As the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) climate talks opened in Panama this week, Indigenous leaders from around the world gathered in Finland and called upon the international community to remove scientific bias against Indigenous knowledge from climate change science and policy.
On September 29, 2011 the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced it will clean up approximately 1.4 million tons of radium and uranium contaminated soil at the Northeast Church Rock Mine, the largest uranium mine on the Navajo Nation in New Mexico.
Russia and China took a step forward in their negotiations to build a
pipeline that would carry natural gas from Russia to China, transecting the
sacred Ukok Plateau. This week the two countries' companies agreed on a
formula to calculate the price of the natural gas, according to an
announcement by Gazprom Deputy CEO Alexander Medvedev. See the complete
report here.
To write letters to Russian and Chinese officials, opposing the proposed
On September 26, 2011 over 200 people protesting Canadian government's support for Alberta's Tar Sands and the Keystone pipeline XL were arrested trying to carry out a sit-in in the House of Commons in Ottawa.
On September 10, 2011, the Honduran president’s office announced that the Minister of Finance signed a contract with the Chinese company Sinohydro to build three dams on the Patuca River, with construction scheduled to start in 2012. Sinohydro expects to fund the project with loans from Chinese financial institutions. A previous contract had only contemplated one dam, Patuca III, which will be built first.
See the full article here.
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.
Reconocimiento de tierra
Reconocemos que nuestra sede está en la tierra de Massachusetts, en Cambridge, MA, y agradecemos a los administradores Indígenas pasados, actuales y futuros de este territorio.
