It swept over the settlement like a plague. First came a fever, then their throats swelled up, their eyes became bloodshot and their lungs rattled with coughing. And then they began to die.
Over two weeks in May, 15 members of Malaysia’s last nomadic people, the Batek, were killed by this mysterious disease, while more than 100 were hospitalised. By the end, only about 20 of the 186 people in the tribe living in their Kuala Koh settlement were left untouched.
Continue reading...Fires have been reported in protected indigenous reserves of the Brazilian Amazon, raising fears that loggers and land grabbers have targeted these remote areas during the dramatic surge in blazes across the world’s biggest rainforest.
Blazes have been seen on the Araribóia indigenous reserve in Maranhão state – a heavily deforested reserve on the Amazon’s eastern fringes, which is home to about 80 people from an isolated group of Awá indigenous people, described by the NGO Survival International as the world’s most endangered tribe.
Continue reading...Indigenous community under threat from fire, deforestation and Bolsonaro
Threatened by fire, deforestation and invasion, the Xikrin people of the northern Amazon are fighting back.
While the authorities stand idle and the Brazilian president, Jair Bolsonaro, tries to undermine their territorial rights, the indigenous community have taken matters into their own hands by expelling the loggers and ranchers who illegally occupied their land and set fire to the forest.
Continue reading...Petition with more than 25,000 signatures delivered, calling on New Zealand PM to visit sacred Ihumātao site
Several hundred protesters have marched on Jacinda Ardern’s Auckland office, demanding she visit Ihumātao, the site of a major indigenous land dispute that has broadened into wider anger at government inaction in tackling Māori disadvantage.
The protesters delivered a petition, signed by more than 26,000 people, to the prime minister’s office urging her to travel to the site that has been occupied for the past month as part of a housing dispute.
Continue reading...Songs in the Key of Cree, Deer Woman and Kiinalik: These Sharp Tools, three shows by Canada’s Indigenous artists, are presented at the Edinburgh festival
This summer, Canada’s National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls revealed “staggering” rates of violence and lay the blame at “persistent and deliberate human and Indigenous rights violations and abuses” . For decades, Indigenous women have been murdered or gone missing and, for decades, the problem has been ignored.
The scandal is shocking in its own terms, but for many of those affected, it stands for an even broader malaise. They see the abuse as an expression of colonialism and link it not only to the excesses of capitalism but also the resultant climate emergency; all are about taking what doesn’t belong to you.
Continue reading...Activist leading Ihumātao dispute calls on PM to visit site and act on Māori disadvantage
The leader of a major Indigenous land dispute in New Zealand has criticised Jacinda Ardern’s government for its lack of action on confronting systemic Māori disadvantage, and says the Māori nation is in “a state of emergency” and “crisis”.
Hundreds of activists camped out in tents and cars continue to occupy a sliver of land at Ihumātao in South Auckland – land they say is sacred to Māori, but which has been sold to a private developer and slated for private housing.
Continue reading...Tara Beagan’s drama about a Blackfoot woman seeking to avenge her sister’s murder confronts the violence suffered by Indigenous women from the standpoint of those affected
“You think we’re not at war here? As a Blackfoot woman I can tell you it sure as fuck feels like we are.” So begins Tara Beagan’s one-woman play Deer Woman, about an ex-soldier avenging the murder of her sister – and the 4,000 other Indigenous women and girls who have gone missing or been killed in Canada since the 1970s.
The show, set deep in the woods with nothing but a cooler, holdall and bundled-up tarpaulin as props, is delivered as a mesmerising, shocking, and at times terrifying confession to a smartphone on a tripod. Lila, whose primary goal in life has been to protect her sister Hammy, is eventually deployed with the army overseas – only to discover that something horrible has happened while she was away.
Continue reading...Brazil’s police have been urged to investigate a ‘very tense situation’ in Amapá state
Dozens of gold miners have invaded a remote indigenous reserve in the Brazilian Amazon where a local leader was stabbed to death and have taken over a village after the community fled in fear, local politicians and indigenous leaders said. The authorities said police were on their way to investigate.
Illegal gold mining is at epidemic proportions in the Amazon and the heavily polluting activities of garimpeiros – as miners are called – devastate forests and poison rivers with mercury. About 50 garimpeiros were reported to have invaded the 600,000-hectare Waiãpi indigenous reserve in the state of Amapá on Saturday.
Continue reading...Clip shows a bare-chested man with a spear, who is believed to belong to the Awá people, the world’s most threatened tribe
Remarkable close-up footage that appears to show an uncontacted tribesman in the Amazon rainforest has been released by an indigenous media group that wants to raise awareness of the threat posed by illegal loggers, miners and drug traffickers.
Related: The Amazon tribe protecting the forest with bows, arrows, GPS and camera traps
Continue reading...Construction to start this year, Canadian prime minister says, despite opposition from environmental and Indigenous groups
Canada’s prime minister Justin Trudeau has once again approved a hotly contested proposal to expand the crude oil pipeline it bought last year, providing hope for a depressed energy industry but angering environmental and Indigenous groups which have fiercely opposed the project.
Construction on the expansion of the Trans Mountain pipeline is planned to start this year, Trudeau told a news conference on Tuesday. A senior government official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said earlier that Ottawa expected legal challenges to the approval.
Continue reading...Giant dam and irrigated sugar plantations mean people in lower Omo valley face starvation and conflict, says US thinktank
A giant dam and irrigated sugar plantations are “wreaking havoc” in southern Ethiopia and threaten to wipe out tens of thousands of indigenous peoples , a US-based thinktank has claimed.
The Oakland Institute says that while the Ethiopian government has made considerable progress on human rights under prime minister Abiy Ahmed, it has yet to address the impact of state development plans on indigenous populations in the lower Omo valley, where people face loss of livelihoods, starvation, and violent conflict .
Continue reading...Infectious disease, pollution and water poisoning among suspected causes of deaths
It was in May that the mysterious illness first took hold.
In their isolated rainforest home in the Malaysian state of Kelantan, members of the Batek tribe, the country’s last indigenous nomadic community, began experiencing a fever and breathing difficulties. Then, one by one, they started dying.
Continue reading...Canadians can no longer turn a blind eye to the “genocide” of Indigenous peoples in the country, a landmark report on missing and murdered women has concluded.
Indigenous communities across the country have for decades attempted to convey the depth and scope of a tragedy that has haunted thousands of families.
Continue reading...Government’s inquiry into disappeared women and girls to be published Monday
Three decades of missing and murdered Indigenous women amounts to a “Canadian genocide”, a leaked landmark government report has concluded.
The document, titled Reclaiming Power and Place, was compiled over more than two and a half years. Canada’s CBC News was given a copy of the report, which is due to be released on Monday, on Friday. Its contents were confirmed to the Guardian by an individual working within the inquiry.
Continue reading...An organisation founded in the 90s and revived in 2014 is now 1,100 volunteers who walk the streets looking for ways to help
In a small room in a Winnipeg community centre, dozens of volunteers strap on bright yellow vests and ready themselves for night patrol. Some will pick up syringes along the way, others will hand out fresh fruit and water – all under the banner of protecting the city’s most vulnerable.
“We are the boots on the ground,” said James Favel, the founder of Winnipeg’s Bear Clan. “We are the direct action that our nation has been crying for for decades.”
Continue reading...The epidemic of missing and murdered indigenous women has long been overlooked. That’s why I’m fighting for them in Congress
What would you do if your sister, your daughter or your mother went missing without explanation? There would be search parties. Law enforcement would issue amber alerts. Investigations would begin. Suspects would be brought in for questioning.
In Indian country, that’s not the case. In Indian country, it is often days before law enforcement shows up for a missing person call or homicide. In the case of Ashlyn Mike, a seven-year-old-girl in New Mexico, an amber alert wasn’t issued for more than 10 hours, when typically for cases of missing children those alerts are posted almost immediately. Ashlyn Mike lost her life at the age of seven.
Continue reading...Senator Lisa Murkowksi tells the Guardian ‘justice was not there’ for indigenous families, but says change is coming
For generations, the deaths and disappearances of Native American women and girls have haunted Indian country. Despite the alarming number of indigenous women who vanish each year from tribal land, rural communities and cities, there is no official accounting of the murdered and missing.
Now, amid a growing demand for answers in the era of #MeToo, political momentum is building on Capitol Hill to finally address these tragedies – and to prevent future ones.
Continue reading...Is Gordon Ramsay allowed to cook Chinese food ? Is it OK to dress up as Disney’s Moana? Can Jamie Oliver cook jollof rice despite plainly not knowing what it is? Exactly what is cultural appropriation? To take a glance at Good Morning Britain, the ITV show that never takes its finger off the pulse of Middle England’s clogged arteries, you’d think it’s a question of white people seeking permission to have fun. And in return, new media outlets have guaranteed traffic from anxious millennials by listing things that fall into the category of problematic when white people adopt them (blaccents, bindis and box braids).
Related: Gordon Ramsay defends new restaurant in cultural appropriation row
Continue reading...Indigenous musicians in Canada are at one another’s throats over the Cree artist Cikwes’s use of a traditional Inuit singing technique
Another week, another row over cultural appropriation. But this one is different. It’s not a white artist being accused of appropriating the cultural forms of a minority community but an Indigenous Canadian artist being condemned for using the musical style of another Indigenous community.
Connie LeGrande, who performs under the name Cikwes, was nominated at the Canadian Indigenous Music awards in the best folk album category. LeGrande is a Nehiyaw, or Cree, one of Canada’s First Nations. On her album Isko, she uses katajjaq, a style of throat singing culturally and historically linked to Inuit groups. First Nations are Indigenous groups south of the Arctic Circle, Inuits those who live in the Arctic.
Continue reading...As country marks centennial of Zapata’s death, government’s agenda makes ‘mockery’ of insurgent’s ideals, grandson says
Sitting back in the shade of a sapodilla tree, Jorge Zapata González takes a slow drag on his cigarette and tells a cautionary tale of revolution and betrayal.
His grandfather, the Mexican insurgent Emiliano Zapata, rallied poor campesinos under the battle cry “land and liberty” a century ago – only to be double-crossed by a former ally and murdered.
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