Thirty-person expedition, including Funai officials and a doctor, contacted and vaccinated 34 people from the Korubo tribe
Brazil’s biggest and most ambitious expedition in decades to contact a voluntarily isolated indigenous tribe has been declared a success after venturing deep into remote and inaccessible Amazon jungle.
The rare, high-risk expedition aimed to prevent potential conflict between tribal groups in a vast and remote reserve near Brazil’s Peruvian border.
Continue reading...Prime minister was criticized as ‘aloof ass’ for telling woman who interrupted him: ‘Thank you very much for your donation’
Justin Trudeau has apologized for a sarcastic response to indigenous activists protesting against the contamination of drinking water, admitting on Thursday that he handled the situation poorly.
Related: 'He's not a bad person, but …' scandal-hit Justin Trudeau turns voters off
Continue reading...The two groups are affected the most by environmental degradation and pollution, but they often feel left out of the movement
Bernadette Demientieff, a representative for the indigenous Gwich’in nation, finds Washington DC anxiety-inducing, especially compared to the wide open spaces and tall mountains of Alaska.
She makes frequent trips to the US capital to fight oil drilling in what she considers sacred caribou calving grounds in the Arctic. But Demientieff is an outsider in the nation’s capital, where her concerns have fallen on deaf ears with the Trump administration. She’s also a bit of an outsider to the national environmental movement, too.
Continue reading...In January, an isolated reserve declared a state of emergency over dangerously poor housing conditions. A resident has now died – what will it take for meaningful change?
A caravan of trucks carrying material for new homes is currently winding through northern Ontario, on its way to a remote Indigenous community. The trip along a seasonal winter road is a slow one, passing over frozen lakes and muskeg, and involves cutting down trees along the way for the vehicles and their trailers. Members of the isolated reserve, Cat Lake First Nation, say there is no time to waste.
Home to roughly 700 people, the reserve declared a state of emergency in January over excessive mould, leaky roofs and other poor housing conditions. The crisis then deepened when one of its residents, 48-year-old Nashie Oombash, died from respiratory issues. Her family blamed the death on extensive mould problems in her home.
Continue reading...When the 2004 tsunami struck, the Moken were saved by their knowledge of the sea. But a catastrophic blaze has exposed authorities’ errors in the rebuilding of their homes
Where stilted huts once stood on the white sand, now there are just charred remains. “This is worse than after the tsunami,” says Hook, a Moken sea nomad surveying the damage fire has wreaked on his former village home in Au Bon Yai bay, Surin island.
After the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami destroyed the previous Moken settlement here on Thailand’s Andaman sea, Hook says people were able to recover some belongings. This time, when fire broke out on 3 February this year, nothing was left. Now the community fears for the future as the authorities begin to reconstruct the village in its original design, an unsafe housing model consisting of highly flammable structures, densely packed together. And it has reignited a row about the Moken’s rights to their ancestral lands.
Continue reading...Ashley Heavyrunner Loring was 20 when she disappeared from the Blackfeet reservation in Montana in June 2017. Her family has been searching for her ever since. Ashley was one of more than 5,000 Native American women listed missing in 2017. Lawmakers are calling it an epidemic
Continue reading...Critics say supreme court ruling constitutes ‘mass eviction in name of conservation’
Millions of Indians face eviction after the country’s supreme court ruled that indigenous people illegally living on forest land should move.
Campaigners for the rights of tribal and forest-dwelling people have called the court’s decision on Wednesday “an unprecedented disaster” and “the biggest mass eviction in the name of conservation, ever”.
Continue reading...The national holiday celebrates the signing of the treaty of Waitangi on 6 February 1840 by Māori chiefs and the British Crown that granted the Māori people the rights of British citizens and ownership of their lands and other properties
Continue reading...Indigenous groups are fighting construction of liquified natural gas pipeline which would cross through First Nations territory
Canadian police have arrested 14 demonstrators at an indigenous protest camp in northern British Columbia, amid growing tensions over a proposed pipeline running through First Nations territory.
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police, Canada’s national police force, said 14 people had been arrested late on Monday as officers enforced a court order to remove barriers built along a logging road.
Continue reading...Police officers deployed near checkpoint where protesters have gathered to block the construction of a natural gas pipeline
Indigenous protesters in Canada have called a growing police presence near their makeshift checkpoint “an act of war”, as tensions mount over a stalled pipeline project in northern British Columbia.
In defiance of a court order, dozens of protesters have gathered on a logging road nearly 700km (430 miles) north-west of Vancouver, to block the construction of a natural gas pipeline.
Continue reading...Executive order transfers regulation and creation of indigenous reserves to agriculture ministry controlled by agribusiness lobby
Hours after taking office, Brazil’s new president, Jair Bolsonaro, has launched an assault on environmental and Amazon protections with an executive order transferring the regulation and creation of new indigenous reserves to the agriculture ministry – which is controlled by the powerful agribusiness lobby.
Related: Jair Bolsonaro's inauguration: the day progressive Brazil has dreaded
Continue reading...