by DGR News Service | Oct 21, 2020 | Agriculture, Biodiversity & Habitat Destruction, Colonialism & Conquest, Indigenous Autonomy
Communal house of uncontacted Indians inside the Uru Eu Wau Wau territory, photographed in 2005. © Rogério Vargas Motta/IBAMA (Brazilian Institute of Environment and Renewable Natural Resources).
Survival International / October 14, 2020
The survival of several uncontacted tribes is now at risk after fires were set inside their territories. Activists have described this year’s Amazon fires, and President Bolsonaro’s war on indigenous peoples, as “the gravest threat to the survival of uncontacted tribes for a generation.”
Four tribal territories face an especially serious crisis:
– The famed Papaya Forest on Bananal Island, the world’s largest fluvial island. It’s inhabited by uncontacted Ãwa people. Eighty per cent of the forest burned in fires last year – fires have been seen this year in one of the last areas of intact forest. More than 100,000 head of cattle now graze on the island.
– The Ituna Itatá (“Smell of Fire”) indigenous territory in Pará state, inhabited exclusively by uncontacted Indians. This reserve was the most heavily deforested indigenous territory in 2019, as land grabbers and cattle ranchers invaded. In the first four months of 2020, another 1,319 hectares of forest were destroyed, an increase of almost 60% compared to the same period last year.
– The Arariboia territory in the eastern Amazon state of Maranhão: uncontacted Awá inhabit this territory, which has already been extensively invaded. Amazon Guardians of the neighboring Guajajara tribe are warning daily that illegal loggers are destroying the forest at alarming rates. (The Ãwa people of Bananal Island and the Awá tribe of Maranhão state are distinct peoples).
– The Uru Eu Wau Wau territory. Uncontacted Indians inside this territory shot and killed famed Amazon expert Rieli Franciscato last month – campaigners fear the group is being forced out of the forest by the invasions.
Many of the fires are being started to clear the rainforest for logging and ranching, and millions of tons of soya, beef, timber and other products are imported into Europe and the US each year.
APIB (the Association of Indigenous Peoples of Brazil) has launched a campaign to highlight the links between Bolsonaro, his agribusiness backers, and the genocidal violence being committed against indigenous peoples across the country. They are asking people and companies around the world to stop buying products that are fuelling the destruction of their territories.
Survival has launched a global action calling on supermarkets in Europe and the US to stop buying Brazilian agribusiness products until indigenous rights are upheld.
Ângela Kaxuyana, spokesperson from COIAB, the Coordination of Indigenous Organizations of the Brazilian Amazon, said: “Land grabbing, deforestation and arson directly threaten the lives of our uncontacted relatives. The destruction of the territories that are their only sources of life, from where they obtain their food (fauna, flora and water), could end in their extermination.” “A grilagem de terra, o desmatamento e os incêndios criminosos ameaçam diretamente a vida dos nossos parentes em isolamento voluntário. A destruição dos territórios que são suas únicas fontes de vida, de onde garantem sua alimentação (fauna, flora e água), podem levá-los ao extermínio”.
Tainaky Tenetehar, one of the Guajajara Guardians who protect the Arariboia reserve for the Guajajara people and their uncontacted neighbors, said today: “We fight to protect this forest, and many of us have been killed doing so, but the invaders keep coming. They have damaged the forest so much in recent years that their fires are now much bigger, and more serious, than before, as the forest is so dry and vulnerable. The loggers must be evicted – only then can the uncontacted Awá survive and thrive.”
Survival’s Senior Researcher Sarah Shenker said: “In many parts of Brazil, uncontacted tribes’ territories are the last significant areas of rainforest left. Now they are being targeted by land grabbers, loggers and ranchers emboldened by Bolsonaro’s open support for them. Consumers in the US and Europe must understand that there’s a direct connection between the food on their supermarket shelves and this genocidal destruction – and act accordingly. Uncontacted tribes are the most vulnerable peoples on the planet, and at the same time nature’s best guardians, by far. We cannot let their land go up in flames.”
by DGR News Service | Oct 18, 2020 | ANALYSIS, The Problem: Civilization
We Indigenous people are fighting to save the Amazon, but the whole planet is in trouble because you do not respect it
by Nemonte Nenquimo / Originally published in The Guardian, Oct. 12 2020
Featured image: Waorani leader Nemonte Nenquimo shows evidence of crude oil contamination in the northern Ecuadorian Amazon rainforest. Photograph: Mitch Anderson / Amazon Frontlines
Dear presidents of the nine Amazonian countries and to all world leaders that share responsibility for the plundering of our rainforest,
My name is Nemonte Nenquimo. I am a Waorani woman, a mother, and a leader of my people. The Amazon rainforest is my home. I am writing you this letter because the fires are raging still. Because the corporations are spilling oil in our rivers. Because the miners are stealing gold (as they have been for 500 years), and leaving behind open pits and toxins. Because the land grabbers are cutting down primary forest so that the cattle can graze, plantations can be grown and the white man can eat. Because our elders are dying from coronavirus, while you are planning your next moves to cut up our lands to stimulate an economy that has never benefited us. Because, as Indigenous peoples, we are fighting to protect what we love – our way of life, our rivers, the animals, our forests, life on Earth – and it’s time that you listened to us.
In each of our many hundreds of different languages across the Amazon, we have a word for you – the outsider, the stranger. In my language, WaoTededo, that word is “cowori”. And it doesn’t need to be a bad word. But you have made it so. For us, the word has come to mean (and in a terrible way, your society has come to represent): the white man that knows too little for the power that he wields, and the damage that he causes.
You are probably not used to an Indigenous woman calling you ignorant and, less so, on a platform such as this. But for Indigenous peoples it is clear: the less you know about something, the less value it has to you, and the easier it is to destroy. And by easy, I mean: guiltlessly, remorselessly, foolishly, even righteously. And this is exactly what you are doing to us as Indigenous peoples, to our rainforest territories, and ultimately to our planet’s climate.
It took us thousands of years to get to know the Amazon rainforest. To understand her ways, her secrets, to learn how to survive and thrive with her. And for my people, the Waorani, we have only known you for 70 years (we were “contacted” in the 1950s by American evangelical missionaries), but we are fast learners, and you are not as complex as the rainforest.
When you say that the oil companies have marvellous new technologies that can sip the oil from beneath our lands like hummingbirds sip nectar from a flower, we know that you are lying because we live downriver from the spills. When you say that the Amazon is not burning, we do not need satellite images to prove you wrong; we are choking on the smoke of the fruit orchards that our ancestors planted centuries ago.
When you say that you are urgently looking for climate solutions, yet continue to build a world economy based on extraction and pollution, we know you are lying because we are the closest to the land, and the first to hear her cries.
I never had the chance to go to university, and become a doctor, or a lawyer, a politician, or a scientist. My elders are my teachers. The forest is my teacher. And I have learned enough (and I speak shoulder to shoulder with my Indigenous brothers and sisters across the world) to know that you have lost your way, and that you are in trouble (though you don’t fully understand it yet) and that your trouble is a threat to every form of life on Earth.
You forced your civilisation upon us and now look where we are: global pandemic, climate crisis, species extinction and, driving it all, widespread spiritual poverty. In all these years of taking, taking, taking from our lands, you have not had the courage, or the curiosity, or the respect to get to know us. To understand how we see, and think, and feel, and what we know about life on this Earth.
I won’t be able to teach you in this letter, either. But what I can say is that it has to do with thousands and thousands of years of love for this forest, for this place. Love in the deepest sense, as reverence. This forest has taught us how to walk lightly, and because we have listened, learned and defended her, she has given us everything: water, clean air, nourishment, shelter, medicines, happiness, meaning. And you are taking all this away, not just from us, but from everyone on the planet, and from future generations.
It is the early morning in the Amazon, just before first light: a time that is meant for us to share our dreams, our most potent thoughts. And so I say to all of you: the Earth does not expect you to save her, she expects you to respect her. And we, as Indigenous peoples, expect the same.
Nemonte Nenquimo is cofounder of the Indigenous-led nonprofit organisation Ceibo Alliance, the first female president of the Waorani organisation of Pastaza province and one of Time’s 100 most influential people in the world.
by DGR News Service | Sep 27, 2020 | Biodiversity & Habitat Destruction, Human Supremacy, The Problem: Civilization
In this article Mike Shanahan describes how the denial of extinction crisis ignores widespread, scientific evidence.
Featured Image: Ross Sokolovski via Unsplash
- There’s a growing refusal by some groups to acknowledge the ongoing global extinction crisis being driven by human actions, conservation scientists say.
- These views are pushed by many of the same people who also downplay the impacts of climate change, and go against the actual evidence of widespread species population declines and recent extinctions.
- Scientists say this phenomenon will likely spike again this week, since a major Convention on Biological Diversity report is due to be released.
- The authors of a new report on extinction denial advise experts to proactively challenge its occurrence, and present the “cold hard scientific facts.”
Biodiversity scientists are being urged to “fight the creeping rise of extinction denial” that has spread from fringe blogs to influential media outlets and even into a U.S. Congressional hearing. The call to arms came in a paper published in Nature Ecology & Evolution last month by Alexander Lees, senior lecturer in conservation biology at Manchester Metropolitan University, and colleagues.
“Many of the same individuals that routinely seek to downplay the impacts of climate change have written articles understating the biodiversity loss crisis,” Lees says. “Denialists have sought to obfuscate the magnitude of both extinctions and loss of bio-abundance.”
The paper describes and debunks three types of extinction denial.
The first, “literal denial,” argues that extinction is largely a historical problem. Arguments like this, such as contained in this article claiming that “the onset of further wildlife extinctions seems far-fetched,” ignore the conservatism of biologists in declaring extinctions, as well as actual evidence of recent extinctions and of the widespread population declines that suggest many more future losses are on the way, the authors write.
They point out, for example, that denialists have long stated that the Atlantic Forest in Brazil has suffered no extinctions despite having shrunk in area by 90%. Yet two bird species were declared extinct there in 2019, and seven more are down to their last few individuals or have not been seen for a decade or longer.
“The problem is most of the losses are not the big ‘exciting’ species but smaller and less charismatic ones in areas that lost the big exciting things years ago,” Lees says. “We are now reaching critical loss of habitat for many species in the tropics in places like the Philippines and eastern Brazil. It is in these places that the next wave of extinctions is taking place.”
Lees and colleagues also discuss “interpretive denial,” which acknowledges the loss of biodiversity but argues that economic growth alone will fix it. One example is a 2019 Washington Examiner article, “How capitalism will save endangered species.”
The third form of denial is “implicatory,” arguing for example that technological fixes and targeted conservation interventions — rather than comprehensive changes to socioeconomic systems — will overcome extinction. The authors write that these two forms of denial may use evidence from temperate ecosystems to make inappropriate claims about reduced impacts in the tropics, where habitat loss is accelerating and species are far more sensitive to change.
This article, written by Mike Shanahan was originally published on 14 September 2020 in Mongabay. You can find teh full and original article here:
https://news.mongabay.com/2020/09/biologists-warn-of-extinction-denial-as-latest-anti-science-conspiracy/
by DGR News Service | Jul 31, 2020 | Repression at Home, The Problem: Civilization
This piece consists of excerpts from two articles. In the first one, Ashoka Mukpo discusses the report by Global Witness on the killings of environmental defenders in 2019. In the second article, Leilani Chavez describes the threats posed on environmental defenders by the current Rodrigo government.
By Ashoka Mukpo/Mongabay
- In a new report, the watchdog group says that at least 212 environment and land defenders were killed across the world in 2019.
- The deadliest countries were Colombia and the Philippines, with 64 and 43 killings respectively.
- Despite making up only 5% of the world’s population, representatives of Indigenous communities accounted for 40% of those killed.
- Killings related to agribusiness jumped by 60%, to 34 in 2019 – researchers say as consumption of commodities like beef and palm oil increases, so too will deadly conflict over land.
2019 was the deadliest year on record for environmental activists, according to a new report by the advocacy watchdog Global Witness. In total, the group says that at least 212 people were killed across the world in retaliation for their defense of land and the environment, with those representing Indigenous communities bearing a disproportionate brunt of the violence.
Many of the killings were linked to battles over control of forests that are critical to the global fight against climate change, said Chris Madden, a senior campaigner at Global Witness.
“Looking at the cases that we’re seeing and the issues these people are working against, they’re often the very same causes of climate breakdown,” he told Mongabay in an interview. “So that’s why we’re saying they’re at the front line of the climate crisis.”
Topping the list of the deadliest countries for environmental defenders in 2019 were Colombia and the Philippines, with 64 and 43 killings respectively. In Colombia, the figure was more than double the number who were murdered in 2018. Overall, the most dangerous region for defenders was Latin America, which saw two-thirds of the global death toll, with the Amazon alone accounting for 33 deaths.
Despite only making up 5% of the world’s population, activists representing Indigenous communities, who are often on the front lines of conflict over forests and land, comprised 40% of those killed.
In Colombia, the 2016 peace agreement signed between the government and the leftist guerrilla group FARC is causing a scramble for control over lucrative resources left behind in the group’s wake.
As FARC insurgents demobilize under the terms of the agreement, paramilitary and other criminal groups are rushing in to fill the void, with Indigenous communities suffering as a result of the power struggle. Those communities accounted for half of the documented killings in the country despite representing less than 5% of Colombia’s population.
In late May, Mongabay published video of paramilitaries firing assault rifles into an Indigenous Emberá town and forcing members of the community to flee by canoe.
When environmental defenders are killed in Colombia, the courts rarely deliver justice. According to Global Witness, nearly nine in 10 murders of human rights activists in the country do not lead to a conviction.
Elsewhere, the deaths of activists have been linked to intimidation and violence carried out on behalf of repressive governments. Killings in Honduras jumped from four in 2018 to 14 in 2019, giving it the highest per capita rate of any country analyzed by Global Witness. In the Philippines, 2019’s toll brings the total since Rodrigo Duterte took office in mid-2016 to 119 — almost double the figure for the comparable period before his election.
By Leilani Chavez/Mongabay
- Attacks on environmental and land defenders in the Philippines have escalated under President Rodrigo Duterte, with at least 43 deaths in 2019, watchdog group Global Witness says in its latest report.
- It recorded a total of 119 defender deaths in the Philippines since Duterte took office in mid-2016.
- Martial law in Mindanao, which was only lifted last December, combined with Duterte’s counterinsurgency campaigns and wide-scale anti-drug war, exacerbated the threats against defenders, local groups say.
- A plurality of the casualties in the global tally are in mining and agribusiness; the Philippines registered the most number of deaths in both sectors, the report says.
Forty-three land and environmental defenders were killed in the Philippines in 2019, according to a new report from the watchdog group Global Witness. The tally marks out the Philippines as the most dangerous country in Asia and the second most dangerous in the world for those taking a stand against environmental destruction.
According to the group, the criminalization of environmental and land defenders under the mantle of anti-terrorism policies imposed by President Rodrigo Duterte contributed to the attacks in the Philippines in 2019.
“[The Philippines] has been consistently named as one of the worst places in Asia for attacks against defenders,” the report says. “The relentless vilification of defenders by the government and widespread impunity for their attackers may well be driving the increase.”
The Philippines has been frequently listed among top countries considered dangerous for environmental and land defenders in Global Witness’s annual reports, and this year is no exception.
In 2016, the watchdog recorded 28 environmental and land defender deaths in the Philippines, a figure that rose to 48 deaths in 2017 — regarded as the bloodiest year on record in the Philippines and the highest number ever documented in an Asian country, Global Witness said.
In 2018, 30 deaths were recorded in the country, which put it in the top spot in the global rankings. Casualties for that year include nine sugarcane farmers, including four women and two children, who were shot by a group of unidentified gunmen after tilling a contested plot of land in the central Philippines.
Since Duterte took office in June 2016, Global Witness has listed a total of 119 killings of environmental and land defenders; this is double the combined tallies of recorded killings under his predecessors. For 2019, Global Witness reported 43 deadly attacks on environmental and land defenders in the Philippines, placing it behind only Colombia with 64 cases.
The attacks have been linked to Duterte’s counterinsurgency policies, including the declaration of martial law in Mindanao to squash a group of ISIS sympathizers who briefly took over the city of Marawi in 2017. The campaign to retake the city lasted five months, until October 2017, but Duterte only lifted martial law in December 2019, after extending it three times in a span of two years.
“Martial law ended in Mindanao without abuses by the civilian sector, by the police, by the military,” the president said in his fifth state of the nation address on July 27. Human rights groups, however, say otherwise, accusing martial law of breaching the civil and political rights of more than 800,000 people, including environmental and land defenders.
Featured image: Kyle Johnson via Unsplash
by DGR News Service | Jul 26, 2020 | Indigenous Autonomy
The CoViD-19 pandemic is impacting Indigenous peoples across the Americas who are already living under ongoing colonization, have poor access to health care, and suffer disproportionately from pre-existing conditions that compromise the immune system.
by Laura Hobson Herlihy and Daniel Bagheri Sarvestani / Intercontinental Cry
Coronavirus now has spread throughout the Indigenous Americas. The Navajo nation reported over 1,600 cases of COVID-19 and 59 deaths on the largest US reservation, which expands through Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah. Nineteen members of the Afro-indigenous Garifuna people living in New York City have died. The Garifuna are migrants from the Caribbean coast of Central America, hailing from Belize, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua.
South of the U.S. border, iconic groups like the Kakchikel Maya in Guatemala, the Kuna in Panama, and the Yanomami of the Brazilian Amazon all have reported COVID-19 cases. Hugo Tacuri, President of CONAIP (Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Peru), said: “Deaths are not recorded in Latin American cities by ethnicity and minorities are being mixed in with the greater population.” Tacuri said about 10% of the cases in Lima, Peru’s capital, were Quechua people, and a few were from the Amazon.
Native peoples in the early colonial period were decimated by diseases such as smallpox and measles. They lacked immunity to fight disease from outside and from European populations. As if through genetic memory, native peoples began extreme measures of social distancing soon after the coronavirus pandemic was reported in the Americas.
US and Canadian reservations went into lockdown and denied entrance to outsiders. Clément Chartier, leader of the Metís nation in Canada, commented, “we created check points along the road and established curfews.” Amazonian tribes in Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru retreated deeper into the forest. A Brazilian tribe stopped missionaries aboard a helicopter, from entering their rainforest homeland.
Indigenous elders, valued for their knowledge and transmission of cultural ways, language, and traditions, are especially at risk from coronavirus. They pass on stories of past epidemics and the remedies to heal fever and respiratory illness. Indigenous peoples refuse to discard their grandparents and elders. Indeed, they are following their elders’ advice to self-isolate.
The Nicaraguan Caribbean Coast
Countries not preparing for the pandemic stand in violation of Indigenous rights. A recent New York Times article cited Nicaragua as being one of three Latin American nations, along with Mexico and Brazil, to have ignored the pandemic and minimized its seriousness. Nicaragua, however, is one of the poorest nations in the Americas, and cannot afford to shut down its economy. Most Nicaraguans work in the informal economy–if they don’t work, they can’t eat. Nicaragua also has the lowest number of infections and deaths in Latin America: the Nicaraguan Ministry of Health (MINSA) only reports three deaths due to Covid-19.
Nicaragua’s ruling Sandinista regime recently sprang into action, blocking international flights into the Managua Airport, but their borders, businesses, and schools remain open. The Sandinista government now considers mandating rest in place and social distancing, as recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO) to mitigate the spread of COVID-19. The WHO also recognized the difficulty of populations living in poverty to quarantine.
Nicaragua’s most impoverished region, the pluri-ethnic Caribbean coast, is home to the Indigenous Miskitu, Mayangna, Ulwa, and Rama peoples, along with the Afro-descendant Kriols and Afro-indigenous Garifuna. The Caribbean coast ethnic groups are organizing to protect themselves from the virus, partially self-isolating and creating resources shared on social media in their own languages. In the Indigenous capital of Bilwi (pop. 185,000), many people live crowded together in households without running water, plumbing, or electricity. Those dwelling in remote forest communities are unable to reach hospitals.
Afro-descendant populations, like the Kriol and Garifuna in Nicaragua, have the pre-existing medical conditions of diabetes, obesity, and high blood pressure. José Coleman, of the Indigenous Youth Organization of Moskitia—Mark Rivas (MOJIMM), stated that Nicaraguan Indigenous peoples “most commonly suffer from anemia, asthma, and cardiovascular illness.”
Anemia is brought on by malnutrition resulting from their poor diet, high in of carbohydrates and sugar. Amidst settler-colonization, food Insecurity also causes malnutrition within the Nicaraguan forest-dwelling populations. The Miskitu and Mayangna are afraid to leave their homes to go to their fields for subsistence activities. So far in 2020, armed colonists’ attacks have left nine Mayangna leaders and land-defenders dead in Las Minas, the mining region, and the UNESCO-designated Bosawas biosphere reserve.
Nicaragua’s health system is weak on the Caribbean coast. Despite excellent doctors, the Bilwi hospital suffers from a lack of infrastructure and investment–medical technology is antiquated and hospital rooms are hot with no fans or ventilation. The patients’ family members bring them food plates three times a day, similar to the Bilwi prisons.
Overcrowded hospitals, prisons, and markets are particularly concerning for the transmission of coronavirus on the Caribbean coast. The Miskitu and other coastal peoples in Nicaragua brace themselves for the impending epidemic.
Health Disparities and Indigenous Peoples Rights
Indigenous peoples have comparatively poor access to national health care systems, and suffer disproportionately from comorbidities, that is, pre-existing conditions or health-related complications that compromise the immune system.
In Canada, First Nations communities have a lower life expectancy and much higher mortality rates due to infant deaths and physical injuries. Indigenous youth are far more likely to experience psychological and emotional health complications, including chronic depression, all factors that are contributing to a suicide rate that is far higher among First Nation communities than the general population.
Central American Indigenous territories are subject to increasing encroachment from mestizo settlers and multinational industries causing water pollution and land degradation. In Honduras, food and water insecurity are sighted as the leading social determinants of health disparities, as illegal operations and mestizo settlers continue to invade Indigenous territories, carrying the risk of infecting them.
The Honduran Indigenous communities are also suffering disproportionately during the statewide shutdowns and COVID-19 confinement measures enforced by state authorities. The Tolupán and Maya Ch’orti’, among other Indigenous nations, have already reported severe food shortages and a chronic lack of access to basic goods. Since most Honduran Indigenous communities are made up of subsistence farmers, the unilateral restrictions imposed in public spaces mean that many families are unable to meet their daily nutrition needs. Furthermore, the widespread police brutality cases reported as part of the enforcement of those restrictive measures have created an atmosphere of increasing state-sponsored oppression of Indigenous communities, further eroding Indigenous peoples’ rights to self-determination and consultation.
It is no secret that, in many places around the world, governments have taken unfair advantage of the coronavirus pandemic to advance policies that are harmful to Indigenous peoples. In the Canadian province of British Columbia, for instance, the Coastal GasLink Pipeline is forging ahead through Wet’suwet’en “unceded territory” without First Nations consent and in spite of widespread public outcry. The oil sands industry is not only threatening to pose a major ecological threat, but it also presents a major risk for the spread of COVID-19. First Nations peoples have collectively put pressure on Ottawa to stop the construction of the pipelines immediately, but whether or not the government will heed their urgent request remains to be seen.
Human Rights, which include Indigenous Peoples Rights, must not be overlooked, particularly during current health crisis, and when Indigenous peoples are at a great economic and social disadvantage as a result of longstanding systematic discrimination by state institutions. States have a responsibility to ensure equal access to public services to all their citizens, free from discrimination.
Because Indigenous peoples are disproportionately vulnerable to the pandemic, the International Fund for the Development of Indigenous Peoples in Latin America and Caribbean (FILAC) recently stated that countries should have a plan to support ethnic groups in dealing with COVID-19. The Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations (FAO) also published a list of recommendations to defend Indigenous rights during the pandemic.
Governments must consult Indigenous leadership and community members in good faith regarding any intervention and decision liable to impact their communities. This is precisely why the right to consultation and the right to participation are the two fundamental pillars of international standards for the Rights of Indigenous Peoples as highlighted by United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and required under Articles 6 and 7 of the ILO Convention 169. Consultation is needed to achieve Free, Prior, and Informed Consent (FPIC). Governments are held to international law regarding any intervention and decision-making that may impact Indigenous territories. This necessity does not change with the current crisis.
Many Indigenous nations, for instance, have long had their own methods of preventative health care based on a variety of native plant medicines. In northwestern Honduras, the Maya Ch’orti’ peoples and other groups regularly rely on locally grown plant medicine to boost their immune systems against common diseases. Medicinal plants, in many cases, have been proven to have tremendous health benefits. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), for one, recommends an intercultural approach to working with Indigenous peoples, meaning that medical interventions in Indigenous communities should respect and incorporate traditional knowledge and medicine as a viable form of healthcare.
During a two-part conference organized by the International Indian Treaty Council (IITC), titled Human Rights and Indigenous Peoples in the Time of COVID-19, Navaho elder Chili Yazzie and other leaders called on the human family to come together and correct our destructive tendencies. Socially and morally irresponsible overexploitation of the environment makes the world population susceptible to natural disasters like pandemics. As elders like Chili Yazzie postulate, COVID-19 teaches us that we should balance our needs with the sustainability of the ecosystem and live in union with our planet.
Indigenous nations around the world provide us with examples of sustainable living. Their ways of life provide us with a vivid alternative to the current corporate-centric world order. Indigenous peoples also are custodians of some the world’s last remaining biospheres. Now is the time for international communities to act, to promote environmental sustainability worldwide in conjunction with Human Rights.
The world that we have taken for granted for too long will either be one, or not at all.
