.
It’s also important for us to help stop the destruction of the tropical rainforest, which is critically important to all of us. Government inaction in the face of mounting numbers of refugees and killings is morally corrupt and warrants international outcry.
The Indigenous Miskitu and Mayagna are not passive victims, but they are facing a tremendous challenge to address a problem of this magnitude. They are in desperate need of assistance to overcome this crisis.
5 WAYS YOU CAN HELP
It is very important for international media outlets to focus on what is happening in this remote region. Spreading the word through social media will be key to applying international pressure to help the refugees and stop the killing of both the Indigenous people and the rainforest.
There is an equal need for conventional media coverage. To that end, you can reach out to your favorite news outlet and encourage them to take on the story
Costa Rica, Mexico, and the U.S. government have issued travel bans to Nicaragua, nevertheless, there is a growing need for humanitarian aid and witnesses to document what’s happening on the ground.
If you want to support the Miskitu and Mayagna from home, consider organizing a community event or any kind of online action to make sure the world knows what’s happening.
You can also ask the Ortega government to do the right thing, by working with the Miskitu and Mayagna to secure their ancestral territory, addressing the ongoing land theft and responding to the brutal attacks that are being carried out at the hands of the Colonos.
Of the several different sub-groups of Ayoreo, the most isolated are the Totobiegosode (‘people from the place of the wild pigs’). Since 1969 many have been forced out of the forest, but some still avoid all contact with outsiders. Their first sustained contact with white people came in the 1940s and 1950s, when Mennonite farmers established colonies on their land. The Ayoreo resisted this invasion, and there were killings on both sides.
In 1979 and 1986 the American fundamentalist New Tribes Mission helped organise ‘manhunts’ in which large groups of Totobiegosode were forcibly brought out of the forest. Several Ayoreo died in these encounters, and others later succumbed to disease.
Recently contacted Ayoreo Indians are worried for the future of their uncontacted relatives. Other Totobiegosode groups came out of the forest in 1998 and 2004 as continual invasions of their land meant they constantly had to abandon their homes, making life very hard. An unknown number still live a nomadic life in the forest.
The greatest current threat to the Totobiegosode is a Brazilian firm, Yaguarete Porá. It owns a 78,000 hectare plot in the heart of their territory, very near where uncontacted Ayoreo were recently sighted. Yaguarete plans to bulldoze most of it to create a cattle ranch – this will have a devastating effect on the Indians’ ability to continue living there.
Land inhabited by the Ayoreo is some of the last standing forest in the Chaco region, a great testament to the tribe’s conservation abilities. However, pressure on the forest is immense. Almost all the Ayoreo’s ancestral land is now owned by private landowners, who hire work-teams to clear the forest of valuable timber and then introduce cattle. Many of these new landowners are Mennonites, but much of the Ayoreo land has now been bought up by wealthy Paraguayan and, especially, Brazilian cattle-ranching businesses.
The Indians are claiming title to just a fraction of their territory. Without their forest they cannot feed or support themselves, and they are also greatly concerned about their uncontacted relatives still living there. Under Paraguayan law, this claim area should have been titled to the Indians years ago, as both Paraguayan law, and the country’s Constitution, recognize the Indians’ right to the ownership of their traditional lands.
But the powerful landowners have blocked the law at every turn, and have illegally bulldozed some of the forest already.
Crisis Point: As bulldozers and cattle ranchers encroach further into their territory the Ayoreo of Paraguay are worried for the safety of their uncontacted relatives. In the heart of the Indians’ territory ranching firm Yaguarete Porá has already cleared a large area of forest that is home to uncontacted Ayoreo.
In response to public anger it has announced plans to create a “nature reserve” on its land, but actually intends to destroy around two thirds of the forest. In 2010, Survival awarded the company with its Greenwashing Award.
With the bulldozing of this vast area of forest, the isolated Totobiegosode will have nowhere left to hide. The settled Totobiegosode are desperate to protect it.
Beast with Metal Skin: In 1994 a bulldozer driver clearing the forest at night was attacked out of the darkness. Although he didn’t know it, he was destroying the gardens and hunting grounds of a group of Ayoreo-Totobiegosode families. One of the Indians, Esoi, was finally forced out of the forest in 2004. Here, he recounts his attack on the bulldozer.
How do they live?
The Totobiegosode live in small communities. They grow squashes, beans and melons in the sandy soil, and hunt in the forest. Large tortoises and wild pig are particularly prized, as is the abundant wild honey.
In the forest four or five families will live together in a communal house. A central wooden pillar supports a dome-shaped structure of smaller branches, topped with dried mud.
Each family will have its own hearth around the outside; people will only sleep inside if it rains. The most important Ayoreo ritual was named after asojna, the nightjar: when the bird’s call was first heard it heralded the arrival of the rainy season, and a month of celebrations and festivities.
The Ayoreo who now live in settled communities live in individual family huts. Those who have lost their land now have little choice but to work as exploited labourers on the cattle ranches that have taken over much of their territory. The evangelical New Tribes Mission has a base near their communities, and exerts a powerful influence on their daily lives. Under the missionaries, the asojna ritual—and many others—have been suppressed.
Act now to help the Ayoreo
Write a letter or email to Grupo San Jose asking it to hand back the Ayoreo’s land to its rightful owners.
Write a letter or email to the government of Paraguay asking it to demarcate the Ayoreo’s land in line with the country’s laws and treaties.
Donate to the Ayoreo campaign (and other Survival campaigns).
In the early morning hours before daybreak on May 2 in the fire-impacted conifer forest near Seiad Valley in the Klamath River watershed, 27 people including Tribal youth, river advocates and forest activists blocked the road leading to the Klamath National Forest’s Westside salvage logging project.
Demonstrators held banners that read ‘Karuk Land: Karuk Plan,’ recited call and response chants, and testified to the timber sales’ impact on ailing salmon populations. Work was delayed for approximately four hours, according to a news release from the river advocates.
The protesters said the Westside Salvage Logging Project would clear cut more than 5,700 acres on steep slopes above Klamath River tributaries and along 320 miles of roads within Klamath National Forest. Post-fire logging and hauling began in late April, before legal claims brought forth by a lawsuit led by the Karuk Tribe could be considered in court.
“The Forest Service should follow the Karuk Plan on Karuk Land. Traditional knowledge of fire helps everything stay in balance because it’s all intertwined,” said Dania Rose Colegrove of the Klamath Justice Coalition. “When you destroy the forests, you destroy the rivers.”
The protesters said the Westside plan, unlike the Karuk Alternative, calls for clear cut logging on steep slopes right above several of the Klamath River’s most important salmon-bearing streams, at a time when returning salmon numbers are reaching record lows.
Members of local Tribal youth councils who participated in the protest see Westside salvage logging as a threat to their future.
“Today I showed up and stood up for what is right for future generations,” said Lacey Jackson, a 16-year old Hoopa Tribal Youth Council member. “My cultural and traditional livelihood is being threatened, and the way they are going about this logging is a big part of that. I will continue to stand up for me, my people and future generations.”
River advocates say the Forest Service plan to clear-cut thousands of acres above the Klamath River disregards the reasonable Karuk Alternative and hurts at-risk salmon and river communities. They believe a healthy Klamath River requires sensible forest restoration that addresses the needs of both fish and people, like that laid out in the Karuk plan.
Federal and state fisheries agency scientists estimate that there are only approximately 142,200 Klamath River fall-run Chinook salmon in the ocean this year, based on the returns of two-year-old salmon, called “jacks” and “jills.” The salmon from the Klamath and Sacramento River make up the majority of salmon taken in California’s ocean and inland fisheries.
The low numbers of Klamath and Trinity River fish expected to return to the river and tributaries this year will result in more restricted seasons for both the recreational and commercial fisheries on the ocean and recreational and Tribal fisheries on the rivers this season.
During a meeting on Klamath dam removal in Sacramento in March, Thomas Wilson, a member of the Yurok Tribal Council and owner of Spey-Gee Point Guide Service, described the dire situation that the salmon fishery is in this year.
“This season will be devastating for fishermen and people on the river. Usually we get around 12,000 fish for subsistence on the river and what’s left goes to the commercial fishery. This year our entire Tribal quota is only about 5,900 fish,” he explained.
“The people are praying that the science predicting the low numbers is wrong. If we don’t protect the fish now, it will hurt us down the road. As Yuroks and natives, we are conservationists. We want make sure enough to keep seed for the all of the resources for future generations,” Wilson said.
The last thing that the watershed needs, at a time when the fishery is in crisis, is a Forest Service-approved clear cutting plan that further threatens salmon and steelhead habitat.
