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Category: Indigenous Peoples

Old religious tensions resurge in Bolivia after ouster of longtime indigenous president

Old religious tensions resurge in Bolivia after ouster of longtime indigenous president

Supporters of former Bolivian president Evo Morales rally with indigenous flags outside the city of Cochabamba, Bolivia, Nov. 18, 2019. AP Photo/Juan Karita By Matthew Peter Casey, Arizona State University Days after the powerful Bolivian leader Evo Morales was forced to resign as president after allegations of election fraud, Bolivia’s new interim president made her first public appearance. Climbing to the balcony of the Presidential Palace in La Paz, Jeanine Áñez – formerly a senator representing Bolivia’s weak political opposition…

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Indigenous people and illegal miners are engaged in a fight that may help decide the future of the planet

Indigenous people and illegal miners are engaged in a fight that may help decide the future of the planet

Jon Lee Anderson writes: One day in 2014, Belém, a member of Brazil’s Kayapo tribe, went deep into the forest to hunt macaws and parrots. He was helping to prepare for a coming-of-age ceremony, in which young men are given adult names and have their lips pierced. By custom, initiates wear headdresses adorned with tail feathers. Belém, whose Kayapo name is Takaktyx, an honorific form of the word “strong,” was a designated bird hunter. Far from his home village of…

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We need indigenous wisdom to survive the Apocalypse

We need indigenous wisdom to survive the Apocalypse

Julian Brave Noisecat writes: For hundreds of years, the Mohawk have defied the governments superimposed over their own. Since the 1600s, they resisted successive French, Dutch, British, American, and Canadian invasions, often successfully. And when the wars ended, they kept fighting. In the ­early 1900s, a Mohawk iron­worker crossed the US–Canada border with his family to live and work in Philadelphia. When the Americans prosecuted him as an “illegal alien,” he insisted that free passage was his birthright as a…

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Why more places are abandoning Columbus Day in favor of Indigenous Peoples Day

Why more places are abandoning Columbus Day in favor of Indigenous Peoples Day

Marchers celebrate the first Indigenous Peoples Day in Berkeley, Calif. on Oct. 10, 1992. AP Photo/Paul Sakuma By Malinda Maynor Lowery, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Increasingly, Columbus Day is giving people pause. More and more towns and cities across the country are electing to celebrate Indigenous Peoples Day as an alternative to – or in addition to – the day intended to honor Columbus’ voyages. Critics of the change see it as just another example of political…

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How the loss of Native American languages affects our understanding of the natural world

How the loss of Native American languages affects our understanding of the natural world

Dance is a unique way of passing on cultural stories to a younger generation. Aaron Hawkins/Flickr.com, CC BY-ND By Rosalyn R. LaPier, The University of Montana Alaska has a “linguistic emergency,” according to the Alaskan Gov. Bill Walker. A report warned earlier this year that all of the state’s 20 Native American languages might cease to exist by the end of this century, if the state did not act. American policies, particularly in the six decades between the 1870s and…

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400 million indigenous people protect 80% of the world’s biodiversity

400 million indigenous people protect 80% of the world’s biodiversity

The Guardian reports: As presidents, prime ministers and corporate executives gathered at the UN climate action summit on Monday, for the first time, an indigenous representative joined the event in a formal capacity. Tuntiak Katan of the Ecuadorian Shuar people spoke on behalf of the International Indigenous People’s Forum on Climate Change (IIPFCC), a caucus of indigenous rights advocates who, for years, has been working towards more robust participation and inclusion at the UN level in response to the climate…

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Brazil’s army wants to ‘occupy’ the Amazon

Brazil’s army wants to ‘occupy’ the Amazon

The Intercept reports: Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro is planning to push industrialization and development in the interior of the country’s Amazon basin. It is far from a new project. For more than a century, a series of Brazilian governments have sought to move into the country’s interior, developing — or, to be more precise, colonizing — the Amazon. From the populist president-turned-dictator who made one of the early industrial pushes into the forest in the 1930s to the military dictatorship…

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Amazon gold miners invade indigenous village in Brazil after its leader is killed

Amazon gold miners invade indigenous village in Brazil after its leader is killed

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The Guardian reports: Dozens of gold miners have invaded a remote indigenous reserve in the Brazilian Amazon where a local leader was stabbed to death and have taken over a village after the community fled in fear, local politicians and indigenous leaders said. The authorities said police were on their way to investigate. Illegal gold mining is at epidemic proportions in the Amazon and the heavily polluting activities of garimpeiros – as miners are called – devastate forests and poison…

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How science got trampled in the rush to drill in the Arctic

How science got trampled in the rush to drill in the Arctic

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Adam Federman reports: Every year, hundreds of petroleum industry executives gather in Anchorage for the annual conference of the Alaska Oil and Gas Association, where they discuss policy and celebrate their achievements with the state’s political establishment. In May 2018, they again filed into the Dena’ina Civic and Convention Center, but they had a new reason to celebrate. Under the Trump administration, oil and gas development was poised to dramatically expand into a remote corner of Alaska where it had…

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Indigenous Waorani win landmark legal case against Ecuador government

Indigenous Waorani win landmark legal case against Ecuador government

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Al Jazeera reports: The indigenous Waorani community in Ecuador won a landmark lawsuit on Friday against three government bodies for conducting a faulty consultation process with the community before putting their territory up for sale in an international oil auction. The ruling immediately suspends any possibility of selling the community’s land for oil exploration. It also sets an important precedent for other communities in Ecuador’s southern Amazon rainforest, trying to keep oil extraction out of their territories. “Today, the courts…

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Do you see what I see?

Do you see what I see?

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Nicola Jones writes: In a Candoshi village in the heart of Peru, anthropologist Alexandre Surrallés puts a small colored chip on a table and asks, “Ini tamaara?” (“How is it?” or “What is it like?”). What Surrallés would like to ask is, “What color is this?” But the Candoshi, a tribe of some 3,000 people living on the upper banks of the Amazon River, don’t have a word for the concept of color. Nor are their answers to the question…

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Protecting indigenous lands protects the environment. Trump and Bolsonaro threaten both

Protecting indigenous lands protects the environment. Trump and Bolsonaro threaten both

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Deb Haaland and Joênia Wapichana write: On Tuesday, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro will meet with President Trump at the White House. Both administrations are pushing a host of policies that are detrimental to the rights of indigenous people. As two of the first female indigenous members of Congress in the United States and Brazil, respectively, we are concerned about these policies and the mounting threats facing our communities. We must stand up against toxic rhetoric and brutal attacks on the…

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Why do so few Aussies speak an Australian language?

Why do so few Aussies speak an Australian language?

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By Laura Rademaker, Australian National University Linguistically speaking, Australia is special. With around 250 languages spoken when Australia was first colonised, Australia was one of the most linguistically diverse places in the world. But few people speak our Indigenous languages. As of 2016, only 10% of Australia’s Indigenous population spoke an Indigenous language at home. Most Indigenous languages are now “asleep”, waiting to be woken up by language revivalists. Australian languages did not simply fade away; they were actively silenced…

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In hunter-gatherer societies, excellent metabolic health is sustained by very active ways of living and a wide range of diets

In hunter-gatherer societies, excellent metabolic health is sustained by very active ways of living and a wide range of diets

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The New York Times reports: Nutrition experts have long debated whether there is an optimal diet that humans evolved to eat. But a study published this month adds a twist. It found that there is likely no single natural diet that is best for human health. The research, published in the journal Obesity Reviews, looked at the diets, habits and physical activity levels of hundreds of modern hunter-gatherer groups and small-scale societies, whose lifestyles are similar to those of ancient…

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Brazil’s Amazon rain forest is in the crosshairs, as defenders step up

Brazil’s Amazon rain forest is in the crosshairs, as defenders step up

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Andrew Revkin writes: By now, anyone worried about the fate of the Amazon rain forest or the indigenous and traditional communities depending on this vast, rich ecosystem knows the litany of potentially devastating steps [Brazil’s newly elected far-right president, Jair] Bolsonaro has threatened to take. He won on a platform mainly built around change and order after the worst string of corruption scandals and economic troubles in Brazil’s modern history. But he also wooed rural landowners and businessmen, appealing to…

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‘First contact’: What a missionary’s death tells us about the perils of colonialism

‘First contact’: What a missionary’s death tells us about the perils of colonialism

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Ed Simon writes: Last week, Alabama native John Allen Chau bribed fishermen to take him to the protected Andaman archipelago in the Indian Ocean, where he wished to “establish the kingdom of Jesus on the island.” In a particularly American spin on first-contact narratives, Chau brought a football to the Sentinelese, among the last pre-Neolithic tribes on Earth protected from contact. He was ultimately killed by Sentinelese armed with bows and arrows, an end that raises profound questions about “first…

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