On June 11, 2018 Attorney General Jeff Sessions ruled that domestic violence is not a valid reason to seek asylum in the United States. His decision overturned a previous ruling made in 2016 by the Justice Department’s Board of Immigration Appeals, which allowed an abused woman from El Salvador to seek and obtain asylum on the basis of her abuse. Sessions’ ruling affects many women seeking asylum from Latin American countries, but might disproportionately affect Indigenous women and their children.
Sessions wrote that domestic abuse is “private violence,” as opposed to violence perpetrated by the government, and as such is not a qualifying factor for asylum unless an asylum seeker can show that the government not only has difficulty protecting her from violence, but actually condones the violence or is totally incapable of stopping it.
Sessions goes on to say that asylum is based on protection of a person who is under threat as a result of her social group, and argued that domestic violence is not such a threat. Instead, he claims that it is based on a personal relationship with the victim. Sessions wrote in his ruling that “generally, claims by aliens pertaining to domestic violence or gang violence perpetrated by non-governmental actors will not qualify for asylum…. The mere fact that a country may have problems effectively policing certain crimes — such as domestic violence or gang violence — or that certain populations are more likely to be victims of crime, cannot itself establish an asylum claim.” A study conducted by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, on the other hand, says that “UNHCR’s long-standing interpretation of refugee law recognizes that gender violence (including intimate partner violence)… meet the criteria for protection.”
The new ruling is especially significant because women in Latin America, and elsewhere, are at high risk of injury, long-lasting psychological harm, chronic pain, and death from domestic abuse. While all women are in danger of domestic assault, and potentially negatively affected by Sessions’ ruling, there is reason for particular concern for Indigenous women. Cultural Survival’s recent reports on the state of Indigenous women’s rights in Mexico and Guatemala showed that gendered violence disproportionately affects Indigenous women.
Many women who are victims of any sort of gender-based violence do not report, in part because they do not trust the authorities, but Indigenous women face additional systemic barriers to seeking and obtaining help from their governments because they are often located in rural areas with fewer sources of care and because they cannot always find someone in authority who speaks their language. Indigenous women might also face discrimination based on ethnicity from their home governments and judicial processes if they do report violence. As such, Indigenous women are more likely to be unable to gain help from their home governments or communities.
Even when women manage to report violence, they seldom receive justice. The Public Prosecutor’s Office in Guatemala receives more than 40,000 cases of violence against women every year but few cases are brought against perpetrators of violence against women, and even fewer sentences are carried out. One to two women are murdered every day in Guatemala, where the impunity rate in cases of femicide is estimated at 98 percent.
In Mexico in 2017, seven women were killed every day and domestic violence is a key cause of women’s deaths in the country. In almost half of the reported cases of violence against women in Nicaragua, the attack took place at home. In 2015, the deaths of 275 women were reported in Argentina, 39 of whom had reported violence to the police before their deaths. 171 of the killings took place inside the women’s homes, making the home one of the most dangerous places to be a woman. One El Salvadoran woman said that she went to the police to report domestic violence and was told simply “well, he’s your husband.” These stories and statistics paint a clear picture that domestic violence is a serious threat from which Indigenous women have little chance of escape, especially if we no longer count it as a reasonable cause to flee to safer ground.
LANSING, Mich. – The Menominee Indian Tribe of Wisconsin has filed a petition for a contested case hearing on the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality’s (MDEQ) issuance of a Wetland Permit for the Back Forty Mine.
The Wetland Permit, issued in June, is the final state permit necessary to develop the Back Forty Mine, a large open-pit mine and minerals-processing facility on the Menominee River, which forms the Michigan-Wisconsin border. The permit allows for construction of the Back Forty Mine on wetlands connected and adjacent to the Menominee River.
The Tribe opposes the mine, not only for its potential to contaminate the Menominee River and destroy surrounding wetlands, but also because the area has cultural significance to the Tribe. The Tribe has burial grounds, agricultural sites and ceremonial sites that have been in the area for centuries.
Represented by Tribal attorneys and the environmental law firm Earthjustice, the Tribe contends the permit was granted to the mine developer (Toronto-based Aquila Resources, Inc.) contrary to the requirements of state law for wetland protections – and over the written objections of MDEQ’s own Water Resources Division.
“This permit was issued despite every indication that it would have a negative impact on the Menominee River and destroy its surrounding wetlands,” said attorney Stephanie Tsosie of the Earthjustice legal team. “The permit application left out critical information on the river and wetlands system, and is based on promises that the developer would provide information down the road. So, MDEQ issued this permit without a full picture of how extensive the mine damage could be, and without public input.”
“This permit ignores that the Menominee River and its surrounding wetlands are interconnected,” added Menominee Tribe Chairman Douglas Cox. “This relationship is something the Menominee people have known for thousands of years. We have deep ties to the River, as the Tribe originated there and has lived in the area since time immemorial. Not only has MDEQ ignored the Menominee Tribe’s interests and assertions – it has also ignored the objections of its own Michigan Tribes and other public comments.”
The petition for a contested case hearing was filed on Friday, August 3. The contested case proceeding will be heard by an administrative law judge in Michigan.
The Menominee Tribe of Wisconsin is already the plaintiff in a federal lawsuit against the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The Tribe contends these agencies violated the Clean Water Act by allowing the State of Michigan to oversee what should be a federal permitting process.
This contested case is another avenue the Tribe is taking to protect cultural, historic and spiritual sites from damage and destruction.
Last June, an Ecuadorean court ordered the suspension of all mining activities by a Chinese corporation in the highlands of Rio Blanco, in the Molleturo area of the Cajas Nature Reserve. It was a local court in Cuenca that gave the historic sentence: a court shut down an active mine for the first time in the history of Ecuador. Judge Paúl Serrano determined that the Chinese private corporation Junefield/Ecuagoldmining South America had failed to consult with the communities as required by Ecuador’s Constitution and by the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP).
Judge Serrano deemed the mining activity illegal and ordered the corporation to immediately suspend all its activities. Within two weeks, local communities accompanied police forces and local government officials in monitoring that the court order was respected.
Police and Molleturo communities discuss procedures to monitor the suspension of mining activities. Photo: Manuela Picq
The company appealed, and pressure was on the rise for the following hearing. The Chinese corporation privately offered $18 million to community leaders. Ecuador’s President, the Minister of Mines and the Minister of the Environment visited the province to pressure the local courts and indigenous communities to accept the mining activity. They defended “sustainable” mining as a form of development.
Affected communities consolidated their resistance, monitoring the access to the mine to impede mine workers to enter their territories, building support from neighboring communities, and informing the international community of the legal stakes.
Photo: Manuela Picq
On July 23, 2018, the court met again to either ratify or revert the decision to suspend mining activities in Rio Blanco. The court listened to all sides along with some expert testimonies; but there were discrepancies among the judges who postponed their verdict for another week.
Molleturo’s lasting vigilance for their waters
The Rio Blanco mine is located in the Molleturo-Mollepongo region, above ten thousand feet in the Andes. The mining license encompasses approximately six thousand hectares of paramos, lakes, and primary forests that nourish eight important rivers. This area replenishes the water system of the Cajas National Park, one of the largest and most complex water systems of Ecuador, which covers over a million hectares and holds immense water reserves.
The area is recognized as a natural biosphere reserve by UNESCO. These mountains have long been the home of Kañari-Kichwa indigenous communities. There are 12 archeological sites in the Molleturo area alone: the most famous one is the Paredones archeological site, located right by the mine.
Photo: Manuela Picq
The area is also a vital supply of water. These paramos provide water to 72 communities in Molleturo, freshwater to towns in the southern coast of Ecuador and to the city of Cuenca, the country’s third largest city which praises the quality of its drinking water.
The Rio Blanco mine is expected to be active for seven years, removing about 800 tons of rock per day and using cyanide to extract gold and silver. This entails an estimate of one thousand liters of water per hour that would be contaminated with deadly toxic waste, including arsenic, before being thrown back into rivers and soil.
Local indigenous communities were never consulted prior to the development of the project that would benefit from a recent Ecuadorean law incentivizing foreign investment. Nor did they give their consent to the licensing of their territories to the Junefield corporation. They reject the mine because it would contaminate their waters.
Photo: Manuela Picq
Women are at the forefront of the resistance that began almost two decades ago, when the mining license was first issued. Molleturo communities have been arguing in defense of water more or less actively over the last decade and a half but stepped it up when the mine started its activity in May 2018. Protests exploded, and a group burned out the miner’s living quarters.
Nobody was hurt in the explosion, but the police intervened, heavily armed, to militarize the area. The next day, protesters called in the president of Ecuador’s Confederation of Kichwa People Peoples for help, Yaku Perez Guartambel, but workers from the mine kidnapped him for eight hours, threatening to kill him. Tensions boiled to new heights.
Prior consultation as a fundamental indigenous human right
The Judge ordered the suspension on the mine–invoking constitutional and international indigenous rights to prior consultation.
Rosa, a delegate from the Andean Network of Indigenous Organizations (CAOI), discusses the territorial dimension of self-determination to community members gathered in the páramos of the Cajas mountain range. Photo: Manuela Picq
Since 1989, Art. 6 of the International Labor Organization Convention 169 safeguards indigenous rights to prior consultation on projects taking place on indigenous territories. Art. 18 of UNDRIP establishes indigenous rights to participate in decision making relating to their territories, and Art. 19 establishes that states must consult “in good faith” to obtain indigenous “prior, free, and informed consent: about legislative of administrative measures impacting their communities. In 2016, Art. 25 of the American Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples reiterated these principles in the context of the Organization of American States.
Prior consultation is not a simple law; it constitutes a fundamental human right of indigenous peoples because their existence is intimately tied to their territories. Their culture, lifeways, and community structures are woven into territorial autonomy.
An Amicus Curiae from a Chinese environmental lawyer
About half a dozen amicus curiaes were presented to Cuenca’s court supporting the communities right to prior consultation, from a range of organizations including the Environmental Defense Law Center, Ecuador’s Ecumenic Commission of Human Rights (CEDHU) and the Ecuadorian group Critical Geographies. Amicus were presented by scholars from Ecuadorean and American universities, including Universidad Internacional del Ecuador, Universidad de Cuenca, Universidad San Francisco de Quito, American University, and Coastal Carolina University.
Environmental lawyer Jingjing Zhang, from Beijing, submitted an amicus in which she provided an overview of relevant Chinese laws and regulations. She testified to the court on July 23, 2018, explaining that China ratified the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in 2007, thus supporting prior consultation and consent for any project on their territories. She reminded the words of the Chinese delegate at the 13th Session of the UN Permanent forum on Indigenous Issues (2014): “ the international community is duty bound to fully meet the legitimate requests of indigenous peoples, to promote and protect their basic human rights and freedoms, to safeguard the natural environment and resources on which their survival depends” and China “firmly supports the promotion and protection of the basic human rights and fundamental freedoms of all indigenous peoples around the world. ”
Jingjing testifies to the court in Cuenca, July 23 2018, with an interpreter. Photo: Manuela Picq
She explained to the court that China has regulations establishing that enterprises may not violate international treaties ratified by the Chinese government and that they are bound by the laws and environmental regulations of the host country. She stated that The Communist Party of China (CPC), State Council, and various government agencies have issued policy guidelines that encourage Chinese companies to focus on ecological environmental protection in their foreign investments. In her view, the Chinese government has deep concerns on the law-abiding and environmental performance of Chinese companies operating overseas.
Her amicus concluded that China’s Environmental Protection Law, Environmental Impact Assessment Law, and the Government Information Disclosure Regulation have strict provisions on the public participation rights of citizens. These regulations are based on the same principles and contain similar provisions to the Ecuadorian norms on the rights of indigenous peoples to prior consultation.
One step forward or two sets back?
The court sentence to suspend the mine marked a milestone of hope to Indigenous peoples and nature defenders. Yet the old tactics of legal warfare are still in use. Within a week of the court sentence, over 20 nature defenders were criminalized, eight of them charged with the crime of sabotage.
The private corporation Junefield/Ecuagoldmining South America did not have to do engage in public debate, Ecuador’s government is taking the lead. It was the Ministry of the Interior who accused indigenous peoples to defend the interests of the Chinese corporation. “The state proves that it is the best lawyer of mining companies,” says Yaku Perez Guartambel.
Will the criminalization of nature defenders continue? For now, judges are holding off a final verdict, and as the clock ticks political and economic pressures thicken. Molleturo leader Fausto Castro says that communities want their right to life back, and that they seek a peaceful solution to this mining conflict. It is indeed an achievement that serious confrontations were avoided, but this may not last forever. Yesterday, when the Judge staved off sentence as hundreds of nature defenders awaited outside the courtroom, many expressed their fears: “if the court reverts its sentence to benefit the State, it is a declaration of war.”
Indigenous peoples have a deep and unique connection to the lands they inhabit. This connection has persisted throughout the world, despite centuries of colonisation, displacement and suppression of their cultural identities.
What has never been appreciated is the contemporary spatial extent of Indigenous influence – just how much of Earth’s surface do Indigenous peoples still own or manage?
Given that Indigenous peoples now make up less than 5% of the global population, you might imagine the answer to be “very little”. But you would be wrong.
In our new research, published in Nature Sustainability, we mapped Indigenous lands throughout the world, country by country. We found that these covered 38 million square kilometres – about a quarter of all land outside Antarctica.
Purple shading shows the percentage of each square degree mapped that is under indigenous management. Garnett et al. 2018
Some 87 countries around the world, on every inhabited continent, have people who identify as Indigenous and contain land that is still owned, managed or influenced by Indigenous people.
These areas are very valuable for conservation. About 65% of Indigenous lands have not been intensively developed, compared with 44% of other lands. Similarly, just 10% of the world’s urban areas, villages and non-remote croplands are on Indigenous peoples’ lands.
By contrast, Indigenous lands encompass nearly two-thirds of the world’s most remote and least-inhabited regions. These are the places with the lowest levels of built environments, crop land, pasture land, human population density, night-time lights, railways, roads and navigable waterways.
An incredible 40% of lands listed by national governments around the world as being managed for conservation are Indigenous lands. Some of this has official recognition. For instance, Australia would never meet its promises under the Convention on Biological Diversity if its Indigenous peoples had not been prepared to allocate more than 27 million hectares of their land to conservation.
A great contribution
This highlights the great contribution that Indigenous peoples are making to conservation. Many groups have instituted land-management regimes that are already delivering significant conservation benefits.
Yet there is danger in making assumptions about the aspirations of Indigenous peoples for managing their lands. Without proper consultation, conservation projects based on Indigenous stewardship may be unsuccessful at best and risk perpetuating colonial legacies at worst.
Conservation partnerships will only be successful if the rights, knowledge systems and practices of Indigenous peoples are fully acknowledged. Many Indigenous peoples have acknowledged this fact, by calling for partnerships that respect, understand and follow local processes. There is no one size that fits all – Indigenous peoples are hugely diverse.
Indeed, so important are local perspectives to Indigenous relationships with land that we pondered for a year on the ethics of creating a global map. However, we also felt that the story of enduring Indigenous influence needs to be told. Our final map shows that broad swathes of Asia, Africa, the Americas, Australia and the far north of Europe are Indigenous lands.
Adapted from Garnett et al. 2018. On every inhabited continent there is a significant overlap between Indigenous management and natural lands.
Our results are particularly important at this time when goals for sustainable development after 2020 are being developed. The results also feed into assessments by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), the international body that assesses the health of the world’s wildlife diversity and ecosystems. It is much more than biodiversity that relies on Indigenous management of land. So too do many of the ecosystem services that allow humans to thrive.
Finally, we should note that, for many countries, the areas we have mapped are the minimum – further work will almost certainly discover that Indigenous influence extends far further than is currently acknowledged.
Yet our crucial message remains the same: that Indigenous peoples hold the future of much of the world’s wilderness in their hands.
The authors acknowledge the contributions of Beau Austin, Benjamin McGowan, Eduardo S. Brondizio and Neil Burgess to this article and the research that underpins it.
Saturday July 14, 2018 – The Secwepemc Women’s Warrior Society is outraged at the arrest of Kanahus Manuel. This morning Kanahus Manuel was arrested by the RCMP, an occupying force that has been criminalizing Indigenous peoples on our own lands and forcing us onto reservations since contact.
Last week the Tiny House Warriors reclaimed an ancestral village to block the planned route of the Trans Mountain Expansion pipeline. We are currently building solarized Tiny Houses on our land to block Kinder Morgan. By doing this, we are providing housing to Secwepemc families, re-establishing our village sites, and asserting our Secwepemc responsibility to our lands and waters.
As Secwepemc women, we will resist construction on the North Thompson line of the Trans Mountain Expansion pipeline, which is expected to begin by the fall. We are re-establishing a permanent village on our land that the pipeline is trespassing without our consent. We have never provided and will never provide our collective free, prior and informed consent – the minimal international standard – to the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain Pipeline Project or the Man Camps. We are taking a stand against the destructive, genocidal, and assimilative forces that have been visited upon us by colonial Canadian governments since first contact.
We have faced intimidation by the white supremacist RCMP and Park ranger goons of the Canadian state who want us removed from our own lands. We are on Secwepemc lands that neither the federal government nor provincial government has any jurisdiction on. While there is much talk by the federal government about respecting Indigenous rights and reconciliation, the Trans Mountain buy-out expansion and arrest of Secwepemc woman warrior Kanahus Manuel is a declaration of war.
We are Secwepemc women. We are still here. We are unafraid. We carry the waters of our lands within us. We are guided by the warrior spirit of our ancestors. We will defend our lands and lives by any means necessary!
– STATEMENT BY SECWEPEMC WOMEN’S WARRIOR SOCIETY
Saturday July 14, 2018
Unsurrendered Secwepemc territories
The authors acknowledge the contributions of Beau Austin, Benjamin McGowan, Eduardo S. Brondizio and Neil Burgess to this article and the research that underpins it.