The Indigenous Environmental Network and other partners in the Tar Sands Action coalition issued a new action plan for protests against the Keystone XL pipeline. They reported that at a meeting on the Rosebud Sioux reservation last week, “Native tribal leaders from both sides of the border and private land owners from South Dakota and Nebraska signed a ‘Mother Earth Accord’ opposing Keystone XL and the tar sands.
Internal State Department emails obtained through the Access to Information Act reveal that the Obama administration has been promoting the Keystone XL pipeline project even while the project is officially under review by the department.
This update was prepared and posted by The Altai Project.
On September 20, 2011 while addressing the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, James Anaya, called attention to the fact that large scale development projects and natural resource extraction in or near the territories of Indigenous Peoples is one of the most significant sources of abuse of their human rights worldwide.
In an effort to teach the Lakota language to its children, the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and the Lakota Language Consortium, have produced a 20-episode Berenstain Bears Lakota-language series, Matȟó Waúŋšila Thiwáhe, or “The Compassionate Bear Family.”
On September 12, 2011 the Contentious Administrative Court of Costa Rican ruled that the ancestral lands of the Bribri people of the Keköldi Reserve must be returned. The Bribri live in the Talamanca Canton in Limón Province of Costa Rica and number between 11,000-35,000 people. Keköldi Reserve was created in 1977 on the Caribbean coast, after non-Indigenous groups began settling on the land.
The Patuca III dam in Honduras is one of more than 250 dam projects being built by Chinese companies in 68 countries, according Peter Bosshard of the advocacy organization International Rivers.
The Altai Project reports that Russian energy giant Gazprom has begun intensive surveying work on a controversial natural gas pipeline from Russia to China even though the Russian Natural Resources ministry has voiced concerns that the pipeline would violate UNESCO conventions and recommended alternative routes be studied.
A municipal judge in the Philippines dismissed charges against nine Ifugao Indigenous people who are members of the Didipio Earth Savers Mulitpurpose Association (DESAMA). DESAMA has long claimed that the charges were trumped up in an attempt to intimidate and harass Indigenous people who oppose construction of an OceanaGold mine in their community. Mine construction has displaced Indigenous landowners and threatens the water supply in this agricultural region.
In May 2011, Cultural Survival’s Global Response program launched a campaign to protect the Patuca River from construction of a hydroelectric dam by the Chinese company Sinohydro. This week, campaign partners OFRANEH, (the Federation of Garifuna People of Honduras) posted an expose of Sinohydro’s disreputable history in controversial dam projects around the world.
Land Acknowledgement
We acknowledge that we are headquartered on Massachusett land, in Cambridge, MA, and we thank the past, current, and future Indigenous stewards of this territory.
