14-4 Land and Resources

Update from Cultural Survival (Canada) - 14.4

Indigenous Issues Dominate Canadian Political Scene Since June 1990, indigenous issues have dominated Canadian politics as never before. In an incredible series of events, Canadian First Nations have become empowered, leaving both provincial and federal governments looking helpless and inept. Due to the wide scope and accelerating nature of the potent challenge mounted by First Nations over the…

The Tawahka Sumu: A Delicate Balance in Mosquitia

Mosquitia is one of the last great wilderness regions remaining in Central America. The name Mosquitia is a historic term used to refer to an isolated region of land located in eastern Nicarague and Honduras. While variously defined, the region holds some cultural and ecological integrity from the Rio Tinto in Honduras to the Rio San Juan in Nicaragua. The well-known eastern part of the region,…

The Pehuenche and the Monkey-Puzzle Tree

While traveling with "Expedition Alerce '90", in southern Chile, trekking in a little-known area called Cahuelmo Fjord, I was told about a valley known as Quinquen. Located near the headwaters of the Bio-Bio River, Quinquen lies east of Temuco, near the Chile-Argentina border, Quinquen is the Mapuche word for "place of refuge." There an indigenous community struggles to maintain its connections…

The Paipai of Jamau: A Test Case for Constitutional Reform

Perhaps the least-known indigenous region of Mexico is that of Northern Baja California. Here vestiges of once large populations live in the mountain range of the Sierra Juarez and the Sierra San Pedro Martir and along the northern Gulf of California coast on the Colorado River Delta. Today California coast on the Colorado River Delta. Today a total of some 500 indigenous inhabitants of the…

The Macaw Feather Project

Students often ask what they, as individuals, can do to help native peoples and to promote cultural survival. What follows is a brief discussion of one project that in a small but meaningful way provides an answer within an environmentally acceptable framework. The program was begun in response to requests for feathers from Pueblo Indians of the American Southwest; it was not imposed upon them.…

The Land Issue in the Ecuadorian Highlands

On 27 May 1990, 160 Ecuadorian Indians took over the Santo Domingo cathedral in the heart of old Quito, converting it into a communal living and eating space. The Indians, representatives of indigenous communities of the six sierra (highland) provinces of Ecuador, demanded that the government immediately resolve 72 individual land conflicts between sierra communities and large-scale landowners (…

Strangers in Their Own Land

West Papua's natural resources became the pivotal point in the public debate over its fate nearly 30 years ago. Had West Papuan aspirations for self-determination been acknowledged at that time, Papuans themselves would now have the final say in the exploitation of West Papua's gold, silver, oil, timber, cooper, nickel, and land development. Unfortunately, in 1962, the US government forced the…

Searching for Life on Zaire's Ituri Forest Frontier

Numerous scenes and images depict the various pressures being placed on Zaire's northeastern forests: a local Kumu woodcutter wielding a whining chainsaw atop a recently felled Afromosia, the open blade four inches away from his bare foot; Mbuti hunter-gatherers turned porters, carrying 50-pound packs of bottled beer over muddied and gorged trails, three days' walk into a Wild West-style gold…

Sarawak: The Human Consequences of Logging

The physical and mental health consequences of logging on the native peoples of eastern Malaysia have, to date, not been fully realized in the West. Instead, local, Malaysian, and international efforts to adequately protect the native forests of the Malaysian states of Sarawak and Sabah have primarily focused on the ecological and cultural damages incurred through logging. Recent reports from…

Maya Survival in Ixil Country, Guatemala

That the Maya of Ixil country have suffered dreadfully as a result of counterinsurgency is but one of Guatemala's many depressing realities (Manz 1988; Stoll 1988; Guatemalan Church in Exile 1989). There is no adequate way that one person can tell of another's pain, but try we must, especially if our lives as privileged North American scholars are to reflect any semblance of academic…

Managing Cultural Resources in Sonoran Desert Biosphere Reserves

The O'Odham are Piman-speaking Native Americans who have lived for thousands of years in the Sonoran Desert region now transected by the United States/Mexico boundary. They have recently become involved in cultural and natural resource management issues relating to Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, Arizona, decreed a biosphere reserve in 1978, and to the Sierra El Pinacate Protected Zone,…

Landholders or Shareholders? The Tribal Movement in Alaska

The 1990s may prove a dramatic decade for Native Americans as managers of land and resources. This is particularly true in the western United States, where large mineral and timber reserves are located on tribal lands and scarce water resources are stretched among Indian and non-Indian users. Beginning in the late 1960s and 1970s, Indian tribes in the lower 48 states (colloquially known as "the…

Land Reform, Ethnicity, and Compensation in Botswana

The shift from communal to individualized systems of land tenure is a process that has occurred throughout the Third World. The twentieth century has seen at least 25 major attempts to reform the basis of land tenure in various countries, some of them relatively successful. In July 1975, Sir Seretse Khama, the president of Botswana, announced a long-term program of land reform and livestock…

Land Acquisition and Compensation in Involuntary Resettlement

The forced resettlement of populations in association with the construction of hydroelectric dams, large-scale irrigation projects, highways, mines, and urban renewal and metropolitan development has become commonplace today. The extent and the implications of such forced relocation are diverse and variable, depending on the nature of the project and density of population being affected. The size…

Introduction: The Value of Biological and Cultural Diversity

Seemingly everywhere, populations are growing and the amount of land used to feed the planet is shrinking. In the Third World, especially, economics are fraying, losing strength; with an increasing tempo, individual families scramble to meet subsistence needs and governments desperately search for foreign exchange to pull themselves out of hock. To meet these needs, rain forests are being…

Hawaii's Rainforest Crunch: Land, People, and Geothermal Development

One hundred and forty-one people, led by Native Hawaiians, were arrested on 25 March 1990 as part of the largest demonstration yet against geothermal development in Hawaii. The gathering was intended to focus attention on Native Hawaiian rights and the ecological consequences of drilling geothermal wells in the near-pristine Wao Kele O Puna rain forest. The energy project, undertaken by True…

Editorial: Genes, Genius, and Genocide

The last great resource rush has begun. It's not land, minerals, timber, or water that are at stake. This time, it's genes, and how to use them. The most genetically diverse areas of the world are inhabited by indigenous peoples. Their areas, and their knowledge, are once again being mined - for information. Unless indigenous rights to this material and knowledge are respected, this gene rush…

Ecocide or Genocide? The Onge in the Andaman Islands

British colonial expansion profoundly altered indigenous people's demographic structure, subsistence mode, and social organization not only in the Andaman archipelago but around the world. As colonialism forced indigenous people to transform from foraging to advanced hunting and gathering, to shifting or settled agriculture, some of the foraging communities completely lost their will to survive…

Cultural Survival Projects, 1990: The Iquitos Declaration

In 1990, more than 60 percent of Cultural Survival's funds supported projects and other field activities among indigenous people and ethnic minorities in the Third World. Each year the final edition of Cultural Survival Quarterly reviews our approach to projects and project selection and outlines the program areas we have focused on in that year. Pages 86-87 contain a listing of activities…

CS (Canada) Projects, 1990

Since opening its office in September 1989, Cultural Survival (Canada) has established itself as an important and credible group on the national environmental and indigenous rights scene. Like its US counterpart, Cultural Survival (Canada) has a strong interest in and maintains working links with indigenous people's support groups in Brazil as well as in Malaysia. It has worked with the rubber…

CISMA: A Mayan Research Organization

As most Cultural Survival Quarterly readers know, Mayans in the western highlands of Guatemala have suffered a protracted (10-year) period of attempted ethnocide. What some may not know, however, is that the Mayan response to this assault on its culture has not been one of withdrawal of passivity. A growing number of Mayan people, who could perhaps be termed Mayan intellectuals, are attending to…

Can Siberut Be Saved?

The indigenous people of Siberut, part of the Mentawai Islands off Sumatra in Indonesia, are threatened by development. A Jakarta-based company, P.T. Sawit Asahan Indah, plans to convert Siberut's rain forests into oil palm plantation. In January 1990 company teams were surveying Siberut to map planting sites. One credible informant saw a planing map showing all of Siberut, except for a swath 12…

"The Land No Longer Gives": Land Reform in Nebaj, Guatemala

In 1988-1989 my wife, our toddler, and I spent a year in Nebaj, a counterinsurgency zone of Guatemala. Living in Nebaj was not as risky as it might seem, at least for researchers enjoying the usual North American immunities and careful not to test the sensibilities of the Guatemalan Army. Backpacking tourists, many of tours of Central America, arrived daily, coming to Guatemala to find oppression…