A stone figure found on a beach was probably by a Lekwungen people artefact, the Royal British Columbia Museum said, but Ray Boudreau begged to differ
Early one morning last summer, walkers on a beach in western Canada spotted an oblong stone figure resting on the sand.
Weighing nearly 100kg, it bore a face with exaggerated features – a bulging eye, contorted nose and lips – and was covered in a thin layer of seaweed and algae.
Continue reading...Canadian casino executive and his wife sneaked into remote town to get injections meant for older population
On a chilly morning in late January, three planes landed on the lone airstrip of a remote community in northern Canada.
Related: Backlash grows for ‘selfish millionaire’ who got vaccine meant for Indigenous people
Continue reading...Three years after the prime minister asked Māori to hold her to account, many are disillusioned with her government
In an oft-repeated story New Zealand’s prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, has recalled how growing up in the small, largely Māori town of Murupara, she would see children going to school hungry, and with no shoes on their feet.
It was these scenes of entrenched inequality and poverty, often along racial lines, that drove a teenage Ardern into the Labour party, where she has dedicated herself to combating child poverty.
Continue reading...The New Zealand foreign minister’s moko has become international news, but beyond an identifier, our tatau are a link to ancestors, a vessel for our cultures’ stories, and a tribute to those who have gone before
Shortly before my interview with six Europeans at a roundtable in Germany, I gently covered my hand tattoo with a skin-toned foundation.
I knew that without the proper context, they would stereotype me in the western sense and presume me either a criminal or at least uneducated or unprofessional. A perception of tattooing common on that side of the world.
Continue reading...A Chilean police officer has been jailed for killing a Mapuche farmer during a vehicle chase in a case that cast a harsh spotlight on the country’s treatment of its largest indigenous group.
Related: Chile: four police officers arrested over fatal shooting of indigenous man
Continue reading...The police stories: Two former Western Australian and NSW officers speak out about what they saw during their time in uniform
One of the worst moments of Jim Taylor’s eight-year career as a Western Australian police officer was the day he strip-searched a 10-year-old Aboriginal boy.
Taylor, now 44, was working in Perth in the Juvenile Aid Group, or “Jag”. He says he was driving around the city’s central business district with his senior sergeant and two other officers when they came across a group of four young Aboriginal kids. They rounded them up and took them back to the station.
Continue reading...Indigenous communities say planned Øyfjellet turbines will interfere with migration paths
Indigenous reindeer herders are bringing a legal action against a proposed wind power project that would be one of the largest in Norway.
The Sámi herders from Nordland county are accusing the Øyfjellet windfarm constructors of breaking licensing agreements which stipulated that construction would not interfere with reindeer migration paths.
Continue reading...Islands surrounded by US military study area, including Guam and Saipan, call for activity that harms the whales to stop
In the midst of the western Pacific, flanked by the world’s deepest ocean trench, the waters off the Mariana Islands are home and habitat to whales, dolphins, and countless other marine mammals as they breed and feed.
It’s also where they encounter the might of the US military.
Continue reading...In a country where indigenous people are increasingly displaced and journalists are killed at an alarming rate, a courageous new voice has emerged: Lupita, a Tzotzil-Maya woman at the forefront of a Mexican indigenous movement. Twenty years after Lupita lost her family in the Acteal massacre in southern Mexico, she has become a spokesperson for her people and for a new generation of Mayan activists. She balances the demands of motherhood with her high-stakes efforts to re-educate and restore justice to the world
Continue reading...Film-maker Monica Wise talks about making her documentary on Mexican indigenous resistance
Our latest Guardian documentary tells the story of Lupita, a courageous young Tzotzil-Maya woman at the forefront of a Mexican indigenous movement. Over twenty years after Lupita lost her family in the Acteal massacre in southern Mexico, she has become a spokesperson for her people and for a new generation of Mayan activists. She balances the demands of motherhood with her high-stakes efforts to re-educate and restore justice to the world. The film-maker Monica Wise talks to us about her experience making the film.
Continue reading...Illegal goldminers supported by Bolsonaro bring environmental destruction and coronavirus to Yanomami communities
A petition with 439,000 signatures demanding “miners out, Covid out” of the Yanomami reserve in Roraima state was handed to Brazil’s congress this month as shamanic images were projected on to the building’s exterior. With Covid-19 ravaging the Yanomami population since the first death from the disease was reported in April, the existence of the “garimpeiros”, or goldminers, has brought even greater threats to the reserve.
The estimated 20,000 miners were already blamed for bringing alcohol and prostitution into the Yanomami reserve, where they have worked illegally for decades, clearing forests and polluting rivers with mercury used in separating out the gold. The destruction wreaked by their work has increased since far-right president Jair Bolsonaro took office – and they have kept working during the pandemic.
Continue reading...Brayden Bushby hurled metal trailer hitch that hit Barbara Kentner, who later died of complications resulting from trauma
A man who hurled a metal trailer hitch at an Indigenous woman walking along a snowy street in Thunder Bay has been found guilty of manslaughter, in a case widely seen as a grim reminder of the Canadian city’s deadly legacy of racism.
In her ruling Monday afternoon, Justice Helen Pierce found that the actions of Brayden Bushby led to the death of Barbara Kentner, 34, on 29 January 2017.
Continue reading...Astonishing rock paintings discovered in Colombia hold a lesson for today’s rainforest
In the past week, remarkable images of ancient cave art have hit the headlines: rock paintings made in South America around 12,000 years ago. The art, created on rock faces in the Serranía de la Lindosa, on the northern edge of the Colombian Amazon, is a riot of ochre-coloured geometrical pattern, handprints, and images of animals and humans. Until recent excavations, the works of art had been unknown to the international community. Their exuberant creativity will soon be revealed to a broad audience in the UK thanks to the Channel 4 series Jungle Mystery: Lost Kingdoms of the Amazon.
The people who made these works of art were, it is believed, among the earliest humans to occupy the region, after migrations across what is now the Bering Strait some 25,000 years ago. Preliminary study of the iconography of the art has led scholars to speculate that among the deer, tapirs, alligators, bats, serpents, turtles and porcupines, long-extinct megafauna are also represented: mastodons, American ice-age horses, giant sloths, camelids.
Continue reading...Study calls for more rights for indigenous reserves as rising gold price attracts more miners
A new report has exposed the scale and impact of mining on indigenous reserves in Amazon countries as gold prices soared during the Covid-19 pandemic. More than 20% of indigenous lands are overlapped by mining concessions and illegal mining, it found, covering 450,000 sq km (174,000 sq miles) – and 31% of Amazon indigenous reserves are affected.
The report, released on Wednesday by the World Resources Institute, said indigenous people should be given more legal rights to manage and use their lands, and called for better environmental safeguards. As pressure mounts over the issue, a leading Brazilian thinktank has called for regulations tracing gold sold by financial institutions.
Continue reading...Joyce Echaquan is seen grimacing as nurses call her ‘stupid as hell’, renewing calls for country to confront systemic racism
A shocking video showing hospital staff in Canada taunting a dying Indigenous woman has left a community in mourning and renewed calls for the country to confront the realities of systemic racism.
Joyce Echaquan, a 37-year-old Atikamekw woman, arrived at a hospital in the Quebec city of Joliette on Monday, complaining of stomach pain.
Continue reading...Milestone is known toll of months of Covid pandemic that has changed everything, from power balances to everyday life
Though an inevitable milestone for months, its arrival is still breathtaking.
Deaths from Covid-19 exceeded 1 million people on Tuesday, according to a Johns Hopkins University database, the known toll of nine relentless months of a pandemic that has changed everything, from global balances of power to the mundane aspects of daily life.
Continue reading...Rieli Franciscato struck in chest as he approached indigenous group he was seeking to shield
A Brazilian government official and expert on isolated Amazon tribes was killed by an arrow as he approached an indigenous group he was seeking to shield.
Rieli Franciscato, 56, spent his career in the government’s indigenous affairs agency, Funai, working to set up reservations to protect uncontacted tribes.
Continue reading...The Paraguayan Guaraní language is a rare regional success story. But its own popularity is a problem for smaller languages
On a hillside monument in Asunción, a statue of the mythologized indigenous chief Lambaré stands alongside other great leaders from Paraguayan history.
The other historical heroes on display are of mixed ancestry, but the idea of a noble indigenous heritage is strong in Paraguay, and – uniquely in the Americas – can be expressed by most of the country’s people in an indigenous language: Paraguayan Guaraní.
Continue reading...Achuar people blame illegal logging for spread and are asking international community for aid
Climate change and multinational corporations have long posed a threat to the people of the Amazon rainforest. Now, however, the region’s indigenous tribes face an even more immediate danger: coronavirus.
Despite living deep in the heartland of Ecuadorian rainforest, the indigenous Achuar tribal people have fallen victim to the pandemic. Over the last several weeks, Covid-19 has struck at the heart of the Achuar community in Ecuador, which is made up of 13,000 people living in 88 groups over 800,000 hectares (3,000 sq miles) along the Pastaza River basin. A further 15,000 Achuar are based in neighbouring Peru.
Continue reading...Indigenous people in headwaters region say financing harms communities and ecosystems
Indigenous people living at the headwaters of the Amazon have called on European banks to stop financing oil development in the region, as it poses a threat to them and damages a fragile ecosystem, after a new report found $10bn in previously undisclosed funding for oil in the region.
The headwaters of the Amazon in Ecuador and Peru are home to more than 500,000 indigenous people, including some who choose to live in voluntary isolation. The area, covering about 30m hectares (74m acres), hosts a diverse rainforest ecosystem, but it is threatened by the expansion of oil drilling.
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