Tag: indigenous issues

An Australian community built on racial segregation looks to the future, with or without a Voice | CNN

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Cherbourg, Australia
CNN
—

Built on the land of the Wakka Wakka people, Cherbourg’s modern motto of “many tribes, one community” reflects the varied origins of its 1,700 residents, descendants of people once forced to live there under laws of segregation.

Between 1905 and 1971, more than 2,600 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders were forcibly moved from their land to Cherbourg, then known as Barambah, according to the Queensland government.

Some were marched barefoot through the Australian bush by colonial settlers under a law that called for the removal of Indigenous people from their traditional lands to be housed and educated in colonial ways.

Today residents live in neat rows of single story houses, their rent paid to a council that’s determined to turn the former government reserve into a thriving community where people want to live – and it seems to be working.

“We’ve got around 260 people waiting on our waiting list,” said Cherbourg Council CEO Chatur Zala. “There’s a huge demand for social housing because our rent is pretty reasonable.

“The rent in the big cities is so expensive, people can’t afford it.”

Life has changed for people in Cherbourg, but a divide still exists in Australia between non-Indigenous and Indigenous people on a whole range of measures – from infant mortality to employment, suicide and incarceration.

Indigenous people have proposed an idea they say may help close the gap, and on October 14 the entire country will vote on it.

A Yes vote would recognize First Nations people in the constitution and create a body – a Voice to Parliament – to advise the government on issues that affect them. A No vote would mean no change.

So how does Cherbourg, a community created from policies of segregation and assimilation, feel about what’s being billed as an historic step forward for Indigenous reconciliation?

“My community is very, very confused,” said Mayor Elvie Sandow, from her air-conditioned office in the center of Cherbourg. “They’re confused with the Voice, and then the pathway to [a] treaty.”

The mayor said residents will vote because if they don’t, they’ll be fined under Australia’s compulsory voting laws, then she immediately corrects herself.

“Well, they probably won’t vote,” she said. “They’ll just go out and get their name ticked off the [electoral] roll, so that avoids them getting a fine.”

A record number of Australians – some 17.67 million of a population of 25.69 million – have registered to vote in the country’s first referendum in almost 25 years, according to the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC).

Early voting has already started in remote communities, with AEC staff traveling vast distances by 4WDs, helicopters, planes and ferries to reach them.

Campaigners for both sides – Yes and No – have also been traversing the same routes, speaking to locals, organizing rallies and spending millions of dollars on radio, television and online advertising to win their votes.

“I think this is one of the most important events of my life,” said Erin Johnston, who was among thousands of people marching at a recent Yes rally in Brisbane, organized by the charity Australians for Indigenous Constitutional Recognition.

“We have an opportunity to right a big wrong,” Johnston said.

But with two weeks to go before the vote, polls are showing that the referendum is on track to fail, a potential blow for Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, who made it an election pledge.

The prime minister has stressed that the Voice is not his idea but a “modest request” made by representatives of hundreds of Aboriginal nations who held meetings around the country in 2017.

Together they agreed a one-page statement called the Uluru Statement from the Heart which calls for “a First Nations Voice enshrined in the Constitution.”

When we have power over our destiny our children will flourish.

Uluru Statement from the Heart

“We seek constitutional reforms to empower our people and take a rightful place in our own country. When we have power over our destiny our children will flourish. They will walk in two worlds and their culture will be a gift to their country,” it said.

Aunty Ruth Hegarty remembers her early days as a child in Cherbourg. There, children did not flourish, they did not walk in two worlds, and their culture was not seen as a gift but something to be erased.

Now 94, Aunty Ruth has written an award-winning book about growing up in the settlement. She was just a baby when her parents moved there from the Mitchell district in southwest Queensland looking for work during the Great Depression.

On arrival, the family was separated into different areas of the settlement. Then they realized they couldn’t leave.

The Aboriginals Protection and Restriction of the Sale of Opium Act 1897 (Qld) allowed authorities to remove Indigenous people to government reserves and govern almost every aspect of their lives.

Aunty Ruth was allowed to stay with her mother in the women’s section of a crowded dormitory until she was 4-and-a-half years old.

But after her first day at school, she was told she wouldn’t be living with her mother anymore. “You’re a schoolgirl now,” she was told, before being directed to the girls’ section where she shared beds, baths, towels and meals with other students.

“We were not allowed to cry,” Aunty Ruth wrote. “Crying always resulted in punishment.”

Punishment meant being caned, having their heads shaved, or being locked alone in a wooden cell at the back of the property, she wrote.

Mothers were sent to work as domestic staff for settlers while the men did manual labor, and when she was 14, Ruth was also sent away to earn money. At 22 she applied for permission from the state to marry, and when restrictions eased in the late 1960s, she moved with her husband and six children to Brisbane to start a new life outside the settlement.

“We escaped all right. But we had to convince my husband,” she told CNN at her home in Brisbane. “I said to him, there’s no jobs for the kids. Even if they went through high school, they wouldn’t get a job in our town. Every office in Cherbourg had White people working in it, so there’d be no jobs for them. So I had to tell him, we’re going,” she said.

Sitting beneath a pergola surrounded by flowers in her garden, Ruth still has the energy of an activist who has spent much of her life working to improve the lives of her people.

She wears an orange Yes badge and says she hopes the referendum will produce change.

“All I want is my constitutional recognition for me and my kids,” she said, leaning forward. “We need a change. We need change.”

Sitting to her right, her daughter Moira Bligh, president of the volunteer Noonga Reconciliation Group, said, “We’ve overcome disadvantage, but unless we’re all at our stage, we won’t stop.”

“I won’t stop,” Aunty Ruth added, “because I think it’s the right thing for us to do.”

Across town on a Wednesday night, an audience of No voters at an event organized by conservative political lobby group Advance gives an indication of why this referendum is so contentious.

Wearing No caps and T-shirts handed out at the door, they cheer loudly as the leaders of the No camp urge them to reject division.

“The Yes campaign focuses on the past. We focus on the now and the future, the making of Australia the envy of the world,” said Nyunggai Warren Mundine, a member of the Bundjalung, Gumbaynggirr and Yuin people.

We focus on the now and the future, the making of Australia the envy of the world.

Nyunggai Warren Mundine

Sitting in the back row, carpenter Blair Gilchrist says Indigenous people wouldn’t need a Voice if politicians were doing their jobs properly and spending money where it was needed. He’s not a fan of Albanese’s Labor government.

“Money has got to be scrutinized better. I think that’s probably the main thing. That the money is spent well,” he said.

Successive governments have spent billions of dollars to close the persistent gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians in national health and welfare statistics, yet many targets aren’t being met. And on some measures, the gap is widening – including rates of incarceration, suicide and children in care.

The Voice seeks to give non-binding advice to government about what might work to end the disparity – but critics say it’s not needed.

“Infant mortality has dropped, life expectancy has increased, it might not be at the levels we need it, but it’s heading in that direction,” Northern Territory Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, a descendant of the Warlpiri people, told the audience.

The death rate for Indigenous children ages 0-4 was 2.1 times as high as the rate for non-Indigenous between 2015 and 2019, according to government figures. On average, non-Indigenous men live 8.6 years longer than Indigenous men – for women it’s 7.8 years. The gap’s even wider in remote communities, statistics show.

“The Voice, it suggests that Indigenous Australians … are inherently disadvantaged, for no other reason but because of our racial heritage,” Price said. “It’s suggested that every one of us needs special measures and [to be] placed in the constitution. That again is another lie. I mean, look at me and Warren, we’re doing all right, aren’t we?” she said.

Both the Yes and No camps want more accountability – some proof that the billions of dollars spent each year on Indigenous programs are being used to help the most vulnerable. And both want a brighter future for the most disadvantaged Indigenous people, though they disagree about how to get there.

It’s suggested that every one of us needs special measures and [to be] placed in the constitution. That again is another lie.

Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price

Many in the Yes camp say that future needs to start with recognition that, as the world’s oldest continuous civilization, First Nations people occupied the land for 60,000 years before the arrival of British settlers just over 200 years ago.

The official No camp believes nothing separates Australians – from First Nations people to new migrants – and changing the constitution embeds division. For the Yes camp, Indigenous people do hold a special place in the country’s history and their existence must be acknowledged, along with a permanent body that can’t be dissolved on the political whim of future governments.

Other Indigenous people are voting No because it’s not enough – they want treaties negotiated between the land’s traditional owners and those occupying it.

Back in Cherbourg, visitors walk through the old ration shed, where people from hundreds of Aboriginal nations once queued for their weekly allowance of tea, sugar, rice, salt, sago, tapioca, slit peas, porridge, flour and meat.

It’s now a museum, where elders share stories of life in those days.

Zala said Cherbourg Council has made gains in recent years, since Mayor Elvie was elected in 2020. The number of council jobs has doubled to 130, mostly filled by local staff, Zala said.

“The highest employment rate of any Indigenous community,” he boasted.

They’ve opened the first recycling center in an Indigenous community, which handles waste from surrounding areas; and the first Digital Service Center staffed by Indigenous workers, who gain experience and qualifications.

Plans are afoot to expand the water treatment plant beyond upgrades unveiled last year. But most of all, the council is working on ways to provide new homes for the hundreds of people wanting to move there.

It’s a tough task – Cherbourg still operates as a Deed of Grant in Trust (DOGIT) community, meaning it relies on government funding. There’s very little private ownership – almost all homes there are owned and maintained by the council.

For years, the council has encouraged residents to buy the homes their families have lived in for decades, but few financial incentives exist – there’s no market for houses, meaning no capital gains, and some prospective homeowners balk at the cost of private upkeep after so many years of council support, Zala said.

As a lifelong resident, Mayor Elvie knows the issues well. Her mother lived in the Cherbourg dormitory until she was old enough to marry. By the time the future mayor was born in the 1970s, restrictions were being phased out.

She is not afraid of change, but she doesn’t see how a Voice to Parliament in Canberra is going to help address the daily challenges she faces to keep her community employed, housed and educated.

For that reason, she’s going to vote No.

“I don’t make my decision lightly,” she said.”I have had a number of conversations with different mayors and communities and some mayors are for the Yes vote. It’s very divided right up the middle.

“I’m going No because I just feel it’s a duplication. At the end of the day, I am the voice of Cherbourg because I’m the elected mayor for this community.”

I am the voice of Cherbourg because I’m the elected mayor for this community.

Mayor Elvie Sandow

Zala is one of the newer Australians the No camp says would be done a disservice if the country’s Indigenous population was given special recognition in the constitution. Born in Gujarat, India, he moved to Australia in 2006 and has been working to close the gap in Cherbourg since 2011.

“That’s still my motivation every day when I come here. I don’t accept why we have to be different than any other community. I always believed that we don’t want to create a community which is so much behind,” he said.

Of the Voice, he said he’ll be voting Yes.

“At least by voting Yes, you have hope. We don’t know the detail [of] what’s going to happen after the Voice, but it’s best to get it through and see if there might be something good come to the community,” he said. “And I think lots of people are going to do the same.”

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September 30, 2023
Three generations of First Nations men share their views on Australia’s referendum | CNN

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Brisbane, Australia
CNN
—

Before Australians last voted in a referendum on First Nations people in 1967, Uncle Bob Anderson set up a table and chair at a tram stop in central Brisbane.

From his rail-side office, he’d tell anyone who would stop and listen that Australia counted its horses, cows, sheep and goats, but not its Indigenous people. “My question to you is, do you think they should be?” he’d say.

Some 56 years later, the Ngugi Elder sat on a chair under the hot Brisbane sun on Sunday, his wispy white hair covered in a straw hat, his presence a sign of support for another referendum concerning his people.

Nearby, thousands of people gathered for “Walk for Yes” rallies in multiple cities around Australia ahead of the October 14 vote.

On that day, some 17.5 million registered voters will be asked whether Australia should change the constitution to include a permanent body made up of First Nations people to advise the government on matters affecting them.

Now 94, Anderson says a Yes vote isn’t just important for him but the country.

“By talking and walking together as a nation and as a society, we will share a common destiny,” he said.

But less than four weeks out from the vote, polls suggest the split between the supporters and opponents is widening, in favor of no change to the constitution.

Veteran grassroots Aboriginal activist Wayne Wharton wore the reason for his objections on his T-shirt, as he shouted at Yes supporters on a bridge in central Brisbane.

“You’re a thief, a liar and a gatekeeper,” he yelled, to a mix of ages and races walking by. “Give back what you stole, give back what you stole, give back what you stole.”

The 62-year-old Kooma man told CNN on the phone that fundamentally people are being asked the wrong question.

“In a well-meaning country and a country seeking justice, this question would never have been raised or tabled. The question that would have been offered would have been a question about [a] treaty or just occupation,” he said.

Like Anderson, Wharton remembers the curfews that confined First Nations people to the outskirts of town between sunset and sunrise, the racial slurs hurled at him and his family, the abuse of his ancestors forced to live in missions, and the theft of First Nations children under policies of assimilation that later prompted a national apology.

Wharton said he wants “liberation, freedom and restitution” delivered through negotiation by the hundreds of Aboriginal nations with people occupying their land.

“I’ve seen many things change in my 60 years, and as the White bigots that created this continent of privilege die, the next generations have a greater sense of fairness and justice,” Wharton said.

“I believe in my children’s time a lot of this will be overcome. And that’s why I want to make sure that the door of opportunity is always going to be there for those people when the opportunity comes to create a just occupation, that the mechanism will be there and that it wouldn’t have been hijacked by some desperates in 2023 that changed the constitution.”

Other First Nations people see it differently, including Nick Harvey-Doyle, who at 31 is half the age of Wharton, and a third of the age of the Aboriginal Elder Anderson.

From his New York apartment, Harvey-Doyle, an Anaiwan man from New South Wales, co-organized a walk across Brooklyn Bridge on Saturday, attended by more than 350 people, mostly Australians, calling for a Yes vote.

“I’m from a really small country town that has about 10,000 people and I think there’s about 8,000 Australians in the New York tri-state area. To me, that’s almost essentially a whole country town worth of votes,” he said.

Harvey-Doyle is a former lawyer who is studying at New York University with a Roberta Sykes Scholarship that provides funding for Indigenous students to undertake postgraduate research abroad. Sykes, who died in 2010, was the first Black Australian to study at Harvard, and fought for a Yes vote in the 1967 Referendum.

That referendum, to count Indigenous people in Australia’s Census figures, passed with over 90% approval.

Harvey-Doyle implored Australians living overseas to cast their votes to improve the life outcomes for First Nations people, who have lagged behind the country’s non-Indigenous population in heath and welfare statistics for decades.

“We as Aboriginal people don’t feel like we have carriage over our most intimate and important personal affairs,” he said.

“I think Aboriginal people do have a different way of life from non-Indigenous people and the current structures and institutions we have in place, don’t always acknowledge that and aren’t always in the best cultural place to service our needs.

“Actually having a body that exists that is enshrined in the constitution that allows us empowerment, to give advice over our own lives and our own issues is actually super important.”

According to the Australian Electoral Commission, as of Sunday, more than 96,000 registered voters were outside Australia – including those living abroad and some 58,000 who have notified the commission that they’ll be traveling on October 14.

While voting is compulsory within Australia, being overseas is considered a valid reason not to vote. More than 100 polling centers will be open worldwide to enable people to vote in person, or they can return a postal ballot. Overseas voting starts early, on October 2.

To pass, the referendum needs the majority vote across the country, as well as the majority of people in at least four states.

Indigenous people won’t determine the outcome of this vote – that will be up to millions of other non-Indigenous Australians, some of whom object to Indigenous people being given a special place over others within the constitution, calling the vote “divisive.”

Wharton says the concept of millions of non-Indigenous voters deciding what’s best for 3% of the population is racist in itself.

However, Harvey-Doyle says he’s wary of the message a no vote would send in the country and beyond.

“If we vote No, it says that we are really happy to be apathetic towards the poor life outcomes that some average Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people experience, and I feel like that goes against what it means to be Australian to give everyone a fair go,” he said.

“It’ll be a really sad global position for us to put ourselves in, if we do vote No.”

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September 17, 2023
The fight for the sacred Black Hills of South Dakota takes center stage in the documentary ‘Lakota Nation vs. United States’ | CNN

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CNN
—

Jesse Short Bull grew up a mile from an Indian reservation in South Dakota not realizing the ground he was stepping on was once soaked with the blood of his ancestors.

Less than a century ago, the Indigenous people of the Lakota Dakota Nakota Nation were killed defending themselves from the United States government, which broke a treaty that vowed the sacred lands, including the Black Hills, would belong to the tribes forever.

“I was like any other kid in America. The real history didn’t exist to me. I had no clue, and the truth was never taught to us,” Short Bull, whose Lakota name is Mni Wanca Wicapi (Ocean Star), told CNN. “When I became older, I wanted to understand what happened and why, and I started to fill in all the missing pieces.”

These missing pieces, which led to Short Bull’s revelation of the violent injustices that led to the creation of South Dakota, is the topic of his documentary, “Lakota Nation vs. United States,” which was released Friday.

The documentary, co-produced by actor Mark Ruffalo, is an in-depth and seldom-heard account of American history – a history that begins with the theft of land and the sacrifice of the Indigenous people who refused to surrender it.

“This film is very much a push for land back, for the return of land, there’s no misunderstanding that’s what they’re looking for,” said film co-director Laura Tomaselli.

Woven together by interviews with community leaders and activists, historical footage and racist Hollywood film depictions, the IFC Films documentary is split into three parts: extermination, assimilation and reparations.

“It’s not about being angry, it’s not about being bitter. It’s about a lot of people appreciating this country and its constitution. Not realizing our treaty, which was bound to that constitution, is negated to being an old dusty antique that has no meaning,” Short Bull said. “Nothing exists to them from our country or our land or our people. But to us, it exists. We’re real.”

The documentary, elegantly narrated by Oglala Lakota poet Layli Long Soldier, begins with a string of broken treaties by the federal government.

Within the land legally protected by these treaties are the Black Hills, a holy site described in the film by Milo Yellow Hair, an Oglala Lakota elder and activist, as “our cradle of civilization, the heart of everything that is.”

The Black Hills are a place of emergence, the birthplace of dozens of Indigenous tribes who consider it to be the most sacred place in the world.

“It is one of the oldest places on the Earth, over 5 billion years old,” Yellow Hair said. “So we say from the Black Hills and the Wind Cave is that place, that opening on this mother Earth that breathes.”

When gold was discovered on this land in 1851, war broke out for 17 years, forcing Indigenous leaders to fight gun-holstered soldiers with bows and arrows.

In 1868, in efforts to make peace after consistently losing battles against Indigenous tribes, the US government signed the Treaty of Fort Laramie. The treaty designated millions of acres west of the Missouri River for the absolute and undisturbed use and occupation of the Great Sioux Nation, which encompasses over a dozen tribes.

The treaty says the US government “solemnly agrees that no person, except those herein designated and authorized so to do…shall ever be permitted to pass over, settle upon, or reside in the territory described in this article.”

But it became another broken promise.

In 1980, the US Supreme Court ordered over $100 million to be paid to the Great Sioux Nation because of the broken treaty. But the nation hasn’t taken the money. Since 1980 that original $100 million has accrued interest and grown to more than $2 billion.

But despite the poverty they face, the Great Sioux Nation still refuses the money. Because the land was never for sale.

“We are nothing without the Black Hills, that’s why the Black Hills are not for sale, because we are not for sale,” Sicangu Lakota historian Nick Estes says in the documentary. “How can you sell your very identity of what makes you an Indigenous person?”

The documentary also offers in-depth analysis into forced assimilation tactics deployed by the US government to weaken Lakota Dakota Nakota tribes who were still fighting back. One method was killing off their buffalo and depleting their resources, so they began to starve and had no choice but to depend on the government, according to the film.

Another method was taking away their children and enrolling them in boarding schools, stripping them of their Indigenous names and clothing, banning them from speaking their languages and forcing them to cut their hair. If they resisted, they were punished, often violently.

With the intention of conquering their people by destroying their culture, says Oglala Lakota activist Nick Tilsen, “they outlawed our language, they made our ceremonies illegal, they criminalized us for living our way of life.”

After premiering at the Tribeca Film Festival in June 2022, “Lakota Nation vs. United States” has played on the screens at Indigenous reservations where the tragic story takes place.

At Standing Rock Sioux Reservation, nearly 200 people, including elders who still carry stories of dark days, attended the screening, and many were in tears, says Hunkpapa Lakota elder Cedric Good House.

“We were impressed with Jesse and everybody else because it took real bravery to do this, a lot of courage,” Good House told CNN. “It’s coming at a time when people think they can know it all in a matter of a minute. They’ll read a little clip on Facebook and that’s it.”

“But here is this lengthy documentary and people are getting captivated by the truth, and after they finish watching they can see this is still applicable to us today. We can point it out for them,” he continued. “Look what’s happening today here and here and here, we are still fighting.”

The Standing Rock Sioux have been recently entangled in another battle against the federal government, mainly the US Army Corps of Engineers, the agency responsible for approving the Dakota Access Pipeline.

A violation of the Treaty of Fort Laramie, the pipeline is a 1,172-mile underground conduit that would transport some 470,000 barrels of crude oil a day – stretching across North Dakota, South Dakota, Iowa and Illinois.

The Standing Rock Sioux, whose reservation resides near where the pipeline runs, say it will not only endanger their main source of drinking water – the Missouri River – but also their sacred tribal grounds.

“This movie is about our history, but here in the present we see nothing has changed,” Good House said. “This is our sacred land, and we try to get ourselves into the process, but the process still doesn’t address us.”

In a desperate fight to protect their land and Unci Maka, or Mother Earth, Native tribal members alongside non-Indigenous allies and environmentalists demonstrated for years against the construction of the oil pipeline until they were forcibly removed from the protest site in 2017.

“We’re not here to chase people off land. We’re not here to take over their farms and ranches and start charging people for crossing our territory,” Good House said. “We are protecting this Earth, we’re not here to do what the government has done to us.”

In the land where ceremonies were once held and their ancestors bones now lay, Indigenous holy sites are still being exploited for profit, elders and activists say in the film.

After killing those who attempted to protect it, the US government has turned stolen land into tourist attractions, Short Bull says, making money off the ongoing pain and suffering of Lakota Dakota Nakota tribes.

Deep in the Black Hills stands a mountain known as the Six Grandfathers, or Tȟuŋkášila Šákpe, whose peaks were blown up to carve the faces of four presidents – now known as the Mount Rushmore National Memorial.

“Mount Rushmore represents and is the ultimate shrine to White supremacy,” activist Krystal Two Bulls of the Northern Cheyenne and Oglala Lakota says in the film. “Our sacred mountain, the Six Grandfathers, of course they carved four racist White men into our sacred mountain, who believed in slavery, who actually removed us from our lands.”

Today the children of the Indigenous leaders who died to preserve whatever land they could continue their ancestors’ purpose: demanding their land back.

And as the world suffers a climate crisis where Indigenous traditions, like controlled burning, are now being used to fight it, “it’s a no brainer” to return the land to those who can actually care for it, says Tomaselli, the film’s co-director.

“If you are a non Indigenous person and you’re concerned about the climate, it should be obvious to throw all of your energy behind people that were living here before any of our ancestors showed up, tribes who have been taking care of this environment better than anyone has before,” Tomaselli said.

As calamities happen around them for the sake of money, Short Bull says – gold mining, coal mining, the pipeline development, deforestation – the Indigenous people living there still have no say.

But with their demand for land back comes a warning.

“I want people to remember that there is bloodshed on Earth and our relatives’ blood is on this ground,” Short Bull said. “This planet was not created for you to just take, take, take. The Earth is an extension of you, and if you’re not going to take care of it, disaster is coming.”

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July 16, 2023
Authorities in northeast India give ‘shoot-at-sight’ orders after violent skirmishes over tribal rights | CNN

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New Delhi
CNN
—

Authorities in the northeastern Indian state of Manipur have issued “shoot-at-sight” orders after violence broke out this week between tribal and non-tribal groups that saw properties and vehicles set ablaze.

The state’s governor, Anusuiya Uikey, issued the order on Thursday in a bid to “maintain public order and tranquility,” a statement from Manipur’s home department said.

Shoot-at-sight orders were authorized for “extreme cases whereby all forms of persuasion, warning, reasonable force etc. had been exhausted” and the situation “could not be controlled,” according to the statement.

Skirmishes broke out on Tuesday after thousands of tribal people took part in a rally organized by the All Tribal Students Union of Manipur, against the potential inclusion of the state’s majority Meitei ethnic group in India’s “Scheduled Tribe” grouping.

The Meitei community, who make up about 50% of the state’s population, have for years campaigned to be recognized as a scheduled tribe, which would give them access to wider benefits including health, education and government jobs.

Scheduled tribes are among the most socio-economically disadvantaged groups in India and have historically been denied access to education and job opportunities.

If the Meitei community are given scheduled tribe status, other tribal groups say they fear they will not have a fair chance for jobs and other benefits.

On Tuesday, clashes reportedly broke out between the Meitei community and some tribespeople. Video and photos broadcast on local television showed vehicles and buildings set on fire, with thick black smoke billowing from the streets.

Manipur’s government announced the suspension of mobile internet services for five days, while troops from the Indian army have been deployed to violence-affected areas of the hilly state and are carrying out evacuation operations.

Former boxer and Olympic medalist Mary Kom, who is from Manipur, told CNN affiliate News 18 that the situation was “very bad.”

“From the bottom of my heart, I appeal to the central (federal government) and state governments for ensuring the safety of everyone,” she said.

About 25% of India’s population of 1.4 billion are grouped under the scheduled castes (Dalits) and scheduled tribes (Adivasis) in India’s constitution.

India’s caste system was officially abolished in 1950, but the 2,000-year-old social hierarchy imposed on people by birth still exists in many aspects of life. The caste system categorizes Hindus at birth, defining their place in society, what jobs they can do and who they can marry.

Adivasis are indigenous Indians who have been socially and economically marginalized for centuries.

Both groups have long endured social isolation, and jobs that Dalits and Adivasis have been forced to take for centuries include cleaning, manual scavenging and waste picking.

Many Adivasis do not have national ID cards, which are required to access many government schemes including getting subsidies and direct cash transfers, and health insurance under the prime minister’s health project, as well as to open a bank account.

“It has been seen that most Dalits and Adivasis, find it difficult to get these government ID cards … or ration cards. Either the information doesn’t reach them, or the enrollment camps to get biometric IDs are never set up in their villages and mostly they are asked to pay huge bribes to get these IDs made,” Alladi Devakumar, executive secretary of Dalit Bahujan Resource Centre, told CNN in 2020.

And poverty makes these groups more vulnerable during emergencies, according to the findings of a 2013 study by the International Dalit Solidarity Network, a network of international human rights groups fighting Dalit discrimination.

For example, after the 2004 Asian tsunami, Dalits were forced to remove bodies and debris, for very little if any pay, and weren’t offered any psychological support.

Some Dalits and Adivasis also reported an increase in social isolation and discrimination during the coronavirus pandemic, with no social safety net to ensure they don’t fall deeper into poverty.

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May 4, 2023
US Marshals team up with California Native American tribe to address cases of missing and murdered Indigenous people | CNN

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CNN
—

The US Marshals Service is teaming up with a Native American tribe based in Northern California for a new push aimed at addressing cases of missing and murdered Indigenous people, a growing crisis that tribes say has not received enough attention.

The Yurok Tribe was chosen as the first pilot location for the federal agency’s Missing and Murdered Indigenous Persons Initiative (MMIP), which is part of the Justice Department’s efforts to address disproportionately high rates of violence experienced by Native Americans, including Indigenous people, its website says.

The Bureau of Indian Affairs, a federal agency aimed at enhancing life for Native Americans, estimates there are more than 4,200 missing and murdered cases that have gone unsolved. The agency lists out many of the cases and photos of the missing on its website. But despite the numbers, cases involving Indigenous people have largely gone under the radar and advocates have been pushing for additional dedicated law enforcement resources and attention in the news media to the crisis, CNN previously reported.

Authorities say they have long faced a number of challenges that have prevented them from solving cases. Police say in some cases it involves family-on-family crime and relatives refuse to provide information because they don’t want the person responsible to go to jail. In other cases, there is limited evidence, CNN previously reported. Tribal communities generally don’t have doorbell cameras or exterior security cameras that help police investigate cases in urban or suburban areas.

The partnership with the Yurok Tribe, which was announced on Tuesday, will involve a collaboration between the tribe and USMS “to share information, identify goals, and develop strategies for improving public safety for Yurok Tribe, its members, and the broader community,” the USMS said in a press release.

The Yurok Tribe is currently the largest tribe in California with more than 5,000 members, according to the tribe’s website. The tribe has been a leader in fighting the crisis of missing and murdered Native American and Indigenous people and calling for programs to prevent future cases.

“The Yurok Tribe is extremely grateful to partner with the US Marshals Service on this important and timely initiative,” Joseph L. James, chairman of the Yurok Tribe, said in a statement. “The knowledge and tools we will gain from this unique partnership will significantly increase our capacity to keep our community safe.”

In January, the tribe received a $350,000 grant from the San Manuel Band of Mission Indians to hire a full-time investigator for ongoing and cold cases involving missing and murdered Indigenous people, according to CNN affiliate KRCR. Tribal leaders also recently requested $200 million dollars from the state government to fight the crisis, KRCR reported.

The crisis spurred the FBI into action enlisting the agency’s intelligence resources best known for fighting crime and terrorism to create a master database last year of missing Native Americans in New Mexico and the Navajo Nation, CNN previously reported.

The database – which includes photos of the missing along with their age, gender and date of last contact – has been praised by advocates who insist that the cases of missing and murdered Native Americans don’t receive the attention they deserve from police, CNN reported.

The issue has also garnered the attention of President Joe Biden’s administration, which has rolled out a number of initiatives to address violence against Native Americans including a new unit within the Bureau of Indian Affairs to investigate the cases while coordinating resources among federal agencies and Indian country.

Members of the Yurok tribe and USMS recently met to discuss the partnership and the potential to work together on a wide range of activities – depending on the tribe’s priorities, the release said.

The targeted areas may include training on missing child investigations, data analysis, public outreach, sex offender registration and enforcement as well as investigative support for the tribe’s law enforcement officers, the release says.

“It is my sincere hope that by dedicating resources in Indian Country and partnering with the Yurok Tribe, U.S. Marshals will help address the problem of missing children from the Yurok Tribe and assist with other public safety initiatives, such as ensuring that registered sex offenders in the area are compliant with their statutory requirements,” US Marshals Service Director Ronald L. Davis said in a statement.

“We are fully committed to supporting the Yurok Tribe’s efforts to keep their communities safe,” he added.

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February 25, 2023
The Yanomami people lived in harmony with nature. Invaders turned their lives into a fight for survival. | CNN

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CNN
—

Shaman Davi Kopenawa Yanomami furrowed his brow as he stared out at the skyscrapers and buildings looming through the window of his oak-panelled hotel room in New York City. “I’m here, in the city of stone, and mirrors and glass… but in my heart, I’m in mourning,” he told CNN.

Davi has campaigned for Brazil’s Yanomami people, one of the largest relatively isolated indigenous groups in South America, for nearly 40 years – braving threats on his life for his activism. Last week, he was invited to Manhattan for the opening of a group exhibition of Yanomami artists and Brazilian photographer Claudia Andujar at cultural center The Shed, which counted among its guests United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres.

Despite the glamour of the surroundings, Davi’s mind was more than 2,000 miles away, deep in the forests of Brazil, where a health crisis has gripped his people. “I’m in mourning…for my people, who I’ve lost,” he said, referring to recent images that emerged from the territory showing emaciated Yanomami adults and children, some with swollen bellies from hunger.

Disease and malnutrition have torn through Yanomami villages over the last four years – a crisis that experts lay at the feet of the scores of illegal miners who have set up camp in their sprawling territory, spurred by the high price of gold.

Yanomami children are dying at a disproportionate rate from preventable diseases, like malaria and malnutrition. At least 570 Yanomami children have died from preventable causes since 2018, Brazil’s health ministry told CNN.

Fiona Watson, research and advocacy director at indigenous human rights group Survival International, said high malaria rates – spread by miners – have left many Yanomami adults too unwell to hunt or fish, as they rely entirely off the forest and rivers for food. “That means the food’s not coming in, hence you get so much malnutrition (that) has led to this terrible catastrophe,” she said.

Their predicament is exacerbated by water pollution and environmental destruction from the mines, and sometimes violent encounters with the intruders. In January, Ariel Castro Alves, Lula’s National Secretary for the Rights of Children and Adolescents, said a federal government delegation were told in January that at least 30 Yanomami girls and teenagers had been abused and impregnated by miners.

Government health workers, who might have mitigated the crisis, have been intimidated and even driven out of the area by miners who took over health facilities and airstrips, Junior Hekurari Yanomami, president of the Urihi Yanomami Association, told CNN.

The emergency is the latest test for Brazil’s newly inaugurated President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who has made environmental protection a priority for his term in office. In January, he launched a crackdown on illegal mines in Yanomami territory, and the country’s military, environmental agencies and police forces are currently sweeping through the area to clear it of miners.

Lula’s administration has brought hope, says Davi, especially through his appointment of the country’s first minister for indigenous people, Sonia Guajajara.

“But he’s going to need a lot of support,” the activist said of Brazil’s bitterly polarized political landscape.

Yanomami territory, which spans the Brazilian states of Roraima and Amazonas, is supposed to be a protected reservation where mining is illegal. But miners have flooded the area over the last several years as gold prices boomed, stripping the natural environment and in some cases driving away vital health workers.

While it is hard to get an accurate number of mines in the sprawling territory, which equals the size of Portugal, a report by Brazilian NGO Instituto Socioambiental (ISA), based on satellite imaging, found that mines on Yanomami land had risen from four in 2015 to 1,556 by the end of 2021.

As hunter-agriculturalists, the Yanomami maintain a symbiotic relationship with their environment. Some 30,400 Yanomami live in the territory, and as they are largely isolated from the outside world, they are more vulnerable to common viruses. Exploitation and encroachment in the forest by extractive industries has proven to be fatal for the indigenous group and their traditional way of life.

The building of the Trans Amazonian highway, started in the 1970s by the Brazilian military dictatorship who were keen to develop the Amazon basin, introduced measles, malaria and the flu that decimated Yanomami communities, said Watson.

A goldrush in 1986 later saw an estimated 20% of the Yanomami community die in a seven-year period, according to Watson. Many of those miners were driven out in 1992, when the area was demarcated by the government of then-President Fernando Collor de Mello.

Davi says he noticed a shift when former President Jair Bolsonaro was in power. Miners felt emboldened to enter the territory armed “with a lot of heavy equipment, the mechanised dredgers, and they were using petrol, mercury, and then they… used planes and small landing strips and helicopters,” Davi said.

The arrival of new miners brought misery, said Davi, including reported threats and attacks against Yanomami communities. In May 2021, a half-hour shootout with miners left four dead, including two Yanomami children – a video of the incident showed women and children running for cover as a boat passed the riverbanks of their village.

“It’s his fault. He let the illness of mining in,” Davi says of Bolsonaro.

Bolsonaro has called accusations that he turned a blind eye to the Yanomami plight a “left-wing farce” on his official Telegram channel on January 21. Having visited the region before, he shared pictures of him with indigenous people on his Telegram account as well as government press releases from his presidency, including one saying the World Health Organization praised the vaccination rate of Brazil’s indigenous people under his government in 2021.

During his term from 2019 to 2022, Bolsonaro signed an environmental protection decree to raise fines for illegal logging, fishing, burning, hunting, and deforestation. His administration also saw Brazil’s National Indian Foundation (FUNAI) – a government agency that oversees policies related to indigenous communities – invest $16 million in surveillance of indigenous lands to combat illegal activities there.

However, the far-right leader also supported legislation to open indigenous protected areas to mining, reduced funding or dismantled agencies tasked with monitoring and enforcing environmental regulations, and repeatedly claimed that indigenous territories are “too big” – all of which emboldened trespassers, experts say.

Brazil’s Supreme Court has ordered an investigation to determine whether the actions of the Bolsonaro government amounted to “genocide” of the Yanomami. Ahead of Lula’s meeting with President Joe Biden on Friday, he reiterated to CNN that Bolsonaro could be “punished” by courts for “the genocide against the Yanomami indigenous people.”

On January 30, Brazil’s Ministry of Human Rights and Citizenship (MDHC) also released a report on alleging that its previous administration disregarded numerous alerts made about the Yanomami’s deteriorating situation.

CNN has reached out to Damares Alves, who led MDHC at the time. When asked about the claims by a Brazilian reporter on February 1, Alves responded: “The Yanomami have been living in a calamitous situation for decades. It’s time for the people (the Senate) to change the union’s budget so that we can take better care of the Yanomami Indians. As for the accusations, I will only speak when cited by a court”.

There has been momentum since Lula’s intervention in the territory. Speaking from Boa Vista in late January, Lula pledged to eliminate illegal mining, saying he was “shocked” by the Yanomami’s poor health.

More than 1,000 unwell indigenous people have been evacuated from the Yanomami territory, and the Justice Ministry announced a major offensive against the miners, and closed the territory’s airspace as it tackles their supply routes.

On Monday, Brazilian security forces began their enforcement operation to expel the miners, many of whom may have already left the area. Videos have emerged on social media of miners fleeing from the territory or imploring the government to help them leave the area. Last week, Justice Minister Flavio Dino said he expected 80% of the illegal miners to have left the first week of February.

A miner, who was seen leaving the area, told Reuters that the Yanomami were desperate for food parcels dropped by Air Force planes. “The day the parcels arrived, they were gone,” Joao Batista Costa, 65, told Reuters, while holding up a food parcel.

But resolving the crisis will be a long road, and Lula is likely to face resistance among parts of the sizeable number of Brazilians who support Bolsonaro’s policies. Nor are all politicians on a regional level as enthused about indigenous protections; Roraima state governor Antonio Denarium, a Bolsonaro ally, for example, appeared to downplay the Yanomami crisis in an interview to Folha de S. Paulo newspaper in January, saying it was time for them to adapt to urban living and “leave the bush.”

In a later statement to CNN, Denarium’s office said the quotes were “taken out of context,” adding that “the desire for people’s lives to improve is the desire of anyone who values the dignity of indigenous or non-indigenous people.”

For Davi, there has been little evidence that authorities valued Yanomami dignity in recent years.

“We indigenous peoples are badly treated, as are our rivers, the animals – but it’s not just indigenous peoples who are dying, the city people are suffering as well,” Davi said from his hotel room. “These two worlds really need to come together in a big embrace and not let our world be ruined.”

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February 10, 2023
Colorado launches new alert system to help find missing Indigenous people | CNN

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After community members searched for Wanbli Vigil in knee-deep snow and brush in Denver, Colorado, authorities activated a statewide alert system on Tuesday to help find the missing 27-year-old Lakota man.

Vigil’s disappearance is the first case to activate Colorado’s new Missing Indigenous Person Alert (MIPA). The system was launched last week to address the state’s missing Indigenous people crisis. Colorado is among a handful of states that have created similar alert systems in the past year amid the nationwide crisis of unsolved Indigenous missing and murder cases.

“It’s needed, because we … as Indigenous people have been silenced too long, and abused too long and not taken seriously,” said Daisy Bluestar, a Southern Ute advocate and member of the Missing & Murdered Indigenous Relatives Taskforce of Colorado, a grassroots group that lobbied for the creation of the new alert system.

Vigil was last seen on December 29 around 2 p.m. as he left an apartment building in Denver and was reported as missing on New Year’s Day, his aunt, Jennifer Black Elk, told CNN. He was wearing blue jeans and a black jacket with white stripes, according to the alert issued by the Colorado Bureau of Investigation (CBI).

Black Elk said Vigil walked out of their apartment after sharing “personal issues” and left the door cracked. She initially thought Vigil went to pray because he was seen carrying a chanunpa, a ceremonial pipe, she said.

“He’s pretty funny. He’s pretty laid-back, easygoing and helpful and just a good person inside,” Black Elk said of her nephew.

The Colorado Bureau of Investigation launched the Missing Indigenous Person Alert system on December 30, 2022.

Its creation is the result of legislation passed last year to expand the investigation of cases of missing and murdered Indigenous people. Bluestar and other Indigenous advocates like her worked with state lawmakers to draft and pass Senate Bill 22-150 despite pushback from some lawmakers and agencies in the state. Gov. Jared Polis signed the bill into law last summer.

The legislation also required the state to create an office of liaison for missing and murdered Indigenous people.

The alert system is designed to be activated when an Indigenous person is reported missing to law enforcement. The legislation requires law enforcement agencies that receive a report of a missing Indigenous person to notify the CBI within eight hours of a report of a missing adult or within two hours of a report of a missing child, according to the Colorado Department of Public Safety.

If an Indigenous child is abducted, an Amber Alert will go out statewide, pinging residents’ phones, the CBI said. An alert under the new system will be issued if an Indigenous child goes missing in a non-abduction case.

Once an alert is issued, local and state law enforcement in Colorado are notified, as well as media outlets and other stakeholders who might distribute the alert information via email or text, CBI said. Unlike an Amber Alert, state investigators say the Missing Indigenous Person Alert will not go out to cell phones.

“The CBI understands the importance and effectiveness of the various alerts that are in place in Colorado, and we are pleased to have been asked to develop this newest alert in an effort to quickly locate missing Indigenous persons and return them safely to their loved ones,” CBI Director John Camper said in a statement.

As the search for Vigil continues, activists criticized how the new alert system was activated this week and said it could have been done in a more timely manner.

Denver Police said Vigil was reported missing on Sunday, but the Missing Indigenous Person Alert wasn’t issued until Tuesday.

“We’re losing valuable time in locating this young man or finding evidence as to where his whereabouts might be,” said Raven Payment, a Ojibwe and Kanienkehaka activist and member of the Missing & Murdered Indigenous Relatives Taskforce of Colorado who has joined the search for Vigil.

When asked about the time it took for the Missing Indigenous Person Alert to be issued, the Denver Police Department said its missing persons unit “opened a missing persons case and followed the notification procedure.”

When asked about the alert’s timing, the Colorado Bureau of Investigation said it issued the alert when it received information from the Denver Police Department. “The Denver Police Department is the lead on this case, as they took the report, and may have been performing investigative tasks leading up to the request for the alert,” the CBI said.

“For us to get this pushed through was an accomplishment, major accomplishment. But right now, you know, we’re at this point where it still doesn’t seem like it’s important enough or urgent enough,” said Bluestar, the other advocate.

Colorado is among three states that have implemented alert systems aimed to locate missing Indigenous people. Last year, Washington became the first state to create one and California launched a Feather Alert to assist in search efforts for an Indigenous person who has been reported missing under suspicious circumstances.

Nationally, there were 782 unresolved cases of missing Native American people as of August 2022, according to data from the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System.

Correction: This story has been updated to correct the length of time authorities spent searching for Vigil before the alert system was activated.

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January 4, 2023
Opinion: Where I come from, being a climate ‘activist’ isn’t a choice | CNN

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This week, world leaders and diplomats are converging on the Egyptian resort town of Sharm El Sheikh for the 27th United Nations Climate Conference – better known as COP27.

Meanwhile, some 12,000 kilometers away from the sun-drenched beaches and high-level negotiations, another climate battle is already underway.

Among those attending COP27 is 20-year-old Helena Gualinga. She hails from a remote village in the Ecuadorian Amazon – home of the Kichwa Sarayaku community, who have been fighting for climate justice and indigenous land rights for decades.

And with historic results. In 2012, the Sarayaku community successfully took the Ecuadorian government to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, after it allowed oil exploration activities on their territory without their consent.

(Among the court’s findings was that Ecuador had put the Kichwa Sarayaku peoples’ right to life and cultural integrity in serious risk and was reportedly ordered to pay more than $1.3 million in compensation).

The landmark legal case had a lasting impact on Gualinga, and she hasn’t shied away from calling out the inadequacy of former COPs.

In response to the perceived failures of COP25, Gualinga co-founded Polluters Out, a global youth coalition challenging the UN and governments to cut ties with the fossil fuel industry. 

Here, she tells CNN Opinion why she has reservations about COP27’s effectiveness, the importance of including indigenous people in climate crisis talks and why she doesn’t identify with the term “activist.”

The views expressed in this commentary are her own.

CNN: Describe growing up in the Ecuadorian Amazon and how this influenced your relationship with nature. 

Gualinga: I spent a significant part of my childhood in my mother’s Sarayaku community in the Ecuadorian Amazon, where I have a big “ayllu” or “family.”

It was an upbringing both in nature and in coexistence with nature – a lifestyle and culture we carry with pride.

Here, we are surrounded by big Ceibo trees and beautiful waters. We live in huts made out of wood and palm leaves, built with ancestral practices. Our subsistence has solely depended on nature – but the climate crisis, extraction of resources and deforestation have all contributed to devastation of our territory, which impacts the wildlife and our communities.

All of this has influenced our philosophy and declaration – Kawsak Sacha, meaning “The Living Forest,” where everything is alive.

The forest, water and mountains are considered living beings and therefore to honor and protect these living beings, the Sarayaku is fighting for legal recognition of them to create a new category of conservation.

With traditional conservation methods increasingly being questioned, it’s clear that the world needs to look towards Indigenous people to learn how to protect our ecosystems.

 CNN: The Sarayaku case in 2012 was a landmark victory for indigenous rights – how did it shape how you see the world? 

 Gualinga: The Sarayaku case is a symbol of resistance. Throughout my childhood, the leaders of my community – many of whom are family – were violated, facing defamation, violence, torture and criminalization for their defiance. It sparked rage in me and my community.

But when Sarayaku won, we showed the world that you can fight big oil because no political or economic force is powerful enough to exploit land when its people unite.

Our victory inspired other Indigenous peoples protecting their lands and sends a powerful message to the companies and banks invested in projects that violate our rights. Their time is up!

 After living in fear of losing our home, my peers and I have followed in our elders’ footsteps in defying the systems that uphold violence against people and nature.

 Last month, a youth gathering was held in Sarayaku where Indigenous youth from across the Ecuadorian and Peruvian Amazon gathered to discuss the future of our territories and reaffirm our commitment to protect Kawsak Sacha.

Kawsak Sacha – a decolonized shift in mindset, rooted in Indigenous practices – is vital to stand against human greed and fight climate change. We need to replace Western conservation methods with Indigenous stewardship.  Western models treat nature as something separate from humans, while Indigenous peoples see ourselves as part of nature, which we have lived with for thousands of years, and seek to pass on to future generations.

CNN: You don’t identify with the label ‘activist’ – why is that?

 Gualinga: I don’t identify as an activist because I do not believe we had a choice. Where I come from, most of the Amazonian Indigenous population would be considered “activists.”

If Sarayaku did not put up a fight, our territory would have been destroyed. It’s a matter of survival rather than acting out of choice. 

My region, Latin America, is one of the most dangerous places for Indigenous people and land defenders. Our life’s work has been to protect our lands – our existence is our resistance.

The mere existence of people in the Amazon is what is securing the future of the Amazon. Does that make us activists? No. It is simply part of who we are and where we come from. It’s a defense mechanism of nature itself. 

CNN: Why are indigenous voices important in the global conversation on climate? 

 Gualinga: Our communities have been raising the alarm bell on the climate crisis as we see the changes to the environment firsthand. We are on the front lines of keeping fossil fuels in the ground as we work to defend our lands. 

 As the world is moving away from fossil fuels, it’s now being replaced by the green energy industry. However, the transition to a green economy must ensure that it includes Indigenous peoples in decision-making – and that it does not repeat the same colonialist approach of the fossil fuels industry.

However, the green energy industry is currently not adequately including Indigenous peoples in decision-making.

Unfortunately, indigenous territories will be ground zero for exploitative practices in the transition to green energy.

Helena Gualinga

Where will these resources come from? Unfortunately, indigenous territories will be ground zero for exploitative practices in the transition to green energy. For example, across Latin America, mining for lithium, ‘the new gold,’ is intensifying and leaving indigenous communities in extremely poor conditions.

In the Amazon we have also seen hydro dam projects happen on Indigenous territories without prior and informed consent from Indigenous people. Often these projects are classified as “green,” however impacts on Indigenous communities have not been adequately addressed and accounted for.

It’s essential that Indigenous people not only have a say in climate negotiations, but that discussions are also led by Indigenous people, so that all climate action is guided by climate justice. 

Indigenous people have tended ecosystems for thousands of years. The knowledge we have obtained interacting and coexisting with nature for years is essential to understand how we will restore and find balance between humans and nature.

To understand this, let’s look at the numbers. Indigenous peoples comprise less than 5% of the world population but we protect 80% of the Earth’s biodiversity in the forests, deserts, grasslands, and marine environments in which we have lived for centuries.

CNN: Are you hopeful COP27 will bring change?

Gualinga: I do not have high expectations for COP27. A sense of urgency about the climate crisis has still not reached the negotiating rooms despite millions of people suffering from its devastating consequences. 

COP has yet to deliver on the big promises the parties have made throughout the years. In particular, COP27 needs to make sure Indigenous people are at the front and center at the negotiations to ensure an outcome that accounts for the injustice we are facing in protecting our rights, lands and the world’s biodiversity.

Countries must put nature at the heart of their mitigation and adaptation plans.

And the most pressing conversation to be had is the end of fossil fuel extraction. The climate crisis will continue if we do not close the oil tap, halt extractive industries and the financing of energy projects that violate the rights of Indigenous peoples and threaten ecosystems like my home.

My community, Sarayaku, for example, is currently divided into several oil blocks – meaning the government has allocated our territories for the exploration for and production of oil – which means we live under a constant threat. Much of the trade of Ecuadorian Amazon crude oil is financed by European banks, some of which may be attending COP27 with inconsistent promises and Net Zero pledges.

COP27 needs to recognize the expiration date of fossil fuels is now. It needs to acknowledge our wisdom on climate solutions as stewards of the land and provide funding and resources so we can help to cultivate a just future. 

Nature is at stake – and it will not be safe until governments are held accountable.  

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November 10, 2022