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The United Nations Voluntary Fund for Indigenous Populations is accepting applications for financial assistance for any representatives of indigenous communities who wish to participate in the 2007 deliberations of the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, the Working Group on Indigenous Populations, or the Working Group on the Draft United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Applications must be submitted by October 1, and must be in English, French, or Spanish. The U.N.

Indigenous peoples concerned with bio-colonialism say they have ethical concerns about National Geographic's Genographic Project, which will study indigenous DNA to map human migratory history.

Launched in April and scheduled to span five years, the Genographic Project will be carried out by scholars in 10 regional centers around the world, lead by the National Geographic Society in partnership with IBM and the Waitt Family Foundation, which will provide technical and financial support.

On July 18, several leading civil society organizations along with the mayor of San Miguel Ixtahuacán unanimously decided to conduct direct consultations with community members regarding the impacts of the Marlin Project, an operation of Canadian company Glamis Gold, Ltd. in the department of San Marcos. The Guatemalan government awarded Glamis a license to practice open-pit mining for gold and silver and to use up to 250 liters of water per hour from the local aquifer according to the organization, Instancia Maya MAM AJPOP.

Achuar Territory, Peru – In January, EarthRights International visited a remote area of the Peruvian Amazon to document the resistance of the Achuar people to oil development by California-based Occidental Petroleum. At an Assembly in the village of Wisum, on the Huitoyacu River, we interviewed, photographed and filmed leaders and members of the Achuar federations of ATI and ORACH, who reiterated unequivocally their official position rejecting oil development in their territory.

 

At least 70 workers on the Camisea natural gas pipeline in Ayacucho were kidnapped early Monday morning by unidentified assailants and held for a ransom of one million dollars and assorted communications equipment. On Tuesday the army led a raid on the kidnappers, freeing the captives. The whereabouts of the kidnappers are unknown. President Alejandro Toledo said afterward that he believed the kidnappers were remnants of the Maoist Shining Path, whose insurgency led to an extremely violent civil war that killed over 35,000 during the 1980s and early 1990s.

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