Carrie Arnold writes: Shortly before 8am on 26 December 2004, the cicadas fell silent and the ground shook in dismay. The Moken, an isolated tribe on the Andaman Islands in the Indian Ocean, knew that the Laboon, the ‘wave that eats people’, had stirred from his ocean lair. The Moken also knew what was next:… Read More »
Inside Climate News reports: The land rights of Indigenous peoples across millions of acres of forests in Brazil, Colombia, Mexico and Peru must be protected and strengthened if the world has any hope of achieving the goals set forth in the 2015 Paris Agreement, a study released on Thursday found. The study, by the World… Read More »
Nature reports: Many scientists rely on Indigenous people to guide their work — by helping them to find wildlife, navigate rugged terrain or understand changing weather trends, for example. But these relationships have often felt colonial, extractive and unequal. Researchers drop into communities, gather data and leave — never contacting the locals again, and excluding… Read More »
Jessica Sequeira writes: Animals are everywhere in the Popol Vuh. They leap and lick and crawl and bite and squawk and hoot and screech and howl. They are considered sacred, not as disembodied beings in some faraway place, but in their coexistence with humans, day by day in the forests. The Sovereign and Quetzal Serpent,… Read More »
Chinese engineers pose after welding the first seamless rails for the China-Laos railway in Vientiane, Laos, June 18, 2020. Kaikeo Saiyasane/Xinhua via Getty Images By Blake Alexander Simmons, Boston University; Kevin P. Gallagher, Boston University, and Rebecca Ray, Boston University China is shaping the future of economic development through its Belt and Road Initiative, an… Read More »
Kim Sterelny writes: Most of us live in social worlds that are profoundly unequal, where small elites have vastly more power and wealth than everyone else. Very few of the have-nots find this congenial. As experimental economists have shown, we tend to enter social situations prepared to take a chance and cooperate in collective activities.… Read More »
Mark Harris and Denise Ferreira Da Silva write: Indigenous peoples in Brazil are under siege by the Brazilian government, which is waging war on two fronts. New legislation in the form of a bill known as PL 490/2007 threatens to cancel legal protections for Indigenous territories, while a landmark Supreme Court case over the so-called… Read More »
Georgina Gustin writes: For thousands of years Indigenous people have survived by hunting, fishing, foraging and harvesting in ways that sustain them while maintaining an equilibrium with nature. But a major report from the United Nations warns that this balance is being severely tested by climate change and by incursions into Indigenous lands—many of them… Read More »
Science Alert reports:The Tsimane, an indigenous people who live in the Bolivian peripheries of the Amazon rainforest, lead lives that are very different to ours. They seem to be much healthier for it. This tribal and largely isolated population of forager-horticulturalists still lives today by traditional ways of farming, hunting, gathering, and fishing – continuing… Read More »
David Treuer writes: In 1851, members of a California state militia called the Mariposa Battalion became the first white men to lay eyes on Yosemite Valley. The group was largely made up of miners. They had been scouring the western slopes of the Sierra when they happened upon the granite valley that Native peoples had… Read More »
Sarah Sax writes: Since Lucely Pio was a little girl, she has been collecting medicinal plants in the Cerrado, Brazil’s tropical savanna. At 5, she walked through the grasslands and forests of the Cerrado with her grandmother, a midwife and healer, who taught her about where to find and how to harvest the thousands of… Read More »
Julian Brave NoiseCat writes: On Election Night, CNN broadcast a table showing the results of an exit poll that broke the national electorate down into racial demographics. It read: White — 65 percent, Latino — 13 percent, Black — 12 percent, Something else — 6 percent, Asian — 3 percent. Almost immediately, that second-to-last category,… Read More »
The New York Times reports: Before their first ayahuasca ceremony, the veterans met individually with two Peruvian “maestros,” or healers, from the Shipibo community in Peru. “Their hearts are hardened,” said Teobaldo Ochavano, who helps run the nighttime ceremonies alongside his wife, Marina Sinti. “They seemed unable to experience love or joy.” Ms. Sinti said… Read More »
The New York Times reports: The Supreme Court on Thursday ruled that much of eastern Oklahoma falls within an Indian reservation, a decision that could reshape the criminal-justice system by preventing state authorities from prosecuting offenses there that involve Native Americans. The 5-to-4 decision, potentially one of the most consequential legal victories for Native Americans… Read More »
Bloomberg reports: The Dakota Access pipeline must shut down by Aug. 5, a district court ruled Monday in a stunning defeat for the Trump administration and the oil industry. The decision, which shuts the pipeline during a court-ordered environmental review that’s expected to extend into 2021, is a momentous win for American Indian tribes that… Read More »
Nick Tilsen writes: On Friday, President Donald Trump will continue his tour of racism and colonialism, moving from Tulsa, Oklahoma, to the sacred Black Hills. Make no mistake, this visit is an attack on Indigenous people. I visit the Black Hills alongside many other Lakotas every year as part of a tradition we have maintained… Read More »