As the Glasgow climate conference begins, and the time we have to avert a climate crisis narrows, it is time to revisit successful First Nations campaigns against the fossil fuel industry.
Like the current fight to avert a climate catastrophe, these battles are good, old-fashioned, come-from-behind, David-versus-Goliath examples we can all learn from. The Jabiluka campaign is a good example.
In the late 1990s, a mining company, Energy Resources of Australia, was planning to expand its Kakadu uranium mine into Jabiluka, land belonging to Mirarr Traditional Owners in the Northern Territory. The adjacent Ranger Uranium mine had been operating for 20 years without Traditional Owners’ consent and against their wishes, causing long-term cultural and environmental destruction.
But the expansion of the mine ultimately failed, thanks to an extraordinary campaign by the Traditional Owners, led by Yvonne Margarula and a relative, the lead author of this article, Jacqui Katona (a Djok woman).
In recognition of our work, we shared the 1999 Goldman Environmental Prize, one of the most prestigious international grassroots environmental awards.
Yvonne Margarula and Jacqui Katona after accepting the Goldman Environmental Prize for grassroots activism, Island Nations 1998.Provided by author.
The campaign included a huge on-site protest camp, shareholder action and significant overseas support (including from the European Parliament, US Congress and an expert committee to UNESCO). It also included a blockade of the mine site – one of the biggest blockades Australia had ever seen.
These are valuable lessons for those wanting to take decisive action against the fossil fuel industry. Here are six ways to learn from our experience:
1. Put pressure on the financial sector
Continuous pressure on companies in the financial sector (such as banks), which are complicit in the success of fossil fuel companies, can have an impact. This can be done by exposing their involvement with fossil fuels and pressuring them to be held accountable for these partnerships.
One of the most successful actions of the Jabiluka campaign was the coordination of protests at Westpac, which financed the mine’s owner, Energy Resources of Australia. Not only did protesters raise awareness about Westpac’s investment at local branches, they created bureaucratic chaos by opening and closing bank accounts.
This resulted in a corporate shift in Westpac towards better accountability on issues affecting First Nations people. Coordinated protests like this are an effective way to empower people to participate in positive action for change.
First Nations campaigns against mining and other fossil fuel companies show the single most important factor in successful protests is leadership by politically powerful organisations or alliances.
In the Jabiluka campaign, Katona and Margarula were successful in large part because of their insistence on a Mirrar-led campaign forming strong alliances with powerful unions, environmental groups and other national and international organisations.
Shareholders were then able to have some influence over corporate responsibility and accountability, including the appointment of a sustainable development manager. While the government ultimately amended the Corporations Act to make such actions more difficult, this nevertheless shows that creative direct action can be successful in holding corporations accountable.
4. Win over the right people
When Rio Tinto detonated 46,000-year-old rock shelters at Juukan Gorge on the traditional land of the Puutu Kunti Kurrama and Pinikura peoples last year, it was not only public outcry that led to the resignation of three senior executives, including the chief executive.
Katona led the Jabiluka campaign while a mother to two small children, juggling local work with international activism. She was jailed for trespassing on Aboriginal land. She was hospitalised with complications from lupus, which required a long recovery.
Be strategic about your participation in high-energy campaigns and find ways to support the efforts of key activists. But also know the fight against the fossil fuel industry takes more effort than just changing your social media profile picture.
There is no perfect time, or single solution, to campaigning for a better future. The power of people is a resource which often delivers inspiration to disrupt and needs to be nurtured.
6. Believe you can win
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities have faced hundreds of years of colonisation, industrial desecration of their sacred lands, and destruction of their Country. However in many cases, they have won battles against the odds.
The Mirrar faced a discriminatory system which sidelined their interests in Kakadu for more than 20 years. But they continued their fight to protect Country, and ultimately succeeded in preventing Jabiluka’s expansion.
So take heart and don’t give up. This is a fight that can be won.
Media contact: Jennifer Wickham, 778-210-0067, yintahaccess@gmail.com Gidimt’en Checkpoint Media Coordinator
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE NOVEMBER 22, 2021
WET’SUWET’EN TERRITORY, SMITHERS, BC: Twenty people who were arrested in a two-day violent raid on Wet’suwet’en territory are appearing at BC Supreme Court in Prince George today at 11 am. Those arrested include Gidimt’en Checkpoint spokesperson Sleydo’ and Dinï ze’ Woos’s daughter Jocelyn Alec, as well as two journalists.
Those arrested are all facing charges of civil contempt for breaching the terms of a BC Supreme Court injunction granted to Coastal GasLink (CGL). CGL is seeking a number of conditions of release, including denying many arrestees access to a vast area of Wet’suwet’en territories. The proposed ‘exclusion zone’ is the whole Morice West Forest Service Road or any other areas accessed by the Morice Forest Service Road. Wet’suwet’en people (as determined by CGL) may be exempt from the exclusion zone for “cultural activities” (as defined by the RCMP), while being subjected to ‘culture-free zones’ around CGL work sites.
CGL is also asking Sleydo’ to provide documentation to “prove” she is Wet’suwet’en, and is seeking conditions that would bar her from returning to her home on Wet’suwet’en Yintah where her, her husband Cody Merriman (Haida nation, who was also arrested), and her three children live. CGL is also challenging Chief Woos’s daughter Jocelyn Alec’s status as a Wet’suwet’en person because she has Indian Act status with her mother’s First Nation. The Indian Act is patriarchal and does not determine identity or belonging to a community.
According to Jen Wickham, media coordinator of Gidimt’en Checkpoint: “Coastal GasLink’s proposed conditions of release are punitive, unreasonable and, in targeting Sleydo’ and Jocelyn, completely racist and sexist. Allowing a private corporation to determine two Indigenous womens’ identities and allowing this corporation to deny our inherent rights to be Wet’suwet’en on our territory is a very dangerous precedent. This is the colonial gendered violence that is the root of the crisis of MMIWG2S. Even though Coastal GasLink is trying to intimidate us through the colonial court system, we are Wet’suwet’en Strong. Under the governance of our Hereditary Chiefs, there will be no pipeline on our Yintah.”
In granting an injunction to Coastal GasLink, Justice Church recognized that the Wet’suwet’en are “posing significant constitutional questions” but said that “this is not the venue for that analysis.” However, the 1997 Supreme Court of Canada Delgamuukw-Gisdaywa ruling clearly affirmed that Aboriginal title – the right to exclusively use and occupy land – has never been extinguished across 55,000 square kilometers of Wet’suwet’en and Gitxsan territories.
States Grand Chief Stewart Phillip, President of the Union of BC Indian Chiefs: “Industry’s reliance on the racist and oppressive legal weapon of injunctions is a way to maintain the continued dispossession and criminalization of Indigenous peoples. Indigenous peoples should not have to comply with industry and government decisions that deny our Indigenous rights. By dragging us through court and using injunctions against us, our Indigenous rights are being violated and are given less consideration than climate-destroying corporations. We are calling for the release of all Wet’suwet’en land defenders, and for BC and Canada to uphold Indigenous Title and Rights and institute a moratorium on fossil fuel expansion in the wake of clear and present climate catastrophe – including LNG which is not clean energy and is a non-renewable fossil fuel.”
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This morning, members of the Gidimt’en Clan evicted Coastal GasLink (CGL) employees from unceded Wet’suwet’en territory, upholding ancient Wet’suwet’en trespass laws and an eviction notice first served to CGL in 2020 by the Wet’suwet’en Hereditary Chiefs.
Employees were granted 8 hours to peacefully evacuate the area, before the main road into the Lhudis Bin territory of the Gidimt’en clan was closed.
Sleydo’, Gidimt’en spokesperson, commented on the eviction enforcement:
“The Wet’suwet’en hereditary chiefs have never ceded, surrendered, or lost in war, title to this territory. That means that what they say goes. The eviction order from January 4th, 2020 says that CGL has to remove themselves from the territory and not return. They have been violating this law for too long.”
Today also marks Day 50 of the establishment of Coyote Camp, where Gidimt’en members, under the direction of Chief Woos, have reoccupied Cas Yikh territory and succesfully blocked Coastal Gaslink’s efforts to drill beneath Wet’suwet’en Headwaters.
In early 2020, Wet’suwet’en Hereditary Chiefs from all five clans of the nation issued and enforced an eviction notice against CGL, sparking nationwide solidarity protests and paralyzing pipeline work throughout Wet’suwet’en land.
Today, November 14, 2021, the Wet’suwet’en Hereditary Chiefs’ eviction was again enforced.
The 1997 Supreme Court of Canada ruling in the Delgamuukw-Gisdaywa court case affirmed that Aboriginal title – the right to exclusively use and occupy land – has never been extinguished across 55,000km2 of Wet’suwet’en and Gitxsan territories. Despite this, in 2019 and again in 2020, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) have trespassed onto Wet’suwet’en territory and undertaken a series of militarized assaults, enacting violent arrests and following the orders of fossil fuel behemoth TC Energy.
Sleydo’ continued:
“Wetlands have been destroyed. Our animals have been sick. We need to protect what is left for all the future generations. Wet’suwet’en law pre-dates Colonial Law. It has existed since time began in our territories, and we have that same fighting spirit that our ancestors fought so hard to keep alive in us so that we would be able to defend our future generations, this land and this water.”
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In 2016, Greenland’s then minister responsible for economic development, Vittus Qujaukitsoq, welcomed the appointment of Rex Tillerson, the former CEO of Exxon Mobil, as US secretary of state. Despite representing the centre-Left party Siumut (Forward) and being surrounded by some of the most visible consequences of the warming world, Qujaukitsoq and his colleagues saw the growing potential for mining and drilling brought by the melting glaciers on the world’s biggest island as an opportunity to bring in the cash which would allow the long-desired independence from Denmark.
They aren’t alone. While the melting of Arctic ice is causing the world’s oceans to overflow and disrupting its weather systems, it has also unleashed a whole new geopolitical race. Earlier this year, the US Geological Survey estimated that the region’s rocks contain 13% of the world’s undiscovered oil, and 30% of undiscovered gas – carbon sinks which have been greedily eyed up by states and oil companies alike. And many of these reserves lie in the seas west of Greenland – where there are an estimated 17.5 billion undiscovered barrels of oil, enough to supply the whole planet for six months, at current usage rates.
And because the Arctic is the fastest warming part of the planet, the ice shielding these prehistoric deposits from prying drills is thinning, and disappearing, at an alarming rate.
But if some see this as an opportunity, others understand the absurdity of using climate change as a means to extract more fossil fuels and further change the climate. And this, alongside broader questions about mining, have shaped politics in the country this year.
In the spring, the governing Siumut party split, and its liberal coalition partners, the Democrats, resigned from the government, triggering a snap election in May.
The winner was the eco-socialist party Inuit Ataqatigiit. And in June, the new government banned all future oil and gas exploration from Greenland’s territory.
“The price of oil extraction is too high. This is based upon economic calculations, but considerations of the impact on climate and the environment also play a central role in the decision,” the government stated in July.
It’s not just oil and gas drilling that are contentious. When Donald Trump notoriously inquired about purchasing the island in 2019, he’d just had a briefing on its deposits of a number of minerals, many of which are likely to play a crucial role in the geopolitics of the coming decades. Among these are large quantities of uranium, and what are thought to be the world’s second biggest reserves of rare earth minerals – demand for which has soared in recent years because of their use in batteries for electric cars, computer chips and other tools of the high tech, low carbon economy.
Seen that way, Trump’s statement was probably less a random outburst and more a crude expression of the reality of Greenland’s role in the future of global geopolitics.
Biden, as ever, works in more subtle ways. In February, in discussion with tech giants like Alphabet (Google) and Facebook, he signed an executive order instigating a review of the supply chain of rare earth metals due to a global shortage and China’s dominance of the market. It seems implausible that the review won’t have produced significant discussion in US intelligence circles about the world’s largest deposits outside China, just a few hundred miles from Maine.
In March, the Polar Research and Policy Initiative expressed concerns about “the security implications of China’s near monopoly of rare earths and other minerals for the UK and its North American, European and Pacific allies”, especially given their significance to “strategically important sectors such as defence and security, green energy and technology”. The think tank called on the ‘five eyes’ intelligence alliance between the US, UK, Australia, New Zealand and Canada to team up with Greenland as part of a strategic resources partnership.
Greenland, says the website Mining Technology, “could be vital for tipping the scales in a trade war between global superpowers”.
In the midst of this global gallop for Greenland, with the world’s major powers, billionaire investors and intelligence agencies getting in on the act, the country has had some coverage in the global media of late.
What is often left out of the conversation, however, is the fascinating domestic dynamics among this Arctic island’s 57,000 people. Greenlanders’ struggle for sovereignty in the context of global capitalism, extractivism and climate collapse is an inspiring example of 21st-century indigenous resistance.
A young socialist indigenous climate leader
“There are two issues that have been important in this election campaign: people’s living conditions is one. And then there is our health and the environment,” Inuit Ataqatigiit leader Múte Bourup Egede told the Greenlandic public broadcaster KNR following his election victory in April.
Egede, 34, is the youngest prime minister Greenland’s had since it achieved a degree of home rule in the 1970s, and has led the democratic socialist and pro-independence party since 2018.
In the recent election, the party, known as IA, centred its campaign on its opposition to an international mining project by Greenland Minerals, an Australian-based and Chinese-owned company that is seeking to extract uranium and neodymium from the Kvanefjeld mine in the south of the country. Neodymium is a crucial component of a broad range of technologies, from some kinds of wind turbine to electric cars, because it can be used to make small, lightweight, but powerful and permanent magnets, while uranium is used for both nuclear power and nuclear weapons.
“We must listen to the voters who are worried. We say no to uranium mining,” Egede told the KNR. His party also promised to ban all explorations of radioactive deposits, and, while it does not oppose the mining of rare earth minerals in principle, it insists it must be better regulated.
Egede and the IA won 37% of the vote, ending the tenure of Siumut, the party which had been in power for most of the time since 1979. Siumut was supportive of the Kvanefjeld mining project, assisting Greenland Minerals to gain preliminary approval and ending a previous zero tolerance policy for uranium mining.
There is now a bill being debated in the Greenland parliament to ban the uranium mining project and all mining that contains radioactive by-products.
According to Mark Nuttall, an anthropologist at the University of Alberta and the head of the Climate and Society research programme at the Greenland Climate Research Centre: “This [election] has sent shivers down the spine of many mining executives as to what kind of future mining would take place in Greenland.”
Under the direction of Egede, the IA-led government has also taken several significant steps in recent months to curb fossil fuel production.
Last week in Glasgow, Egede announced that Greenland will be joining the Paris Agreement. In 2016, under the leadership of Siumut, Greenland had invoked a territorial exemption to the climate agreement when Denmark joined.
Greenland, which is technically a self-governing territory of Denmark, claimed at the time that the country was dependent on its oil, gas and natural mineral reserves for its economy.
“The Arctic region is one of the areas on our planet where the effects of global warming are felt the most, and we believe that we must take responsibility collectively. That means that we, too, must contribute our share,” Egede said last week.
Egede’s government also pledged to develop its renewable energy capability, especially hydropower: “Greenland has hydropower resources that exceed our country’s needs. These large hydropower resources can be utilised in collaboration with national and international investors who need large amounts of cheap and renewable energy.”
The Northwest Passage
The rush for the rare earth minerals vital to so many low carbon technologies isn’t the only way that climate change is moving the country from the periphery of global geopolitics to its core. When the huge container ship the Ever Given blocked the Suez Canal in March, the world was reminded how much of its trade passes through its two major transcontinental waterways – Suez and Panama.
As much of the Arctic Ocean becomes ice-free for greater parts of the year, new potential trade routes open up, most significantly, the Northwest Passage across the top of North America, and the Northern Sea Route, above Eurasia.
The vast majority of Greenland’s settlements – including the capital, Nuuk – lie on the west coast of the country, along the Labrador Sea and Baffin Bay. When travelling from Asia or western North America to Europe or the east coast of North America through the Northwest Passage, this is the final stretch, positioning Nuuk as a potential hub on a future major shipping route.
The struggle for sovereignty
Nearly 90% of the population of Greenland are indigenous Inuit people, who have inhabited the island for thousands of years. Although they’ve been colonised for the last thousand years by Nordic powers, they have maintained their own language and culture.
Norsemen first settled on the island in the tenth century, and in 1261 Greenland formally became part of Norway. In 1814 Greenland became a Danish territory – and in 1953 the island became fully integrated into the Danish state. (During World War II, when Denmark was conquered by the Nazis, Greenland was de facto under US control.)
“The official Danish view was that Greenland was actually a dependency; it wasn’t a colony in the sense of its colonies in the West Indies and other places,” Nuttall explained. This, he said, was “because of this historic view that Greenland had long been part of this Nordic Commonwealth from the Norse settlements of the tenth century onwards”.
But the Inuit people don’t always see it that way. During the Black Lives Matter global movement in 2020, younger Greenlanders, including the 21-year-old hip hop artist Josef Tarrak-Petrussen, called for the removal of Danish colonial statues in Nuuk.
Denmark finally granted home rule in 1979. And in 2008 Greenland voted in favour of the Self-Government Act, which transferred more power to the island’s government – and effectively marked the beginning of state formation.
This self rule act recognises Greenland as a nation with the right to independence if it chooses it. Currently Greenland has nearly full sovereignty, with the exception of the areas of foreign policy and defence. The Arctic island currently receives an annual grant of around $585m from Denmark.
In recent years, questions around sovereignty have in many ways defined the political and environmental policies of the island. Many of the political parties support independence.
However, this financial dependence on Denmark makes the prospect of full independence quite difficult: the grant accounts for nearly 20% of the island’s income, while fishing makes up around 90% of its exports.
In order to gain full autonomy from Denmark, Greenland needs to develop a self-sufficient economy. However, this likely requires the development of lucrative extractive industries which will deepen the island’s dependence on (foreign) international capital.
“If we go back ten years, mining was seen as the major way to [become politically independent], and there was great excitement,” said Nuttall.
However in recent years this attitude towards mining has changed considerably due to a host of factors including a downturn in global commodity markets, a greater emphasis on renewable energy and attention given to the climate crisis.
“Mining is going to be one pillar of an economic development strategy that will include other things such as the development of tourism, expansion of the fishing industry… and expanding renewables,” Nuttall explained.
The current government is now focusing on investments in the island’s enormous hydropower potential, which has the potential to grow as glaciers melt and which will allow a reduction in petrol imports, one of the country’s main expenses. Kalistat Lund, the minister for agriculture, self-sufficiency, energy and environment, stated that the government is “working to attract new investments for the large hydropower potential that we cannot exploit ourselves”.
The island is also currently expanding its airports and promoting tourism. Currently the only flights available to Greenland are from Reykjavik or Copenhagen.
Greenland often appears in discussions about climate change – usually in the context of films of starving polar bears, adorable Arctic foxes and rutting muskox; or melting glaciers diverting the Gulf Stream and raising global sea levels, flooding cities across the planet. Ice cores from Greenland, like those of Antarctica, help us understand historic variations in the composition of our atmosphere and in our climate, and have been vital for scientists’ understanding of the science of climate change.
These things are all true, and each Arctic species being pushed to extinction by the warming of the world is a tragedy. But what’s also true is that Greenland is home to tens of thousands of people, with their own history and culture, politics and organisations; a people who, after a thousand years of colonisation, are starting to assert both their independence from Denmark and their sovereignty in the face of the global market. And, who, along with other indigenous communities around the world, are starting to lead a fightback against the industrial, extractive capitalism that’s killing the planet.
Editor’s note: This struggle continues and we will continue to cover it. Deep Green Resistance against civilization is the only way to prevail. It “will not go quietly into the night.” – William Shakespeare
Representatives of India’s Adivasi (Indigenous) people have denounced PM Narendra Modi for proclaiming his green credentials at COP, whilst simultaneously planning a massive expansion of coal mining on their lands.
The lands and livelihoods of tens of thousands of tribal people will be destroyed under Modi’s plan to open 55 new coal mines, expand 193 existing ones, and produce 1 billion tonnes of coal a year. Eighty per cent of the new mines will be on Adivasi land.
Vast areas of tribal forests are being sold off without the people’s consent. Corporations including Adani, Jindal and Vedanta are snapping up coalfields which are being auctioned as part of Modi’s coal rush.
One of the areas targeted is the priceless Hasdeo Forest in Chhattisgarh, home to twenty thousand Adivasis. Two mines are already operational there, and a third, Parsa, has just been approved. The Parsa mine will be operated by mining giant Adani, whose subsidiary was recently announced as a sponsor of London’s Science Museum.
Shakuntala, an Oraon leader from Hasdeo, said: “If the mine comes to Hasdeo forest, the entire region, including the Adivasi villages will be destroyed. The forest gives us everything we need – if the mine is opened there will be nothing left. Everything will be uprooted. The Earth is our Mother. We are the sons and daughters of the Earth. So how can we watch anyone destroy our Mother? We are ready to give our lives for Mother Earth.
“Whenever the government wants, it gives our land away for industries and coal mining. So we Adivasis are not free. We do not accept this slavery. We will give everything we have to resist this slavery: our bodies, our souls, our lives, but we will never accept it. We will not give our forests and lands away. If we do, the Adivasi existence will be lost forever.”
Phillip, an Oraon activist. His people’s land (behind him) has been sliced in two by a giant coal mine.
Phillip, an Oraon activist from Jharkhand, said: “We Adivasi people can save the Earth… but they see no value for this. They just want us to be dead… That waste dump you see behind me, that is how Modi sees us Adivasis. I want to say to Modi: You cannot sit in power long. To Adani and Ambani: big corporations like you people need to also pay attention. We Adivasi people will not just leave our lands to you. Because, if anything can save the world, it is the worldview of the Adivasi people. There is no other way. You are destroying the environment, which is Adivasi people’s life, by mining. Hear me straight: Change yourself, or nature will change you for the better.”
Athram, a Gond lawyer and leader from Andhra Pradesh, said: “Now, there is a world COP summit going on, and I want to warn the COP leaders attending the summit: You talk about environmental protection, but Adivasi people are the real protectors of the environment. The government is bringing in so many projects to destroy Adivasi people. The environment is getting destroyed. Our culture, our lifestyle and our forests are being destroyed by this government.
“The same leaders of the government go to these summits, to lie that ‘I save the environment’ and so on. How big a lie can they get away with? Destroying our communities and destroying environment by imposing destructive projects on our lands, is against the [Paris] agreement. Here you are destroying our people and there [Glasgow] you are speaking about environment protection as if you are protecting it on your own. Why are you lying like this? We Adivasis… can take care of our lands; we know how to protect it. We want our lands, our territory. Who are you? You sit somewhere in Delhi and then go to meetings like this and speak as if you are a “great environmental protector.” Don’t lie like this.”
And Mukesh, a Ho activist from Jharkhand, said: “I want to send this message to the COP leaders who are of the opinion that they can save our environment, while also continuing to push mining and industrialization. Because of mining, our forests will be deforested, our rivers silted up. If our forests and ecosystems, which are our schools, are destroyed, then our knowledge will also be destroyed. If our knowledge gets destroyed, the future of the planet will be in danger. So, that’s why, to save the planet, you have to save the Adivasi people living in their ecosystems.”
Survival recently launched, in collaboration with Adivasi representatives, its Adivasis Against Coal campaign, to press the Indian authorities to stop coal mining on Adivasi land without their consent.
This week, governments from around the world will convene online for the first part of the UN Biodiversity Summit COP15 (the second part will take place partially in-person in Kunming in spring), which will agree on the post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework. Framed as a ‘stepping stone’ to the 2050 Vision of ‘Living in harmony with nature’ as part of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), ratified by 196 countries, this framework is intended to deal with runaway biodiversity loss over the next decade.
Increased attention is being paid to how Indigenous peoples have for centuries realised this aspiration of harmony. Indigenous peoples manage or have rights to 22% of the world’s land, yet this land supports 80% of the world’s biodiversity, even as they struggle to regain ancestral lands that were taken from them in many places. What is less recognised is how Indigenous understanding and perception of reality upholds this harmony.
The CBD meeting three years ago promised greater inclusion of Indigenous peoples and traditional knowledge, and there is much discussion of these issues ahead of COP15. The CBD developed the Akwé: Kon Guidelines in 2004 and further deepened involvement with the launch of a Traditional Knowledge Information Portal. Despite this progress, when mainstreaming of biodiversity into the energy sector was discussed by CBD parties in 2017, the negative impacts of hydropower dams were discussed in biodiversity and ecosystem terms, paying mere lip service to Indigenous rights.
A narrowly technical understanding of hydropower – passed off as “scientific” – underestimates how culture supports economies, conservation and utility for Indigenous peoples living in river basins. When external experts interpret Indigenous knowledge without the context of Indigenous perception of reality (ontology), they fail to grasp its importance. What is needed is an incorporation of Indigenous understanding of reality when discussing biodiversity in Indigenous territories, in order to manage ecosystems better.
The Salween through Indigenous eyes
The Salween River is one of the few major rivers in Asia who still flows freely and uninterrupted by large-scale dams. Roughly 2,400 kilometres long, the Salween flows from the Tibetan Plateau through Yunnan into Myanmar, briefly touching Thailand. The river supports some of the most biodiverse areas in the world and is home to diverse Indigenous groups including the Akha, Blang, Derung, Hmong, Kachin, Karen, Karenni, Kokang, Lahu, Lisu, Mon, Nu, Palaung (T’arng), Pa’O, Shan, Tibetan, Yao, and Wa.
As custodians of the Salween River, community members maintain a spiritual relationship with the Salween, as our ancestors have done since they descended from the Tibetan Plateau many centuries ago. For us, the Salween is home to countless important spirits who are intermediaries between our human societies and the environment around us. She supports the sacred animal and plant species who populate our cosmos and carries the memories of our ancestors whose lives were intertwined with the river. Our relationship with the spirits is maintained and the memories of our ancestors kept alive by our continuous interaction with the Salween River. She is the backbone of our traditional knowledge and practices.
This is a wider understanding of the river than a mere provider of ‘ecosystem services’ that sustains our ‘livelihoods’. In our Indigenous understanding and perception of reality, developed over generations of living in the Salween basin, we don’t make a distinction between plants, animals, humans and more-than-humans such as spirits and ancestral spirits. This interconnectedness remains strong because the Salween is a free-flowing river.
These connections are reflected in Indigenous land, water and natural resource management across the Salween basin. As has been noted with reference to the Htee K’Sah guardian spirits of the water in S’gaw Karen ontology in the journal Pacific Conservation Biology,
“Karen environmental governance consists of social relations and ceremonial obligations with more-than-humans… It is through relations with the K‘Sah that Karen villagers relate to the water and land itself, and humans’ rights to use the land are contingent on maintaining these ritual obligations.”
Indigenous knowledge systems lead to better conservation
Our customary water governance traditions include stewardship practices, hunting and fishing restrictions, and ceremonial protocols that have fostered harmony with nature and safeguarded biodiversity. Our river is inhabited and protected by guardian spirits. In sanctuary areas, prayer ceremonies are performed to protect the fish and harm those who fish there. Our traditional watershed management systems designate ecologically sensitive areas such as ridges, watersheds and old growth forests, where the cutting back of forest is prohibited.
The benefits of traditional knowledge and practices for biodiversity thus come from the cultivation of a harmonious relationship between humans and more-than-humans, which is why sacred areas – an old tree or an entire mountain or river – must be protected. The ongoing relevance of such traditional knowledge and practices can be seen in the Salween Peace Park, an Indigenous initiative in Karen state that was awarded the 2020 UNDP Equator Prize. Around 75% of the forests, mountains and rivers that constitute the 1.4-million-acre area is managed according to traditional ‘kaw’ customary knowledge that combines spirituality, culture and conservation. This combination characterises Indigenous knowledge and is at the heart of Indigenous identity even when people have adopted ‘formal’ religions.
Indigenous knowledge and practices that are beneficial for biodiversity cannot be separated from Indigenous understanding and perception of reality. The inseparability of Indigenous ontology, Indigenous knowledge and Indigenous practices is hard to recognise for people living outside these ontologies. It is not possible to capture or preserve our Indigenous knowledge in a museum or a book. What meditation and prayer in a house of worship is for other religions, for us is the interaction with the Salween River. Our knowledge regenerates from our interaction with our environment, especially at the countless natural sacred sites and auspicious confluence points where the Salween meets its tributaries. We see her as a living entity.
Uninterrupted interconnectedness is key for the Salween
There are plans for seven Chinese-built dams along the Salween River, which has been a source of friction between Myanmar and China, as well as the current and previous governments and Indigenous groups. If the Salween River is dammed, it will strike at the heart of our cultures and beliefs. The severance of the river itself and the cascade of consequences will be the death knell for our traditional knowledge and practices for three reasons.
Firstly, the Salween responds to seasonal snowmelt and monsoon rains. Altering these variations in her flow affects the river’s ecology, severing people’s interdependency with the river by causing a decline in local river-linked livelihoods such as fisheries and agriculture. If these are disrupted, young people will have no choice but to take up professions disconnected from the river or move away. Less interaction and cohabitation with the river over time weakens Indigenous knowledge systems.
In the Karen context, Lu Htee Hta is one of the most important ceremonies performed as part of our relationship with the water, a ‘founders’ ritual’ which maintains a social contract with the more-than-human owners of the water and land. If the next generation is not able to conduct these rituals, the social contract will be broken. Without the continuous interactions between animals, humans and non-humans in the Salween basin, Indigenous knowledge will cease, and with it practices that have sustained the rich biodiversity we see today.
Secondly, dam-induced changes to the river’s rhythms, levels and nutrition will reduce the numbers and ranges of many sacred aquatic species that are strictly protected in the traditional management systems of the Salween, including the fish Nya Moo, Nya Ter Taw, and Nya Pla (Neolissochilus sp.). For instance, a reddish species of Nya P’tay is regarded as the king of all fish and killing them, we believe, will result in the extinction of fish species and water scarcity and drought. The Salween is home to a diversity of turtles greater than any other river in the world, and we regard a number of them as sacred.
Mainstream dams will also affect river-based sites considered sacred, such as the Thawthi Kho watershed area, threatening the effective protected status of waterbodies rich in biodiversity such as spring-fed pools, mud beds, waterfalls, rapids and islands. If these sacred natural sites run dry or flood in unusual ways, people will believe that the spirits may become angry and cause accidents and illness in nearby communities, or leave the river altogether, stripping these sites of protection.
Third, if our Salween is fragmented by dams, this will disrupt the flow, interconnection and relationship between all beings that depended on it. This upsets the balance in the river, which in turn upsets the balance between the river, humans and more-than-humans. It is the wholeness of the river – connecting beginning to end; past to present; humans to more-than-humans – that makes her the backbone of our belief systems. This gives her a sacred meaning as an indivisible living entity that supports our Indigenous cosmos.
Recognition and action for Indigenous ontologies
We draw hope from recent developments that have seen the central importance of free-flowing rivers in Indigenous ontologies being increasingly recognised, including by parties to the CBD. In 2017, New Zealand acknowledged the sacred status of the Whanganui River in Maori ontology by giving the river legal personhood. Through this act, New Zealand recognised the Whanganui as “an indivisible and living whole, comprising the Whanganui River from the mountains to the sea, incorporating its tributaries and all its physical and metaphysical elements”. New Zealand acknowledged “the enduring concept of Te Awa Tupua – the inseparability of the people and the River” thereby echoing the ancient Maori proverb: “The Great River flows from the mountains to the sea. I am the River and the River is me.”
According to the New Zealand attorney general in charge of the process, their most difficult challenge was getting the country’s European-descendant majority “to see the world through Maori eyes”. While rivers have since been recognised as living entities in CBD member countries such as Ecuador, Bangladesh and Canada, many other CBD members are still severing the flow of rivers sacred to Indigenous Peoples. In our own country, Myanmar, the military junta recently announced a fresh push to dam the Salween River.
Participants at the COP15 of the Convention on Biological Diversity should move beyond previous calls for ‘participation by’ and ‘consultation with’ Indigenous Peoples to recognise ontological diversity in order to safeguard biodiversity in Indigenous territories. To play an effective role in addressing the biodiversity crisis, we have to be able to sustain our own ‘Ecological Civilisation’.
Parties to the CBD should consider legislation that recognises legal personhood and rights of rivers considered sacred to Indigenous Peoples and incorporate Rights of Nature into the post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework. Parties should also translate the Akwé: Kon Guidelines into their national laws so that these guidelines become more relevant. Through enabling more research into Indigenous ontologies and their spiritual relationship with rivers, the CBD Secretariat should help to foster a better understanding of who a river is in the ontology of Indigenous Peoples.
Above all, parties to the CBD should, in their effort to mainstream biodiversity in the energy sector, commit to excluding large-scale hydropower as an energy option for rivers such as the Salween which are sacred and culturally significant to Indigenous Peoples.
