The Southernmost part of Africa comes alive every year on the 2nd of January, and 2017 was certainly no exception.The Cape Minstrel Festival is an annual celebration that takes place in the mother city of South Africa, Cape Town.

​​​​​​​“It is never about resolving differences and working together. Never! It is always about India and China,” mourns an elder from Siskin village as he crosses a bridge close to the border of India and China. The Adi community collectively weaves these bamboo bridges every year across the pristine Siang River.

On November 1, 2016, the Constitutional Chamber of Costa Rica’s Supreme Court provided some good news to a Terraba (Teribe) Indigenous territory when it stopped the state-run Costa Rica Electricity Institute (ICE by its Spanish acronym) from going forward with the Diquis hydroelectric project for failing to consult Indigenous communities who would see part of their lands flooded.

Introducción por Laura Hobson Herlihy y traducción de la introducción por Sasha Marley

A finales del 2016,  un partido político minoritario de denominación indígena, YATAMA, por sus siglas en la lengua miskitu (Yapti Tasba Masraka Nanih Aslatakanka/Hijos de la Madre Tierra), logró un triunfo importante en las elecciones generales de Nicaragua, confrontando de forma eficaz al estado totalitario del régimen sandinista.

At the end of 2016, a small Indigenous political party, Yatama (Yapta Tasbi Masraka Nanih Aslatakanka/Sons of Mother Earth), achieved a victory in the Nicaraguan general elections and effectively confronted the dictatorial Sandinista state.

Cultural Survival condemns the action of of the Ecuadorian government in the raiding of the Indigenous Shuar federation FICSH and the arbitrary detention of its president Agustin Wachapa.  

In October, I visited the the Q’eqchi’ community of Nimlajacoc to support them in their application for funds from Cultural Survival’s Community Media Grants Project, what I found was an organized community who are a model of Indigenous resilience. 

On Thursday, December 15th Bangladeshi protesters from the Phulbari region were joined by climate activists in London outside of the annual general shareholders meeting of Global Coal Management (GCM) Resources Plc, a British mining company who wants to build a massive open cast coal mine by forcibly displacing 130,000 people in Phulbari, Bangladesh.

Hosted by Massachusetts Sierra Club and co-hosted by Cultural Survival, join us in Somerville for an action-inspired concert in solidarity with and support of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and all those standing in opposition to the Dakota Access Pipeline project. 

Saturday, January 14, 2017 at 12 PM - 4 PM
Aeronaut Brewing Company
14 Tyler St,
Somerville, Massachusetts 02143