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.
Citing the documented negative effects of mining operations on indigenous communities, Ifugao Congressman Teddy Brawner Baguilat is pushing for a new mining law that respects and protects the rights of Indigenous Peoples.
James Anaya, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, recently published a report on his correspondence with the Mexican government regarding mining concessions within Mexico’s Wirikuta Natural and Cultural Reserve, an area that is sacred to the Wixárika (Huichol) people.
Anaya presented the following facts to the State of Mexico:
2011 Human World Geography Conference
Lawrence, KS. Leaders of the Miskitu and Tawahka Indigenous peoples will be at Haskel Indian Nations University this week to promote their campaigns to stop dam construction and to exercise Indigenous autonomy in Honduras’ vast Moskitia wilderness.
Elouise Cobell (Blackfeet) has been nominated for the Congressional Gold Medal after taking the U.S. government to court for mismanaging more than a century of American Indian land trust royalties. The lawsuit resulted in a $3.4 billion settlement for an estimated 500,000 Native Americans.
On September 6, 2011, Peru’s President Ollanta Humala signed a historic law guaranteeing Indigenous Peoples the right to prior consultation about any mining, logging, or petroleum projects affecting them and their territories.
President Humala said he wanted Indigenous People to be treated like citizens who must be consulted where their interests are involved.
Since Cultural Survival's Global Response campaign in 2003 to prevent gold mining in forests reserves in Ghana, one company has been successful in pushing their plans for the construction of a gold mine into reality. Newmont Mining Company, world renowned for human rights and environmental abuses, began construction on the Ahafo gold mine inside the Ghana Forest Reserves in 2008. Since then, re
The Ngöbe (also spelled Ngabe-Bukle) people of Panama held a series of peaceful demonstrations in Chiriqui,Veraguas, in the autonomous Indigenous region of the Ngöbe in Panama on September 1st to protest the hydroelectric project known as CHAN-75 on the Changuinola River as well as others planned within Ngobe territory.
Papua New Guinea’s Supreme Court has rejected an appeal by Indigenous landowners who asked for a temporary injunction to prevent a Chinese company from dumping its mine and refinery waste into the Bismarck Sea.
In a letter addressed to the Fund for 21st Century Altai, Russia’s Minister of Natural Resources, R. R. Gizatulin, said that building a pipeline across the Ukok Plateau would violate Russia’s obligations to protect the Golden Mountains of Altai UNESCO World Heritage Site, of which Ukok is a part. The letter, dated July 21, 2011, was published by altapress.ru on August 3.
The International Finance Corporation (IFC), the branch of the World Bank Group that loans money to private corporations, announced a new policy that will require clients to obtain the free, prior, and informed consent of Indigenous communities that could be affected by their projects. Approved as part of an updated Sustainability Framework by IFC’s board of directors on May 12, 2011, the policy will take effect on January 1, 2012.
The Sustainability Framework’s Performance Standard 7 concerns Indigenous Peoples. The introduction states:
August 6th, 2011- For the International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples, a coalition of Indigenous groups from the United States, Mexico, and Australia issued a proclamation on the state of Indigenous rights. To read that proclamation on the International Indian Treaty Council website, click here.
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.
