Featured image: Two recently constructed temples serve as the centerpiece of the Garifuna community of Vallecito. Image by Christopher Clark for Mongabay.
The Garifuna, an Afro-indigenous ethnic group, have inhabited eastern Honduras since the late 18th century, collectively owning and conserving large tracts of Honduras’s rich coastal ecosystems.
In recent decades both their way of life and their ancestral lands have been increasingly threatened by the relentless encroachment of powerful private interests in Honduras’s burgeoning tourism and biofuel industries.
The Garifuna have been mounting a resistance, aided in part by a network of community radio stations.
In addition to serving up traditional music and shows on health and nutrition, domestic violence, substance abuse, and other topics, the stations have helped raise the profile of people struggling to protect indigenous lands and ways of life and serve as a strong means of mobilization, according to local activists.
LA CEIBA, Honduras — In the small, sky-blue studio at the Faluma Bimetu community radio station, 32-year-old Cesar Benedict reaches for the controls and slowly fades out the fast percussive rhythms and flighty guitar of a well-known Garifuna praise song. He leans his considerable bulk closer to the microphone and delivers a clipped message about the threat of deforestation and global warming in Honduras. Then he adeptly fades the track back in.Located in the rural village of Triunfo de la Cruz, in Honduras’s Atlántida department along the country’s palm-fringed northern Caribbean coast, Faluma Bimetu broadcasts the plight of the Garifuna people. The station’s name means “sweet coconut” in the distinctive Garifuna language.The Garifuna are a unique Afro-indigenous ethnic group descended from mutinous West African slaves and indigenous Carib and Arawak groups that dispersed across parts of South America and the Caribbean. The Garifuna have inhabited this part of Honduras since the late 18thcentury, collectively owning and conserving large tracts of Honduras’s rich coastal ecosystems and sustaining themselves on subsistence agriculture and small-scale fishing.
In recent decades, however, both their way of life and their ancestral lands have been increasingly threatened by the relentless encroachment of powerful private interests in Honduras’s burgeoning tourism and biofuel industries.
According to reports from organizations including Global Witness and Amnesty International, Garifuna communities along the Honduran coast have routinely faced threats, harassment and gross human rights violations. Faluma Bimetu was set up in 1997 in response to the murder of three local land activists.
Cesar Benedict looks out to sea in Triunfo de la Cruz. Image by Christopher Clark for Mongabay.
Benedict was born here in Triunfo de la Cruz. When he was just 11 years old, he decided it was time to “join the social struggle,” as he puts it, to help protect the Garifuna’s land and culture against what he saw as an onslaught by external forces. He started volunteering at Faluma Bimetu, carrying out various menial tasks after school and picking up a few tricks of the trade from the radio hosts, who included his older brother.
Today, Benedict is Faluma Bimetu’s hardworking director. With no salary and minimal funding, he manages a team of seven radio hosts and oversees a 24-hour schedule that includes shows on health and nutrition, domestic violence and substance abuse, the environment, youth and women’s leadership development, religion and spirituality, and traditional music.
A “strong means of mobilization”
Benedict quickly creates a playlist to cover the next hour of his show, then we duck out for a short tour of Triunfo de la Cruz, a village of approximately 2,000 inhabitants characterized by pastel-colored wooden houses divided by uneven dirt roads. The sound of Benedict’s music selection pours through the open windows of many of the households we pass.
Benedict says that Faluma Bimetu, which broadcasts almost exclusively in Garifuna, plays a pivotal role in both informing and mobilizing the community of Triunfo de la Cruz. “I’d go so far as to say that the radio has saved the life of this community. Without it, I’m not sure we’d still be here,” he said.
To illustrate his point, Benedict cites a 2016 judgment by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, an international appeals court in Costa Rica for countries in the Americas. The judgment found the state of Honduras responsible for the violation of collective ownership rights and a lack of judicial protection in Triunfo de la Cruz and the nearby Garifuna community of Punta Piedra, after the municipal government sold off Garifuna land to private developers.
Benedict believes that Faluma Bimetu was crucial in raising awareness of the case and reiterating the importance of conserving ancestral lands. Recordings of on-air discussions that included call-ins from aggrieved local residents were also submitted to the court as evidence.
Miriam Miranda, a prominent Garifuna activist and the general coordinator of the Black Fraternal Organization of Honduras (OFRANEH), sits in her office in the city of La Ceiba. Image by Christopher Clark for Mongabay.
Miriam Miranda is a prominent Garifuna activist and the general coordinator of the Black Fraternal Organization of Honduras (OFRANEH is its Spanish acronym), a Garifuna advocacy group that finances Faluma Bimetu and facilitates the training of its team. She shares Benedict’s sentiment that the radio station has served as a “very strong means of mobilization” in Triunfo de la Cruz, adding that “it’s also a very cheap one.”
Furthermore, Miranda points out that community radio can still operate with relative freedom in Honduras’s increasingly repressive media environment, where most commercial radio stations and television channels are either state sponsored or forced to self-censor for fear of heavy-handed state reprisal. In small and largely neglected Garifuna communities, independent stations like Faluma Bimetu have a better chance of flying under the government’s radar.
Miranda’s organization helps run a total of six Garifuna community radio stations across Honduras, all of which have close links with other indigenous radio stations and causes. In a country renowned as the most dangerous in the world for environmental rights activists, these stations have helped raise the profile of people on the frontlines of the struggle to protect indigenous lands and ways of life. They also highlight the regular injustices activists face at the hands of the Honduran state.
In November 2016, Radio Lumamali Giriga, a Garifuna community radio station in the coastal town of Santa Fe, 130 kilometers (80 miles) east of Triunfo de la Cruz, ran an interview with local Garifuna leader Madeline David Fernandez. The activist had been detained and allegedly tortured by Honduran police in response to her attempts to occupy ancestral Garifuna land that the municipal government had sold to a Canadian company for a large-scale tourism development. Lumamali Giriga was first to pick up this story, then a number of other community radio stations and human rights organizations followed suit.
According to Francesco Diasio, secretary general of the World Association of Community Radio Broadcasters, radio is a particularly powerful and accessible medium in indigenous Latin American communities, which often have low internet connectivity and literacy rates and strong oral traditions.
Persistent threats
However, Diasio cautioned that there is “very little protection and often considerable risk” for journalists and activists working in community radio in Central American countries such as Honduras. “You only have to do a quick Google search to see that the Garifuna community radio stations have faced harassment from the Honduran government,” he adds.
In January 2010, after various incidences of intimidation and theft, Faluma Bimetu was the target of an arson attack that destroyed broadcasting equipment and badly damaged the building. No arrests have ever been made in connection with the incident. Benedict places the blame at the feet of Indura Beach and Golf Resort, a flagship luxury tourism destination near Triunfo de la Cruz that was initiated in 2008 as a joint venture between the Honduran Tourism Institute and a number of the country’s most powerful business figures.
A January 2017 Global Witness report titled “Honduras: the deadliest place to defend the planet,” wrote of Indura that “Beneath the perfect travel brochure surface, is a story of threats, harassment and human rights abuse.” In the months preceding the arson attack, Faluma Bimetu had frequently criticized Indura on air.
The report also claimed that the boundaries of Jeanette Kawas National Park, located just west of Triunfo de la Cruz, were redrawn to allow for the construction of Indura. In addition, Global Witness alleged that in 2014 police and military units tried to forcibly evict 157 Garifuna families from the same area as part of a plan to expand the tourism complex, incorporating two new hotels that would take the total number of rooms to 600.
Playa Escondida Beach Club is one of two luxury tourism developments that have been built on land claimed by the Garifuna in Triunfo de la Cruz. Image by Christopher Clark for Mongabay.
Keri Brondo, an anthropologist with the University of Memphis in Tennessee, U.S., who has written extensively on the Garifuna, testified before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in 2013 for the case brought by Triunfo de la Cruz and Punta Piedra. In her testimony she said that creating protected tourism areas that excluded local populations had led to overcrowding and the perpetuation of poverty in places like Triunfo de la Cruz. She added that lack of access to these protected areas had “hindered the community’s ability to maintain its traditional way of life.”
Mark Bonta, an assistant professor of earth sciences at Penn State Altoona in Pennsylvania, U.S., who has been working in Honduras for almost 20 years, told Mongabay that coastal tourism development in this region threatens not only local communities’ environmental sustainability, “but also coral reefs, mangroves, seagrass, strand, and other marine and coastal ecosystems.”
Bonta added that “local communities themselves, against all odds, if left alone, are able to protect their own resources sustainably, and there are many cases of their doing so.” He believes that community radio can make a “huge difference” in propagating such causes.
Indura Beach and Golf Resort declined to comment for this story, but in a January 2017 press release the resort stated that it had “all legal permits required by law for the development of the project” and that Global Witness had made “several false allegations.” Indura denied any attempt to force out Garifuna and said it had sought to work hand in hand with local communities.
The Red Willow Womyn’s Family Society is a grassroots Indigenous nonprofit organization in the Cowichan Tribes First Nations territory of British Columbia, Canada. It was founded in 2009, as a small group of Hul’qumi’num women began weekly gatherings to talk about their lived experiences with daily systemic oppressions. Through these “sharing circles,” Red Willow women would help each other navigate their daily barriers, and the circle grew. Today, the Society acts as a support for the wider Hul’qumi’num community. Through cultural protocols and teachings, they support and advocate for one another and work to strengthen families and the role of mothers as sacred life-givers. Cultural Survival’s Keepers of the Earth Fund is supporting the Society’s Breaking the Code of Silence: Lifting the Voices of Hul’qumi’num Families Project, which serves Cowichan, Chemainus, Penelakut, Lyackson, Halalt and Lake Cowichan Tribes.
The community exists in a constant state of crisis, struggling with high rates of poverty, homelessness, addiction, suicide and domestic violence, which leaves families in a continuous state of child removal. The Society links the issues surrounding child apprehension directly to the systemic oppressions of poverty, intergenerational trauma, and archaic legislative policies that continue to echo Canada’s Residential School system, whose last institution closed as recently as 1996. The contemporary child apprehension model, under the Canadian Federal Ministry of Child and Family Development (MCFD), awards funding per child apprehended, perpetuating this historic cycle.
The Society claims that the residential school genocidal model is still entrenched in current legislation and policy practices at federal, provincial and local levels, and funding still incentivizes children being apprehended. Children are being removed by both internal (Lalum’utul’ Smun’eem/Cowichan Tribe Children and Family Services) and external governing bodies, like the MCFD, and placed into primarily dominant culture foster care families. In 2017, over 56 percent of all children in foster care in British Columbia were First Nations, even though Indigenous children make up only 9 percent of the child population in the province. The Chief Island Health Officer of Vancouver Island has repeatedly criticized the local MCFD office and staff, identifying “discrepancies in their decision-making process.”
The Society promotes cultural teachings (called Snuw’uy’ul) and engage Indigenous women and families in reconnecting with their Elders. They provide space for open dialogue, companion families, and mothers. Using home-based early interventions, they work to prevent child apprehension by building the capacity of parents and the family as a whole to ensure child safety by addressing the root causes of child endangerment, prior to apprehension. In addition, they engage in training, peer-to-peer mentorship and advocacy so that women and families are informed and prepared to navigate the Ministry and courts. Central to the Society’s work is the process of companioning women, assuring women’s right to have an advocate present—essential for a process that occurs in a language and context of highly unequal power which was not previously recognized. Advocacy for families has improved access and serves as a tool for Ministry accountability.
Through a grant from KOEF, the Society maintains its existing platform for the Hul’qumi’num community to raise their voices and be heard by the Ministry and government in order to address the cycle of child removal. They will implement the Breaking the Code of SilenceProject through a process of holding meetings and public forums, creating increased understanding, engagement, peer-to-peer advocacy, to initiate systemic change.
Cultural Survival advocates for Indigenous Peoples’ rights and supports Indigenous communities’ self-determination, cultures and political resilience, since 1972.
Cultural Survival envisions a future that respects and honors Indigenous Peoples’ inherent rights and dynamic cultures, deeply and richly interwoven in lands, languages, spiritual traditions, and artistic expression, rooted in self-determination and self-governance.
Much of the world’s land is occupied and used by Indigenous Peoples and communities—about 50 percent of it, involving more than 2.5 billion people. But these groups are increasingly losing their ancestral lands—their primary source of livelihood, income and social identity.
Governments, corporations and local elites are eager to acquire land to extract natural resources; grow food, fibers and biofuels; or simply hold it for speculative purposes. Most communities hold land under customary tenure systems and lack formal titles for it. While national laws in many countries recognize customary rights, the legal protections are often weak and poorly enforced, making community land especially vulnerable to being taken by more powerful actors.
Communities, however, are not standing by idly. They’re increasingly taking action to protect their lands.
Here are five ways communities are defending their land rights:
Children living in Kenya’s Mau ForestPatrick Shepherd / CIFOR
1. Litigation
As Indigenous Peoples and communities learn of their rights, more are turning to the courts to help realize them. In 2008, the Kenyan government began a campaign to evict the Ogiek, an indigenous group of hunters and gatherers, from their ancestral home, the Mau Forest in the Rift Valley. The following year, the Ogiek filed a complaint against the government to the African Commission on Human and People’s Rights which referred it to the African Court on Human and People’s Rights, a continental court based in neighboring Tanzania. Last month, the Court delivered its judgment, ruling that the government had violated several articles of the African Charter on Human and People’s Rights, of which Kenya is a signatory. It recognized the Ogiek’s indigenous status and their right to the forest, and awarded reparations for forcible evictions. The ruling from Africa’s highest institutional human rights body sends a powerful message to all African governments of the need to respect indigenous rights.
Protestors in Ecuadorpato chavez / Flickr
2. Demonstrations and Protests
Community members are marching to state capitals, staging protests and meeting directly with government leaders. In December 2017, following a two-week march by hundreds of indigenous people in Quito, Ecuador, President Lenin Moreno agreed to a moratorium on new auctions of oil and mining concessions without the consent of local communities. When the government then announced a new oil auction and handed out several new mining concessions in February 2018, protestors returned. In March, nearly 100 indigenous women camped out for five days in front of the government palace in Quito’s central plaza. Moreno granted them a meeting, and the women pressed him again to limit oil drilling and mining in their territories, and to combat the violence that often accompanies the industries. Moreno assured them he would heed their demands. The women vowed they would return if the matter is not addressed.
Aerial view of the Brazilian AmazonNeil Palmer / CIAT
3. Monitoring and Patrolling
In the absence of government support, many communities have organized their own patrols to monitor their land and evict intruders. Brazil and other countries have long struggled to contain illegal logging. In the state of Maranhão in northeastern Brazil, only 20 percent of the original forest cover remains. Nearly all of this forest is in indigenous territories and protected nature reserves where commercial exploitation is banned, but loggers linked to criminal syndicates continue to cut trees. In 2014, after repeated calls to government went unheeded, indigenous Guajajara and Ka’apor communities organized their own patrols to rid their land of illegal loggers. They have captured loggers cutting timber or setting fire in their lands, confiscated their chainsaws and seized their trucks. The Maranhão government has praised the work of the indigenous patrols and offered to train and equip them to help enforce environmental regulations.
Logging in East Kalimantan, Indonesia.Josh Estey / AusAID
4. Mapping Land
Much community land is not represented on any official government maps and, as such, is essentially invisible. Many communities are therefore preparing precise maps of their land using hand-held Global Positioning Systems (GPS) and other tools. These maps are challenging official government narratives. In Indonesia’s Malinau District, East Kalimantan, loggers and palm oil companies have long sought the customary forests of the indigenous Dayak. When one palm oil company began to log the forest of Setuland village, villagers jumped into action. After threatening to force the company off their land, the company withdrew. The Dayaks realized they needed a map of their land that documented their boundaries, customary forest, homes and longhouses, as well as the damaged forests where the company had illegally cut their trees. With the help of an Indonesian geographer, villagers used drones to map and then monitor their lands. Now, if a logging or palm oil company enters onto their land, Setuland will be armed with their own map to help them confront the challenge.
Community members in the Philippines detail documentation of their Certificate of Ancestral Domain Claim.Jason Houston / USAID
5. Registering and Titling Land
Indigenous Peoples and communities are also registering their customary land rights into a government cadaster and obtaining a formal land titles or certificates. Doing so integrates their customary rights into the legal system, establishes formal land rights and helps communities protect their lands. The Higaonon, an indigenous group in the Mindanao region of the Philippines, holds its land under customary tenure systems. The lack of clear boundaries, however, has led to conflicts with neighbors who have extended their plots onto Higaonon land. In response, the Higaonon applied for a Certificate of Ancestral Domain Title (CADT), a formal land ownership title. Despite a 1997 law requiring the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples facilitate the demarcation and registration of ancestral lands, the agency has only issued 182 CADTs with many more applications waiting to be processed. Moreover, fewer than 50 CADTs have been formally registered, limiting their effectiveness to protect indigenous land.
A woman in Indonesia’s Dayak community weaves a basket.Rainforest Action Network / Flickr
While no measure can guarantee land security, these actions have helped communities protect their homes. Scaling these measures, however, has proven challenging.
Communities need help securing the appropriate technologies like GPS devices or navigating often complex land titling processes. And governments must reform and better implement the laws to better protect indigenous and community land.
Being assertive in protecting their lands has also exposed community members to new risks. Clashes between communities and those seeking their land have escalated in recent years. Last year, 197 land and environmental defenders were killed, the bloodiest year since Global Witness began keeping records on this issue. We all need to do a better job of protecting not only community land, but also land defenders.
Lately, I have been writing a series of introductory articles on the importance of skills and equipment for revolutionaries. Part of my thesis is that gaining skills and gathering equipment is important not only for practical reasons, but also because it opens up new possibilities and removes barriers in our thinking that we didn’t even know were there.
The situation is similar when it comes to digital communication.
We all know that we live in a world of ubiquitous surveillance. Most of us walk around every day with a phone in our pockets that is constantly tracking our location and sending that data to corporations, who bundle it and sell it to the highest bidder. All our web traffic is monitored and recorded, as are our phone calls, text messages, emails, video chat calls, and so on.
Political dissidents are an especially high-priority target.
This surveillance leads to a form of self-censorship whereby we don’t discuss important topics essential to developing resistance organizations and planning and carrying our revolutionary actions.
The only final solution is to dismantle the surveillance system and the institutions (capitalism, patriarchy, empire-culture, civilization) that depend on and lead to it. But pending that outcome, we can fight back in other ways. Here are a series of concrete recommendations for upping your privacy and security game.
Once again, this is an introduction to this topic, and isn’t meant to be comprehensive. Do your own research and be cautious.
Use a VPN or Tor for everyday web browsing
A VPN, or Virtual Private Network, adds a reasonable level of privacy and security to everyday web browsing. Look for a well-regarded platform that doesn’t keep any logs and is not based in the United States or in the territory of close allies. These are cheap and essential in the age when net neutrality is dead, and one subscription can work for multiple devices (laptop, tablet, phone, etc.). Take one hour to purchase and start using a VPN as a priority action.
To bring your security to a higher level, use Tor Browser. Tor is not only essential for high risk online activities, but for normalizing privacy for everyone using the web. It’s easy to use side by side with your regular web browser.
Encrypt data
Almost all phones, tablets, and computers now have simple disk encryption built-in. Enable this function on all your devices. Use strong passwords/passphrases. If you have a habit of forgetting passwords, use a password manager to organize your data. Don’t use the same password for multiple accounts.
Use secure chat/call apps
Today there are multiple easy-to-use, free apps for encrypted communication. These include Signal and Wire. Download these apps and use them instead of standard phone calls, text messages, and video chat whenever possible. These apps are well-regarded in the professional security community and your data should be inaccessible to eavesdroppers.
Keep your devices secure
All your encryption is worthless without physical security. If you leave your computer sitting in a hotel room, a state agent can gain access, open your computer case with a screwdriver, and install a keylogger inside. Next time you login, that device can send your passphrase to the agent, and your security is compromised.
This is just one example of a physical attack.
Keep your devices inside your control at all times. Don’t let strangers or people you don’t trust fully use your devices. If the state does gain access to your device, consider keeping that device disconnected from the internet, wiping all your data, selling it, and buying a new one (as I did after my laptop was searched at the U.S./Canada border).
Don’t share all location data
As I mentioned above, all cell phones (including “dumbphones”) track your exact location any time there is service, and share that information with your service provider and any partners/law enforcement agencies. Consider as well that most smartphones have ~6 microphones in them.
The solutions to this are simple. First, consider leaving your phone at home or in another location. Leave it off as much as possible, and in the bottom of a bag or other location where sound is muffled and eavesdropping is not possible. It is not overkill to purchase a “faraday bag” which blocks all radio waves in and out of your device. These can be purchased cheaply and allow you to carry your phone with you privately, only removing it in innocuous locations when you wish to use it.
Cover cameras
Any cameras in internet/cell-network connected devices can be hacked. Cover them with tape or stickers unless they are actively in use.
Other recommendations
Corporations sell data and provide it to government agencies without warrants or probable cause regularly. In general, your data will be much safer if you use non-corporate products, or only corporate products that are zero-data services.
For example, use Firefox (with privacy-enhancing add-ons such as uBlock Origin, Decentraleyes, Disable WebRTC, HTTPS Everywhere, Privacy Badger, NoScript, etc.) instead of Chrome or Safari. Use OpenStreetMap instead of Google Maps. Use DuckDuckGo instead of Google for search.
Conclusion
As I’ve already said, this is just a beginning. While these recommendations will help improve your privacy, they are not foolproof. Attacks and defense methods are always changing. However, the weakest link in most secure computer systems is the human element. Install software updates, use methods recommended by trustworthy privacy advocates, and use common sense. Remember that the goal here is freedom of action, not perfection.
Next weekend, Deep Green Resistance is hosting an advanced training in direct action, revolutionary strategy, tactics, and organizing taking place next to Yellowstone National Park. If you wish to attend, sign up now. We also have one free scholarship available that covers the cost of attending. Email us at training [at] deepgreenresistance [dot] org if you wish to apply for this scholarship.
Sakej Ward Sakej (James Ward) belongs to the Wolf Clan. He is Mi’kmaw (Mi’kmaq Nation) from the community of Esgenoopetitj (Burnt Church First Nation, New Brunswick). He is the father of nine children, four grandchildren. He resides in Shxw’owhamel First Nation, B.C. with his wife Melody Andrews and their children. Sakej is a veteran of both the Canadian and American militaries. He finished his military career at the rank of Sergeant in an elite Airborne unit. Sakej holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science with a specialization in International Relations and a Master’s of Arts Degree in Indigenous Governance. Sakej has a long history of advocating and protecting First Nations inherent responsibilities and freedoms, having spent the last 24 years fighting the government and industry. Having taught, organized, advised and led various warrior societies from all over Turtle Island down into Guatemala and Borike (Puerto Rico) Sakej has made warrior-hood his way of life. He has been on over a dozen warrior operations and countless protest actions. He dedicates all his time to developing warrior teachings and instructing warrior societies from all over.
Kara Dansky Kara Dansky is an independent consultant and the founder of One Thousand Arms. One Thousand Arms consults with organizations in conducting research and policy analysis on criminal and racial justice topics, including policing, bail and pretrial, sentencing and corrections, mass incarceration, drug policy, immigration policy, and others. She is also a radical feminist and serves on the Board of the Women’s Liberation Front. Kara created Gender Critical Lawyering in order to bring radical feminist arguments before the Court. She has previously served as Special Advisor at the New York City Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice, Senior Counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union’s Center for Justice, Senior Advisor at the DHS Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, Executive Director of the Stanford Criminal Justice Center, and Staff Attorney at Society of Counsel Representing Accused Persons. She earned her J.D. from the University of Pennsylvania Law School and her B.A. from the Johns Hopkins University, both cum laude.
Rachel Lima
Rachel Lima (Charlie Rae) is a freelance writer for The Fifth Column and a dedicated independent journalist who has taken on the topic of transgenderism. Growing up with gender dysphoria, Rae speaks from the perspective of a tomboy who evaded the grips of this fad by a decade. Rae is a Tau Sigma honors student from NCSU intermittently studying communication, and a grassroots activist who has worked on everything from on-the-ground coverage, to local elections, to door knocking, to fundraising, to social media campaigns, to being a student senator representing her college body, to interviewing for local independent media, to guest lecturing at University, to photographing for the resistance, etc. Rae has developed an encompassing resistance seminar so that DGR and its members will have the tools and the mindset to incorporate resisting transgenderism into their approach.
Will Falk Will Falk is a lawyer and writer living in Heber City, UT, on occupied Ute territory. A graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Law School, and a former public defender, his legal practice is committed to protecting human and non-human communities. The natural world speaks and Will’s work is how he listens. His writing has been published by the Dark Mountain Project, Earth Island Journal, CounterPunch, Whole Terrain, CATALYST Magazine, and the San Diego Free Press, among others.
Max Wilbert Max Wilbert is a third-generation organizer who grew up in Seattle’s post-WTO anti-globalization and undoing racism movement. He holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Environmental Communication and Advocacy from Huxley College. He lives in rural Oregon. Max has a 15-year history as an organizer and revolutionary. He is a co-founder of Deep Green Resistance and longtime board member of a small, grassroots environmental non-profit with no employees and no corporate funding. His first book, a collection of pro-feminist and environmental essays, was recently released. He is also the co-author of the forthcoming book “Bright Green Lies,” which looks at the problems with mainstream so-called “solutions” such as solar panels, electric cars, recycling, and green cities. The book makes the case that these approaches fail to protect the planet and aim at protecting empire from the effects of peak oil and ecological collapse. He has participated in countless protests and more than ten direct actions, and been a part of multiple campaigns and land defense efforts. He has organized training for activists and revolutionaries in 10 states and in Canada.
Mike Bucci Mike Bucci is an environmental activist with Deep Green Resistance. He also helps community-based organizations develop affordable housing. He lives in a small cooperative of “homesteaders” in NY City (originally settled by the Leni Lenape tribe), and in the woods in an upstate NY watershed area surrounded by acres of old growth and farmland. Currently, he’s focused on promoting more effective activism against the industry’s build out of fossil fuel infrastructure, and fighting to end institutionalized racism, while building communities of resistance. In solidarity with radical feminists he supports the end of patriarchy and gender. In the past, he co-founded both NY Men Against Sexism, and Men Against Pornography.
It’s been a pretty mellow week here with the buffalo. We’ve had very few instances of buffalo along the highway, but there is one big bull who is starting to stretch his legs into some of the newly gained year-round habitat. He has headed north of Fir Ridge, along Highway 191, moving out of the Hebgen Basin further north than we’ve seen a buffalo go in many years. He’s making us a bit nervous, though, as he’s in a tight, forested section and staying close to the road. If he continues north, the land will open up a bit, and if he continues even further north, he could potentially be the first buffalo to make it to the Taylor Fork in over two decades. There are some organizations and agencies who have wanted to capture and transport buffalo to the Taylor Fork, but we keep saying that if they want to be there, they will go. We’re keeping a close eye on this amazing boy who is showing other humans who want to “make” them do things that, if given time and space, they will be the ones to show us the way.
Around the Hebgen Basin, Central herd members continue to bring forth new life. Calving season got off to a bit of a late start, but, now, every day we are seeing more and more calves. Except for a few, short hazing operations and the challenges of the highway, the buffalo are at peace here. Moms can give birth without disturbance, and the calves are able to run, play, and grow strong without the threat of being hazed. While the Central Herd’s numbers are drastically down — our highest count here has been fewer than 250 in this Basin, and less than 100 counted on recons into Yellowstone’s interior — every single calf who is born is a symbol of resistance, an effort to make a comeback from Yellowstone’s senseless slaughter. Each calf is a celebration for the buffalos’ future. And, we want you to celebrate with us. So, instead of a lot of words, here is a little photo journey into wild buffalo calving season!
