29-3 Fair Trade and Indigenous Peoples

Cooperatives: A Short History

Cooperative societies were created long before the advent of the fair trade movement to help workers improve their livelihoods and protect their interests. Cooperatives are organizations of people who have the same needs. Most scholars recognize the business of the Rochdale pioneers of England as the first coop. In 1844, this group of 28 men (weavers and skilled workers in other trades)…

Politics in the Andes

Politics in the Andes, a series of social science essays, presents a unique comparative analysis of the ongoing research of several international authors in five Andean countries- Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia- a region rarely examined by scholars. Three main issues of concern for the region are brilliantly examined: social movements and the struggle for identity,…

Learning As They Go

As the president of La Voz Que Clama en el Desierto, I direct the cooperative’s business, meetings, work plans, and employees, advise the small coffee growers, and watch to see that everything ends to the benefit of the community. I have been involved with this group of farmers for 26 years, and we have been a fair trade cooperative for 14 years. La Voz became involved in fair trade because we…

Juicing Up For Fair Trade

A women's organization in the Philippines used an environmental campaign to create a worldwide trend that helps artisans compete in the global market. Through their artisanal production, Philippine women have entered the global market on their own terms by forging links with alternative trade organizations (ATOs)-institutions that conduct business according to a philosophy of fair trade…

FLO Standards for Fair Trade Coffee

Long Term and Stable Relationship Buyers and sellers will establish a long-term and stable relationship in which the rights and interests of both are mutually respected. Buyer and seller will sign contractual agreements for the first part of the season and a letter of intent for the rest of the season, to be confirmed by purchase contracts as the harvest progresses, which stipulate basic…

Commitments and Actions

Some coffee roasters' current work and future commitments for their fair trade businesses Green Mountain Green Mountain has had a licensing agreement with TransFair USA since 2000. In December 2003, the company made a commitment in a letter to the United Students for Fair Trade that 25 percent of its purchases and sales would be fair trade within five years. Two years later, Green…

A Gallery of Dreaming

In Australia, Aboriginal paintings- which boast an extremely contemporary "look" despite the millennia of traditions from which they arise—are displayed in prestigious museums alongside such modern masters as Jackson Pollock, Helen Frankenthaler, and Agnes Martin. Originally a male purview, the genre has become increasingly dominated by female artists who are becoming household names among…

A Better Life At Home

I have been working in the main office for the past five years. During that time I have had the opportunity to travel to the United States, Canada, and Norway to do weaving demonstrations. I am involved in different aspects of production: I help in the dying process, inspect products (and there is a lot to inspect), arrange the products, do shipping and packaging tasks, make the tags for…

The Fleecing of Navajo Weavers

The popularity of Navajo rug designs has allowed some fair trade businesses to thrive while Navajo weavers suffer. Ninety percent of indigenous peoples living in the southwestern United States depend on crafts as their principal or secondary source of income. Yet, of the $1 billion worth of American Indian arts and crafts sold annually in the United States, more than 50 percent is “fake…

So, You Want To Be A Fair Trader?

A former crafts fair trader shares the lessons he learned when he mixed business and social justice. Fair trade companies are usually born with the best intentions: they are for-profit enterprises whose founders believe they can do well while doing good. But fair trade is a complicated business that appears deceptively simple, particularly when dealing with crafts rather than commodities…

Is Fair Trade Fair?

This issue of Cultural Survival Quarterly looks at fair trade—the global movement in which North American and European marketers form partnerships with producers in the global South to ensure that low-income farmers and artisans earn a living wage for their work—and examines whether it is “fair” for indigenous peoples. For some, in this era when free trade has triumphed over all other global…

Indigenous Youth Challenge Corporate Mining

On June 22 the second International Indigenous Youth Conference (IIYC) released several resolutions and declarations aiming to stop the destructive impacts of globalization on indigenous lands, cultures, and peoples. The six-day meeting facilitated conversation between indigenous youth from countries in Africa and Latin America, Australia, the Philippines, New Zealand, India, Bangladesh, Finland…

Helping the Earth

I entered the coop in 1985. I have always had my plots and I run them in a natural way. Since I entered the coop with the organic technology, I have earned a better price and I was able to buy my house and my children have achieved a higher level of education. My children and I get up early to gather firewood before they go to school and I go to the fields. I work during the whole year. The crop…

Fair Trade & Indigenous Peoples

Indigenous farmers and crafters told Cultural Survival about their experiences with fair trade and what the movement needs to do to achieve its goals. About two years ago, Willie Foote from Ecologic, a microfinance company based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, came into the Cultural Survival office to ask if we had done any research on how fair trade impacts indigenous peoples. It was a…

Confessions of a Fair Trader

Coffee is the economic lifeblood of many indigenous communities. As with any primary cash crop, it can provide meaningful income or it can lock the growers into an unbreakable cycle of poverty. The fair trade movement has great potential to support the goals and aspirations of indigenous peoples throughout the coffee lands. But there are certain dynamics of trade and business culture that inhibit…

By A Thread: The Benefits and Challenges of Being a Fair Trade Crafter

A Guatemala fair trade weaving cooperative enables civil war widows to stay home and maintain their Mayan culture, but the coop struggles to survive in the global marketplace. In the 1980s the women of Guatemala’s department of Sololá, in the Canton Pujujil region on the edge of Lake Atitlán, watched as their community slowly disintegrated under the pressures of the country’s decades-…

A Cup of Truth

Fair trade has allowed indigenous coffee producers to improve their lives, but some farmers' experiences show that this social movement must go beyond charity. When consumers buy a cup of fair trade coffee, they feel comforted to know that they have helped a farmer in a far-off country earn a living. And they should—fair trade has helped thousands of farmers worldwide improve their…

Siberian Dream

From the plains of Buryatia, Siberia, to the runways of Moscow, New York, Milan, and Paris, Siberian Dream drives home the message that indigenous people can live in the modern world while still maintaining their indigenous identities. The film documents the success of Irina Pantaeva, the first Siberian supermodel, as she makes her way from Soviet-era Buryatia to the glossy covers of top…