Category Archives: Indigenous peoples

Outcry as Brazil congress moves to gut environment and Indigenous ministries

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Plan to drastically dilute bodies’ powers would deal severe blow to Lula’s attempt to reverse Bolsonaro’s era of Amazon devastation

Brazilian activists have voiced outrage after congress moved to drastically dilute the powers of the environment and Indigenous peoples ministries in what campaigners called a potentially crippling blow to efforts to protect Indigenous communities and the Amazon.

Hopes that Brazil could turn the page on Jair Bolsonaro’s era of Amazon devastation were sky-high after the far-right leader lost last year’s presidential election to the leftist Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. During his campaign Lula vowed to stamp out environmental crime and champion Indigenous people, and after taking power in January put the veteran environmentalist Marina Silva in charge of environmental affairs and made the Indigenous activist Sônia Guajajara head of a new ministry for Indigenous peoples.

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FBI investigating shooting death of Native man by border patrol in Arizona

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Raymond Mattia of the Tohono O’odham Nation in southern Arizona was shot by agents after calling them for assistance

The FBI and Tohono O’odham Nation police are investigating the fatal shooting of a tribal member by US border patrol agents in southern Arizona.

Federal Customs and Border Protection officials said agents from the Ajo border patrol station “were involved” in a fatal shooting on the Tohono O’odham reservation near Ajo at about 10pm on Thursday. They haven’t released any additional information other than to say the encounter was under review by Customs and Border Protection’s office of professional responsibility, which investigates fatal shootings carried out by agents, among other cases.

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Ex-chief of Brazil’s Indigenous agency charged over murders of Bruno Pereira and Dom Phillips

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Marcelo Xavier accused of indirectly contributing on the grounds that he failed to take steps to protect workers in Amazon

Federal police have brought criminal charges against the former head of Brazil’s Indigenous protection agency for alleged acts of omission they believe indirectly paved the way for the murders of Bruno Pereira and Dom Phillips in the Amazon last year.

Brazil’s former far-right president Jair Bolsonaro made Marcelo Xavier the head of the Indigenous agency Funai in July 2019, six months into his environmentally devastating four-year administration.

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Indigenous nation in US seeks to block billion-dollar port project in Canada

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Lummi Nation in Washington state says it holds transboundary rights and that Canada has failed to ‘consult and accommodate’

A tribal nation in the United States is seeking to block approval for a multibillion dollar port expansion in Canada, arguing that it holds transboundary rights and should have been included in consultation process.

The effort to block approval of a controversial new container terminal project in Vancouver marks the first major attempt to use a recent landmark decision by the Canadian supreme court, which found that some Indigenous peoples living in the US have rights in Canada.

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Grain trader Cargill faces legal challenge in US over Brazilian soya supply chain

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World’s biggest grain trader accused of ‘shoddy due diligence’ on deforestation and alleged rights violations

The world’s largest grain trader, Cargill, is facing a first-ever legal challenge in the United States over its failure to remove deforestation and human rights abuses from its soya supply chain in Brazil.

ClientEarth, an environmental law organisation, filed the formal complaint on Thursday, accusing Cargill of inadequate monitoring and a laggard response to the decline of the Amazon rainforest and other globally important biomes, such as the Cerrado savannah and the Atlantic Forest.

Soya beans bought from third-party traders, which make up 42% of all Brazilian soya Cargill purchases.

Soya beans owned by other companies that passes through Cargill ports.

Indirect land use change.

Soya sourced from the Cerrado savannah.

Soya sourced from the Brazilian Atlantic Forest.

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Commonwealth Indigenous leaders demand apology from the king for effects of colonisation

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Exclusive: Aboriginal Olympian Nova Peris says ‘change begins with listening’ as campaigners from 12 countries ask for ‘process of reparatory justice to commence’

Australians have joined Indigenous leaders and politicians across the Commonwealth to demand King Charles III make a formal apology for the effects of British colonisation, make reparations by redistributing the wealth of the British crown, and return artefacts and human remains.

Days out from Charles’s coronation in London, campaigners for republic and reparations movements in 12 countries have written a letter asking the new monarch to start a process towards “a formal apology and for a process of reparatory justice to commence”.

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Brazil’s battle to reclaim Yanomami lands from illegal miners turns deadly

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Fatalities underline dangers in government efforts to evict thousands of miners who have devastated Indigenous territory

Brazil’s battle to reclaim its largest Indigenous territory from tens of thousands of illegal miners has taken a deadly turn after at least five people were reportedly killed during 36 hours of violence in the Amazon’s sprawling Yanomami territory.

The bloodshed began on Saturday afternoon when masked illegal miners allegedly launched an attack on a Yanomami village called Uxiu.

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Indigenous community in Colombia gets its day in court over ‘ancestral land’

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The U’wa people’s case against the Colombian government could help protect the environment across Latin America

After centuries fighting to protect their territory – and 26 years waiting to testify in an international legal dispute – an Andean Indigenous community has finally made its formal declarations against the Colombian state.

The U’wa Indigenous community told the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR) that Colombia has repeatedly failed to recognise their ancestral lands and has threatened the group’s existence by polluting their territory with oil.

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2023 Goldman environmental prize winners include Texas Gulf coast defender

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Diane Wilson took on Formosa Plastics and won a $50m settlement to help clean up decades worth of toxic plastic waste

Grassroots activists who took on British mining giants and a serial plastics polluter – and won – are among this year’s recipients of the world’s most prestigious environmental prize.

The environmental campaigns led by the six 2023 Goldman prize winners highlight the hurdles faced by some local activists, who are often on the frontlines confronting the toxic mix of corporate greed and systemic corruption that is fuelling the climate emergency, biodiversity collapse and increasingly forced displacement.

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How an Arctic snow school aims to respond to climate crisis with Inuit help

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Canadian project plans to strengthen understanding of Arctic environment by drawing on Indigenous knowledge

Alexandre Langlois was surprised to learn that snow that has stayed on the ground for a couple days in the Arctic can be heard even before it is felt.

Margaret Kanayok, an Inuk elder from Ulukhaktok, an Inuit community in the neighbouring Northwest Territories, had come to speak to a group of scientists who had gathered to attend the world’s first Arctic snow school, being held in Nunavut, Canada.

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UK company mining gold in Amazon on disputed land

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London-listed Serabi Gold extracting gold without approval of Brazilian land registry and Indigenous communities

A London-listed company has been mining gold in the Amazon rainforest without approval from the Brazilian land agency or the consent of nearby Indigenous communities, according to an investigation by the Guardian and partners.

Serabi Gold has been blasting 4.5 metre-wide tunnels and trucking ore from the Coringa project site in Pará state. But interviews with land agency officials and documents seen by the Guardian, Unearthed and Sumaúma indicate that ownership of the area is disputed and the land was allegedly occupied by illegal land-grabbers.

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Horror in Winnipeg as another Indigenous woman’s body found in landfill: ‘It keeps happening’

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Remains of Linda Mary Beardy, 33, spotted by staff at Canadian garbage dump amid crisis of missing and murdered Indigenous women

Police in Canada say the body of another Indigenous woman has been found at a Winnipeg landfill, in the latest grim episode of the country’s crisis of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls.

The body of Linda Mary Beardy, a 33-year-old mother from Lake St Martin First Nation, was spotted on Monday by staff at the Brady landfill.

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Indigenous tattooist becomes Vogue’s oldest ever cover star at 106

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Apo Whang-Od appears on front of Philippine edition and is credited with keeping batok form of art alive

An Indigenous tattooist in the Philippines credited with helping to keep alive a form of the art known as batok has become the oldest Vogue cover star after appearing in the Philippine edition of the magazine at the age of 106.

Apo Whang-Od, who is from Buscalan, a remote, mountainous village in the Kalinga province of the northern Philippines, began tattooing at 16. Once described as the last remaining mambabatok, or traditional Kalinga tattooist, she has since inspired a new generation to learn batok, said Vogue. Batok involves tapping the tattoo into the skin by hand, using a thorn, which is dipped in soot and natural dye, and is attached to a bamboo stick.

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Mark Dreyfus rejects human rights commissioner’s claim Indigenous voice would undermine principles of equality

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Attorney general declines to comment on calls for commissioner Lorraine Finlay to consider her future in the role

Federal attorney general Mark Dreyfus “does not agree” with the human rights commissioner that the proposed Indigenous voice to parliament would undermine human rights principles of equality and non-discrimination in Australia, but would not comment on calls for the commissioner to consider her future in the role.

In an opinion piece published in the Australian on Thursday, commissioner Lorraine Finlay wrote that the draft wording of the referendum question and proposed amendment to the constitution “inserts race into the Australian constitution in a way that undermines the foundational human rights principles of equality and non-discrimination, and creates constitutional uncertainty in terms of its interpretation and operation”.

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Indigenous children suffer most from illegal miners’ Amazon invasion

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The influx of heavily armed gangs, now being tackled by President Lula, has had a catastrophic effect on infant health

The severely malnourished Yanomami baby girl is about eight months old but weighs just 2.75kg (6lbs) – less than half the average for her age. A catheter runs into her tiny right foot, delivering a blood transfusion doctors hope will save her life.

“This is a really difficult moment for us,” says Francinete Rodrigues, the director of the Santo Antônio children’s hospital in Boa Vista, an institution on the frontline of an Indigenous health catastrophe Brazil’s president calls an attempted genocide.

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Canada: university president to take leave amid controversy over Indigenous ancestry claim

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Incident involving Vianne Timmons is latest high-profile case of apparent cultural identity fraud

The president of a Canadian university has apologized and is taking a leave of absence after allegations that she falsely claimed to be Indigenous, in the latest high-profile case of apparent cultural identity fraud.

Vianne Timmons, who is president of Memorial University of Newfoundland, said that she would be taking a six-week leave after the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) published a report last week questioning her claims that her father’s great-great-grandmother was Mi’kmaq.

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Biden denies reports that Alaska oil drilling project has been approved

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Signing off on the Willow plan would place the president’s political career in conflict with climate-minded Democrats

The Biden administration has denied reports that it has authorized a key oil drilling project on Alaska’s north slope, a highly contentious project that environmentalists argue would damage a pristine wilderness and gut White House commitments to combat climate crisis.

Late Friday, Bloomberg was first to report citing anonymous sources that senior Biden advisers had signed off on the project and formal approval would be made public by the Interior Department next week.

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‘A war society doesn’t see’: the Brazilian force driving out mining gangs from Indigenous lands

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An elite unit is on a mission to expel the illegal miners who devastated Yanomami territory during Bolsonaro’s presidency

For the last four years Brazil’s rainforests bled. “They bled like never before,” said Felipe Finger as he prepared to venture into the jungle with his assault rifle to staunch the environmental carnage inflicted on the Amazon under the former far-right president Jair Bolsonaro.

Moments later Finger, a mettlesome special forces commander for Brazil’s environmental protection agency, Ibama, was airborne in a single-engine helicopter, hurtling over the forest canopy towards the frontline of a ferocious war on nature and the Indigenous peoples who lived here long before Portuguese explorers arrived more than 500 years ago.

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Canadian minister calls for emergency order to save country’s last spotted owls

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Steven Guilbeault wants to block logging of critical old-growth forest to prevent owls from going extinct in British Columbia

Canada’s environment minister plans to use a rare emergency order to protect the last of an endangered owl species in an area where critical old-growth forest is slated for further clearcutting.

Steven Guilbeault advised the environmental groups Ecojustice and the Wilderness Committee that he believed the spotted owl was facing “imminent threats to its survival” and he would use the powers to block further destruction of its habitat in British Columbia, the groups announced on Thursday afternoon.

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Peru’s ‘racist bias’ drove lethal police response to protests, Amnesty says

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In a damning report, human rights group says state permitted ‘excessive and lethal use of force’ against Indigenous groups

Peru used “excessive and lethal force” driven by “marked racist bias” against a largely indigenous and campesino population, Amnesty International has concluded, following an investigation into more than two months of anti-government protests which have claimed at least 60 lives.

An Amnesty International fact-finding mission investigated 46 possible cases of human rights violations and documented 12 cases of deaths from the use of firearms – all the victims appeared to have been shot in the chest, torso or head – following visits to the capital Lima and the southern cities of Chincheros, Ayacucho and Andahuaylas.

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