Editor’s note: Colonialism has not ended. It is in full force. It is what civilization does. For this to end, governments must give the Land Back. All BLM, Forests and Park land should be returned to the sovereign Nations it was stolen from. Turtle Island is Treaty Land, ceded or unceded. Treaties are the Supreme Law of the Land and must be honored. Australia just returned more than 395,000 acres of land to the Eastern Kuku Yalanji people. It included the Daintree National Park which is believed to be the oldest living rainforest in the world. Protections for the Bears Ear National Monument are being reinstated and management of the 1.3 million acres will be placed back into indigenous management. Rightful Lands, Rightful Hands!
As Colorado and other states eliminate Columbus Day as a holiday, it might seem as if our society has begun to repudiate the legacy of a slave trader/explorer who fed Spain’s lust for gold by trafficking in, and annihilating, native peoples. In truth, we continue to celebrate it.
We celebrate it every time the desires of the dominant culture override the concerns of native peoples about destruction of their homelands and sacred sites. Despite relentless legal and political resistance from affected tribes, Canadian oil that is produced by converting forests to sand pits recently began flowing through the Enbridge Line 3 pipeline.
The U.S. Senate should adopt a resolution endorsing the UN Declaration and explicitly repudiate the white supremacy of Johnson v. McIntosh. Only then will Columbus’s legacy be in doubt.
Earlier this year, a federal court ordered the federal government to reassess the environmental impacts of the Dakota Access Pipeline, yet the Biden administration is allowing it to continue to operate.
In the coming days, it is likely that, over the objections of native people, including the Fort McDermitt Paiute-Shoshone Tribe and Atsa Koodakuh Wyh Nuwu/People of Red Mountain, backhoes will claw into Thacker Pass, Nevada, a relatively pristine desert landscape and site of a U.S. Cavalry massacre of Paiutes. Thacker Pass contains the largest lithium reserves in the United States. The mine will destroy nearly 5,700 acres to fuel the “green energy” revolution touted by advocates of the Green New Deal.
Affected tribes and native activists asked U.S. District Court Judge Miranda Du to stop the excavation, which she declined to do. The federal-agency defendants “do not dispute that the Tribes consider the entire Thacker Pass area sacred,” Judge Du stated. Regardless, she noted that the tribes lack the “right to prevent all digging in the entire Project area” and instead are entitled only to consultation with U.S. officials.
What Columbus achieved through bloodshed and savagery is now accomplished with paper weapons wielded in a federal court.
Judge Du’s blunt statement about the toothless legal recourse available to tribes also reveals the white supremacy embedded in federal law. In 1823, in Johnson v. McIntosh, Justice John Marshall cited the “superior genius” of Europe as justification for federal dominance over native nations. Marshall acknowledged how “extravagant the pretension of converting the discovery of an inhabited country into conquest may appear.” Still, “if the principle has been asserted in the first instance, and afterwards sustained; if a country has been acquired and held under it; if the property of the great mass of the community originates in it, it becomes the law of the land and cannot be questioned.”
Nearly 200 years after Marshall invoked the “Doctrine of Discovery,” the fundamental relationship between native nations and the U.S. government is unchanged. Despite occasional pledges from presidents to honor native rights, those promises are mostly gimmicks designed to distract from the day in, day out policy choices that undermine native rights through federal approval of projects like the Thacker Pass lithium mine and the Dakota Access and Enbridge pipelines.
The Obama administration endorsed the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which requires states to obtain “free, prior and informed consent” before taking actions that affect native peoples, yet that endorsement has had no effect on approval of massive projects so destructive to native lands. For this reason, the Biden administration should immediately enforce those protections in federal permitting decisions. The U.S. Senate should adopt a resolution endorsing the UN Declaration and explicitly repudiate the white supremacy of Johnson v. McIntosh. Only then will Columbus’s legacy be in doubt.
Karen Breslin is an attorney and teaches political science at Metropolitan State University of Denver.
Editor’s note: Deep Green Resistance stands in solidarity with the Karen people and the Revolution against the military junta in Myanmar. We will keep it in the headlines to help them raise their voice as we do with all land protectors of Mother Earth. “Until the end of the world we will not give up our efforts…we will not let it happen.”
The Tanintharyi Region in southern Myanmar contains an expanse of rainforest, ocean, and mangroves where a range of wildlife – from tigers and elephants to tapirs – roam, and the Indigenous Karen people consider themselves stewards of this richness.
In 2012, the Karen and the Myanmar military signed a ceasefire to end 70 years of war in their territory, allowing the Indigenous communities an opportunity to develop new institutions, campaigns, and programs to conserve their resources and forests from destruction by outside interests.
That ended with the military coup of 2021: “Attacks by the military on Indigenous peoples and environmental defenders means that the forests are at risk – and for this reason we want to say to the world ‘this coup doesn’t just affect our country, but the future of the globe.’”
This article is a commentary, it reflects the views of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.
The Tanintharyi Region in southern Myanmar is a beautiful and rich expanse of rainforest, ocean, and mangroves where we still have wild tigers and elephants, and where the forest provides all that we need in life. It is my home land. Our Indigenous communities depend on the forest for food, water, medicine, and our forests depend on Indigenous communities, who manage, conserve and protect them with great care.
The Myanmar military coup risks all our recent progress after 10 years of rebuilding our lives, following 70 years of civil war. Our people plan to fight to protect our lands and win back our lives. We want the rest of the world to understand why.
Our Territory and Our Struggle
Though it is a rich, green land, our territory and our communities have also been terrorized and traumatized by decades of armed conflict at the hands of the Myanmar military. In 1948, our Karen people began our fight for greater autonomy, for self-determination, and for our basic rights against fascist oppression by the Myanmar military. The resulting civil war saw villages burned, people were killed, raped and tortured, and over 80,000 were displaced into the forest and along the Thai-Myanmar border. Relentless oppression of our people and our Karen identity meant that we never had a chance to develop, to forge our own destiny, to manage and protect our territory.
Malayan tapirs are one of many threatened mammal species present in Tanintharyi’s forests. Image by seth m via Flickr/Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
In 2012, the Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA) and the Myanmar military signed a ceasefire agreement, bringing to a halt 70 years of brutal civil war in our territory. During this time of relative peace, communities were able to re-establish their livelihoods, manage and protect their lands and forests, participate in political processes, and finally live and breathe without the fear of being shot, abducted, and tortured. We were able to mobilize our communities, develop new institutions, and create new ideas for a collective and peaceful future.
While the ceasefire stopped the bullets flying and the soldiers destroying our villages, we experienced a barrage of new challenges. Suddenly new laws, concessions, development projects, and national parks threatened to confiscate our lands – the lands that we had already been displaced from so many times before. 1.7 million acres of land were handed to crony companies for oil palm concessions, 3.5 million acres were earmarked for the Ridge to Reef project, a large-scale conservation program funded by the GEF, and other parts of our region were taken for special economic zones, infrastructure development, and mining operations. For us, it felt like the rug was being pulled from under our feet, just when we could finally stand.
In response to these new challenges, Indigenous communities and civil society organizations started to create their own conservation areas – proving their ability to conserve their own resources and protect their lands and forests from those who wished to destroy them. Communities across the region mobilized, strengthened their customary tenure systems, and documented their boundaries and land use systems. We showed policy makers how we govern our territories, and sought to have our rights recognized, and respected. We built networks with Indigenous communities throughout the country, creating new spaces of inter-ethnic solidarity, and started to join international platforms with other Indigenous activists from across the globe. We campaigned against mega projects with great success – our campaigns halted mining operations, suspended palm oil concessions and cancelled conservation projects. We knew that united, we could win.
Together with my community, we developed new visions for what our territory should look like, and how conservation and development should be carried out. We developed a grassroots alternative to the Ridge to Reef Project, a Landscape of Life that proved that communities were best placed to protect and conserve our territory, and that a peaceful future would include harmony between our Karen people and their forests and biodiversity.
Our futures are again uncertain
On February 1st 2021, however, the military staged a coup, arrested members of the elected NLD government, and brutally cracked down on resistance. According to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (Burma) site, over 1,000 people have been killed and nearly 7,000 have been detained or arrested, and the military has started brutal campaigns in ethnic areas once more, dropping bombs on our forests and burning down our villages.
Under the military regime, we cannot protect our land, forest and biodiversity – those who attempt to defend their territories will be detained, tortured, or killed – and we cannot protect ourselves. Environmental defenders have been targeted by the military for the work that they have done protecting their lands from theft and destruction by military companies and their cronies. Recently, Kyaw Min Htut, a forest defender from Sagaing region was arrested and beaten, along with his family, because of his leading role in organizing his community and protecting surrounding natural resources.
Further, in Tanintharyi Region the offices of many environmental civil society groups have been raided and many environmental defenders have had to flee, hiding from arrest or murder at the hands of the junta. Defending forests and the environment in Myanmar in 2021 is a crime punishable by death.
Despite attacks by the military and decades of destructive development, we still have a lot of forest in our Indigenous territories in Myanmar. Without forests, we cannot survive, and without us, our forests cannot survive. We contribute a lot to climate change mitigation internationally, and our efforts to protect our forests are clear. Attacks by the military on Indigenous peoples and environmental defenders means that the forests are at risk – and for this reason we want to say to the world ‘this coup doesn’t just affect our country, but the future of the globe.’
Since the coup, our divided nation has become united. We have united in revolution against the military who has stolen our futures from us. We stand together to change the path of history, and until the end of the world we will not give up our efforts. Over 400,000 workers have joined the civil disobedience movement – going on permanent strike, youth from across the country have joined the armed resistance, and ethnic armed groups are continuing the struggle to defend their territories – together we cannot and must not lose. Our fight is for the future of our people, our nation, our forests, our world.
While our struggle has disappeared from international headlines, we call upon international governments, global social movements, international Indigenous organizations and the international community to stand in solidarity with us and help us to raise our voice – the world depends upon it.
If we do not speak out, our futures will be lost, and our forests will be destroyed. Until the end of the world, we will not let it happen.
Esther Wah (real name redacted for safety) is an Indigenous Karen activist.
The survival of the last uncontacted tribe in South America outside the Amazon is at stake.
Indigenous people living in a South American forest with one of the world’s highest rates of deforestation have appealed to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights to save it from total destruction. Their uncontacted relatives are fleeing from one corner of the remaining forest to another, seeking refuge from ever-present bulldozers.
The Ayoreo-Totobiegosode of Paraguay’s Chaco forest have been trying since 1993 – when they submitted a formal land claim – to protect their forest in the face of a rapidly expanding agricultural frontier.
In 2013, given a total lack of political will in Paraguay to uphold the law and stop the destruction of their lands, they requested that the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights intervene.
In 2016, at the government’s request, they agreed to enter formal negotiations with the government for their land titles, but for 5 years, and despite 42 meetings, the destruction of their forest has continued unabated. Satellite photos reveal that the Ayoreo now live in an island of forest surrounded by monocultures and beef production.
The Ayoreo have now announced they are pulling out of the negotiations, and have written again to the Inter-American Commission, asking it to order the Paraguayan authorities to finally return their land to them, and expel the agribusiness corporations that have taken it over.
Although most Ayoreo-Totobiegosode were forcibly contacted by American evangelical missionaries some years ago, an unknown number remain uncontacted in the last island of their forest, which is now being cut down around them.
Earlier this year one uncontacted group made contact with a settled community of their relatives, to express their fear at the destruction of their forest refuge, before returning to the forest.
The Ayoreo-Totobiegosode leader Porai Picanerai, who was forcibly contacted by the American New Tribes Mission in 1986, said: “My uncontacted relatives are suffering and in danger because they barely have any space now to live in. There are many outsiders occupying our land and burning the forest for beef production.”
Porai also said: “After having participated in most of the 42 meetings, I can confirm that the government doesn’t keep its word, that it lies and doesn’t want to protect my people or return the lands that we’ve always lived in and cared for. We’ll only get the government to act by going to outside bodies like the Commission.”
Survival Researcher Teresa Mayo said today: “The Ayoreo-Totobiegosode have called a halt to the negotiation process as the government was just dragging it out while allowing the rampant destruction of the Ayoreo’s forest to continue. The state knows that it simply has to do nothing to effectively condemn the uncontacted Ayoreo to death – and if a government sees the solution to its “problem” as the extermination of a people, we’re talking about genocide.”
One nonprofit said the decision in a case brought by bushfire survivors “should send a chill through the state’s most polluting industries, including the electricity and commercial transport sectors.”
By JESSICA CORBETT
In a case brought by bushfire survivors against an Australian state’s environmental regulator, a court found Thursday that the government agency must take action to address the climate emergency—a first-of-its kind and potentially precedent-setting ruling for the fire-ravaged nation.
“This is a great day for environmental justice.”
—Chris Gambian, Nature Conservation Council
“It’s a really big win,” said Elaine Johnson, director of legal strategy at the Environmental Defenders Office (EDO), which represented Bushfire Survivors for Climate Action (BSCA). “It means [the New South Wales agency] has to do something to ensure there is protection against climate change.”
“The next 10 years are really critical,” Johnson told The Sydney Morning Herald, which noted that the ruling comes in the wake of a major United Nations climate report about what the future could hold without a global course correction. “We need rapid and deep emissions cuts.”
Though the government of Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison has long faced pressure to take bolder climate action and a federal court in the country found in May that Environment Minister Sussan Ley has a duty to protect children and the environment from the climate emergency, Johnson said Thursday’s decision was the first in Australia to find that a government agency is required to address the global crisis.
“It’s breaking new ground,” she told the newspaper, adding that other Australian states could soon face similar legal challenges.
The landmark ruling in favor of survivors of the 2019-20 bushfires and earlier seasons came from Brian Preston, chief judge of the Land and Environment Court of New South Wales (NSW).
Preston ordered the NSW Environment Protection Authority (EPA) “to develop environmental quality objectives, guidelines, and policies to ensure environment protection from climate change” in the Australian state.
Though Preston found that the EPA has not fulfilled its legal duty to ensure such protection, he said the agency “has a discretion as to the specific content of the instruments it develops” and his order “does not demand that such instruments contain the level of specificity contended for by BSCA, such as regulating sources of greenhouse gas emissions in a way consistent with limiting global temperature rise to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.”
The EPA had argued that it has already “developed numerous instruments to ensure environment protection in many ways, some of which incidentally regulate greenhouse gas emissions, such as methane from landfill,” according to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
In a statement, the agency—which has 28 days to appeal—said it was reviewing the decision.
“The EPA is an active government partner on climate change policy, regulation, and innovation,” the agency statement said. “It is a part of the whole-of-government approach to climate change embodied by the NSW Climate Change Policy Framework and Net Zero Plan.”
The statement also highlighted the EPA’s involvement in “work that assists with and also directly contributes to” adaptation and mitigation measures, its support for industry “to make better choices,” and its recently released “Strategic Plan and Regulatory Strategy.”
Despite the judge’s decision to limit the specificity of his order for the agency to act, his ruling was still welcomed by survivors, their legal representation, and climate campaigners around the world.
“This is a significant win for everyone who has been affected by bushfires,” said BSCA president Jo Dodds, explaining that survivors have worked to rebuild their lives, homes, and communities that were devastated in recent years.
“This ruling means they can do so with confidence that the EPA must now also work to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the state,” she continued. “Global warming is creating the conditions that can lead to hotter and fiercer fires, and all of us need to work to make sure we’re doing everything we can to prevent a disaster like we saw during 2019 and 2020.”
As Johnson put it: “The EPA has discretion as to what they do but they have to do something and it has to be meaningful.”
“Greenhouse gases are the most dangerous form of pollution,” she told The Guardian. “An obvious response to this order would be to control greenhouse gases in the same way they do other pollutants in the environment.”
The nonprofit Nature Conservation Council said the court’s decision “should send a chill through the state’s most polluting industries, including the electricity and commercial transport sectors.”
“Most people will be astonished to learn the EPA has until now not regulated greenhouse gases,” said the council’s chief executive, Chris Gambian. “But that will now have to change.”
“This is a great day for environmental justice,” he declared, crediting BSCA “for having the courage to launch this case” and EDO for their convincing arguments.
Calling human-caused climate change “the most significant challenge our society has ever faced,” Gambian asserted that “allowing politicians to set greenhouse gas emission targets and controls rather than scientific experts has led us to the precipice.”
“These decisions are far too important to left to the politicians. These are issues of science and should not be hijacked by the political process,” he added. “We hope that today’s decision results in the effective regulation of greenhouse gas emissions and gets the state on track to net zero well before 2050.”
Fairy Creek is home to a number of species at risk, and should be protected, say several scientists. At-risk species sighted in recent months include a variety of birds, little brown bats, and a lichen described as “cute” and sensitive.
Could these species help Fairy Creek find true protection — beyond its present two-year deferral of logging?
Last Friday at Fairy Creek, three scientists and a citizen scientist showed the assembled forest protectors evidence gathered since May on several federally listed species at risk. Although they described their inventory of species in the old-growth forest as just a beginning, many species were sighted.
Citizen-scientist Natasha Lavdovsky described the Oldgrowth specklebelly lichen which she found in the area. As a multi-disciplinary artist with a science background, Lavdovsky appreciates the lichen’s uniqueness. “They are really cute, because they have a speckled texture on their underbelly. It’s bluish on top, and pinkish underneath. When you look at them with a hand lens, they’re really quite exquisite.”
The rare lichen is generally found farther north, she told the group. Yet, “This is very likely to be the largest population of this lichen ever found in B.C.”
The main reason it still exists is because blockades have been protecting the area for the past year, she said. Most of the lichens are within an approved Teal Jones cut-block in TFL 46, which has been partially logged.
“Many of these lichen communities are right beside clear-cuts. They’re dying now from too much sunlight.” The speckled-belly lichen only grows in old-growth forests.
Dr. Loys Maingon explained that the importance of lichens is vastly underestimated: “They are a crucial, foundational part of our living world. They play an outsized and poorly understood role in global photosynthesis and nutrient cycling.”
An old-growth forest hosts communities of lichens, which, in a highly synchronized way, process rainfall and atmospheric humidity. They capture vital nutrients out of the air, and provide nutrients that support the forest, and the food chains that support all of its creatures, he said.
“Their abundance and diversity are indicators of ‘healthy forests’,” Dr. Maingon added. “Lichens are the basis of nitrogen-cycling in old-growth forests. They’re the foundation of the pumping mechanism that goes into the “biotic pump model” – the capture of water out of condensation and evapotranspiration processes of water, and its transportation inland, far beyond what would normally be expected by passive wind-driven processes. The forest’s biotic pump creates much of our climate.”
Some researchers recently reported that lichens may actually sequester even more carbon dioxide than the old-growth trees they live upon, he said. They also neutralize acidic rainwater as it runs over them to the ground.
Despite providing countless ecosystem services, the specklebelly lichen “is very sensitive,” and a vulnerable at-risk species, Lavdovsky noted. She read a BC Timber Sales document that called for a 200-metre buffer zone to protect the lichen’s habitat from logging. One tree on which she found the rare lichen growing had been marked with red falling-boundary tape. She also found dying lichens along the newly built roadside and in an area that directly bordered a recent cut-block.
“Many people trust that endangered species are protected by law in BC, but they’re not,” said Kathleen Code, a Rainforest Flying Squad spokesperson. “Although there are government ‘guidelines’ requiring logging companies to complete a wildlife inventory and management plan before they log, in practice there is no penalty for inadequately prepared inventories and management plans. No penalty, in other words, for erasing habitat and killing endangered species.”
Dr. John Neilson, a fisheries scientist who has worked for the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada, noted that the federal Species at Risk Act applies only to federal lands in BC, such as national parks.
“In spite of explicit election promises made by Mr. Horgan in 2017, BC still does not have a provincial act to protect at risk species, placing the province in a minority nationally.” A very small number of species are covered by BC’s Forest and Ranges Practices or Wildlife Acts.
“I expect that information from our surveys will inform public reactions to the government’s passive and inadequate response to protecting BC’s biodiversity on southern Vancouver Island.”
Along with Dr. Jim Cuthbert, Dr. Neilson helped organize several “BioBlitz” inventories at Fairy Creek since May. Using the i-Naturalist app, he noted that, “With minimal survey effort, we have now documented 322 species, from 903 observations.
“Our data provide evidence of a significant number of species at risk. We have seen 62 observations of 14 vulnerable species.” A more thorough inventory is still needed, which would consist of returning through different seasons, and better coverage of the central part of the Fairy Creek valley and watershed.
At-risk species documented during the BioBlitzes include:
– recordings made of little brown bats near Fairy Lake
– many sightings of Western toads and Northern red-legged frogs
– many sightings of Marbled murrelets and Western Screech owls, as well as other bird species such as Northern Goshawk, Olive-sided flycatcher, and Band-tailed pigeon.
– many plant species, including Western Rattlesnakeroot, Coastal Brookfoam, Carolina Bugbane and Stink Currant.
– fungi species including Northern Red Belt
– other lichen species, including Cabbage Lung lichen
Dr. Neilson’s presentation to forest protectors ended with “a huge thank you” to the forest protectors, “for your passion, dedication and tenacity in your essential efforts to protect old-growth forests.”
Dr. Neilson and Dr. Jim Cuthbert wrote the BC government last week, to alert the ministers of environment and forests about the presence of endangered species in the Fairy Creek area (excerpt below).
“Perhaps enlightened public pressure might lead to long-term protection for these threatened species and their entire ecosystems,” Dr. Neilson said.
The following is an excerpt from a letter sent by the scientists July 25th, to Minister Katrine Conroy (Forests, Lands, Natural Resource Operations and Rural Development), and Minister George Heyman (Environment and Climate Change Strategy):
“In spite of your Ministry’s initial lack of support for our right to scientific freedom of inquiry, we have used the iNaturalist app to gather together much of the existing knowledge of the biodiversity of Fairy Creek. https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/fairy-creek-research
“Please refer to the link, and you will see evidence that federally-listed species at risk occur in that watershed. Note that these publicly-available data already exist, even without complete survey coverage of the watershed, which was the issue that we hoped to address by seeking access. We are sure that British Columbians will be deeply interested in hearing your plans to protect the habitats of those species, beyond temporary measures in certain parts of the watershed.
“It seems shocking that logging activities are being contemplated for an area where so little is known — and what little we know is indicating an area of great species diversity, including a significant proportion of species at risk. Please take time to explain your plan to protect the habitat of Fairy Creek for listed species found so far, and those yet to be found.
“We appreciate a prompt and positive response to this critical matter.”
