Category Archives: Indigenous peoples

Decades of missing Indigenous women a ‘Canadian genocide’ – leaked report

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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.

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Bear Clan: a model of indigenous activism that’s swept across Canada

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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.”

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Women are dying in Indian Country. We must act | Debra Anne Haaland

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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.

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‘Essential first step’: Congress moves to act on crisis of violence against Native women

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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.

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Why we need to pause before claiming cultural appropriation | Ash Sarkar

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The debate, tied up with racial oppression and exploitation, is a difficult one. Yet not every interloper is a colonialist in disguise

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

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Who polices the cultural appropriation gatekeepers? | Kenan Malik

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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.

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Mexico battles over legacy of revolutionary Emilano Zapata

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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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Brazil: high-risk expedition to contact isolated tribe declared success

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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.

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Trudeau apologizes for ‘smug, mean’ jibe at indigenous activist

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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

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‘A lot at stake’: indigenous and minorities sidelined on climate change fight

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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.

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‘Beggars in our own land’: Canada’s First Nation housing crisis

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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.

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‘It’s worse than the tsunami’: the sea nomad village devastated by fire | Susan Smillie

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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.

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Millions of forest-dwelling indigenous people in India to be evicted

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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”.

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Canada: 14 arrested at indigenous anti-pipeline protest camp as tensions rise

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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.

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Canada: indigenous anti-pipeline protesters call police presence ‘act of war’

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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.

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Jair Bolsonaro launches assault on Amazon rainforest protections

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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

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