Land Rights

Nicaragua: A Canal At What Cost?

December 17, 2014 Chris Hartmann, www.fpif.org Resist! Finance and the Economy, Indigenous Rights, Land Rights, Nicaragua

What does a canal have to do with human rights? Plenty, according to the thousands of Nicaraguan protesters who filled Managua’s streetson December 10, International Human Rights Day. With banners, flags, chants, and a petition submitted to the Nicaraguan Center for Human Rights, they came out in opposition to a proposed canal that would pass through Nicaragua, linking the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. No doubt, the canal would increase Nicaragua’s economic importance in the region, bring in much needed income, and generate jobs. But those benefits come at steep costs: The canal is expected to devastate the environment. Moreover, it would displace indigenous communities and hurt some of the nation’s most marginalized peoples.

Black Mesa Communities Continue Stand Against Mine Expansion

December 16, 2014 Liza Minna Bloom, www.wagingnonviolence.org Resist! Arizona, Indigenous Rights, Land Rights, Wars and Militarism

This October, as many Americans returned to work after their Columbus Day holiday, rural Dineh, or Navajo, communities in the Black Mesa region of Northeastern Arizona were rocked by an invasion. SWAT teams descended upon this remote region, navigating unpaved, washed out roads, while drones and armed helicopters flew overhead. For nearly two months, Hopi Rangers, with the backing of the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs, or BIA, and the Department of the Interior, have been impounding the livestock of the Dineh residents of the area now known as the “Hopi Partition Lands,” or HPL. The official justification given is that residents’ herds exceed the size allowed to them in permits, and that they are, therefore, overgrazing and causing harm to the land in a period of prolonged drought.

Cree Youth Walk 850 Km To Protest Uranium Mining In Quebec

December 15, 2014 CBC News, www.cbc.ca Resist! Canada, Energy, Environment, Indigenous Rights, Land Rights, Mining

About 20 young Cree people have walked nearly 850 kilometres to Montreal’s South Shore from their village in northern Quebec, protesting against uranium exploration in the province. The youth left Mistissini, Que., northeast of Chibougamau in the James Bay region three weeks ago. On the way, they stopped in Quebec City to share their message. They arrived in Longueuil, just across the bridge from Montreal, Saturday. Their final destination is downtown Montreal, where they will deliver that message to the province’s environmental protection agency, known as the BAPE, when it holds the last of a series of public hearings on uranium exploration tomorrow.

What Resolution Copper Wants To Inflict On Apache Sacred Land

December 13, 2014 Indian Country Today Media Network, www.indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com Resist! Energy, Indigenous Rights, Land Rights, Mining

The San Carlos Apache Tribe is battling to save a sacred site that has been federally protected from mining since 1955. That is, until now. Lawmakers have slipped a clause into the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that would allow for a land swap, giving Resolution Copper Inc. 2,400 acres of copper-containing land in return for 5,300 acres of substandard land scattered throughout southeast Arizona. Problem is, it lies right on a scenic—and did we mention sacred?—recreation area set aside by President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who specified that it be protected from mining: Oak Flat, Devil's Canyon, and Apache Leap. It is not only sacred to the San Carlos Apaches and related tribes but also would be subject to a technique called block cave mining.

DOJ To Allow Native Americans To Grow, Sell Marijuana

December 13, 2014 Timothy Phelps, www.thestar.com Educate! indigenous, Land Rights, Law, Marijuana

Opening the door for what could be a lucrative and controversial new industry on some native American reservations, the Justice Department on Thursday will tell U.S. attorneys to not prevent tribes from growing or selling marijuana on the sovereign lands, even in states that ban the practice. The new guidance, released in a memorandum, will be implemented on a case-by-case basis and tribes must still follow federal guidelines, said Timothy Purdon, the U.S. attorney for North Dakota and the chairman of the Attorney General’s Subcommittee on native American Issues. It remains to be seen how many reservations will take advantage of the policy. Many tribes are opposed to legalizing pot on their lands, and federal officials will continue to enforce the law in those areas, if requested.

Arizona Defenders Face Land Grab By Foreign Mining Companies

December 11, 2014 Tracy Barnett, www.intercontinentalcry.org Resist! Arizona, Indigenous Rights, Land Rights

Apache leaders and concerned citizens from Superior, Ariz., including a strong contingent of former miners, met on Sunday with touring members of the Huicholes: The Last Peyote Guardians film crew on the sacred ground near Superior, Arizona, where Rio Tinto and other foreign mining companies are planning a takeover of public lands for the installation of a massive copper mine. Congress is set to approve the giveaway of 2,400 acres of National Forest lands, including the burial, ceremonial and medicinal lands of the San Carlos Apaches, to Resolution Copper, a subsidiary of British-Australian Rio Tinto Mining Corp., a company with a long history of environmental and human rights abuses in developing countries.

Congress Gives Native American Lands To Foreign Mining Company

December 11, 2014 RT, www.globalresearch.ca Educate! Indigenous Rights, Land Rights, Law

This week, the House and Senate Armed Services Committees quietly attached a provision to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that would mandate the handover of a large tract of Tonto National Forest to Resolution Copper, a subsidiary of the Australian-English mining company Rio Tinto, which co-owns with Iran a uranium mine in Africa and which is 10-percent-owned by China. The “Carl Levin and Howard P. ‘Buck’ McKeon National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2015” - named after the retiring chairmen of the Senate and House Armed Services panels – includes the giveaway of Apache burial, medicinal, and ceremonial grounds currently within the bounds of Tonto. News of the land provision was kept under wraps until late Tuesday, when the bill was finally posted online.

Peru-Brazil Indigenous People To Fight Amazon Oil Exploration

December 11, 2014 David Hill, www.earthfirstjournal.org Resist! Environment, Indigenous Rights, Land Rights, Oil & Gas

Peru – host of the COP20 UN climate conference now under way in Lima – is facing rebellion by a 3,500 strong indigenous people deep in the Amazon committed to fighting oil exploration in their forest territory, writes David Hill, following the government’s failure to consult Matsés communities or respect their rights. We don’t want the oil company. If they don’t listen to us, if they don’t understand our no means no, there’ll be conflict that’ll lead to people being killed. Members of an indigenous people living on both sides of the Brazil-Peru border in the remote Amazon say they are prepared to fight with spears, bows and arrows if companies enter their territories to explore for oil.

First Nation Files Land Claim To Stanley Park And Gulf Islands

December 11, 2014 Amy Judd, www.globalnews.ca Resist! First Nations, Land Rights, Law

A B.C. First Nation is taking the federal and provincial governments to court for two billion dollars and a massive land claim. They say more than 100 years ago they lost their land when it was shelled by a Royal Navy gunboat. “When you look at our history and genealogy you will see that we’ve always been here and did not, as Canada would suggest, simply fall out of the sky one day in the last 10 or 15 years,” said Hwlitsum chief Raymond (Rocky) Wilson. “Our serious dispute is not with private land owners or other First Nations, but with the Crown, Canada and the province, in this case British Columbia, who have consistently hidden their heads in the sand and ignored what we have to say.”

U.S. Tar Sands Action: Reports From Front Lines

October 28, 2014 Ben Jervey, www.desmogblog.com Resist! Energy, Environment, Indigenous Rights, Land Rights, Tar Sands

For the past five months, activists from the Utah Tar Sands Resistance have camped out on the sage-swept, high plateau lands known as PR Springs in eastern Utah. From the site—where the first tar sands mine in the United States is planned, and preliminary clearing work is already underway—you can’t miss the majestic Book Cliffs that tumble from the East Tavaputs Plateau and the canyons full of tall conifers. Book Cliffs is an area cherished by sportsmen and sportswomen—the public lands a place where Rocky Mountain Elk roam free, a place beloved by hunters and anglers and campers and backpackers. Book Cliffs is also an area presently threatened by oil, gas, and tar sands development. Activists with Peaceful Uprising and the Utah Tar Sands Resistance are working to stop the tar sands projects in their tracks.

Support Will Parrish

October 27, 2014 Cal Winslow, www.counterpunch.org Resist! California, Environment, Land Rights, Law

Will Parrish is a young journalist In Mendocino County. He’s a rare type in his field these days. He is fearless, he takes on the hard targets, the biggest ones he can find, and he writes with passion and commitment. If we still have muck-rakers, literary crusaders in the best sense, he’s one. Now he’s in the dock again. Where else? This time it’s at the mercy of CalTrans (the California Department of Transportation) and its corporate colluders in Big Asphalt, the billion dollar construction barons whose bulldozers relentlessly march across this once lovely landscape. They tenaciously pave the way for the “developers” who inevitably follow, where ever it is, whatever the cost. More, CalTrans has the California Highway Patrol (CHP) in tow, as well as the state’s administration, various congressmen, state senators and a hodge-podge of local time-servers.

First Nations Protesters Set Up At Manitoba Dam

October 17, 2014 Chinta Puxley, www.globalnews.ca Resist! Energy, Environment, Indigenous Rights, Land Rights, Protest

CROSS LAKE, Man. – Protesters from a northern Manitoba First Nation are occupying the grounds around a generating station and have issued an eviction notice to Manitoba Hydro for what they say is a violation of their treaty rights. More than 100 protesters from the Cross Lake First Nation north of Lake Winnipeg marched to the hydro dam Wednesday and some have refused to leave the grounds. In a letter to Hydro president Scott Thomson, Chief Catherine Merrick said the First Nation is taking control of its traditional territory and evicting the Crown corporation. “You do not respect our rights,” she wrote in the letter dated Oct. 6. “You do not even respect or acknowledge who we are as people. Money and profit — that which you make off our traditional territory and people — is apparently all you care about.”

Islanders Occupy The Sabine Channel For A Coal Free Salish Sea

October 17, 2014 West Coast Native News, www.westcoastnativenews.com Resist! Climate Change, Coal, Energy, Environment, Indigenous Rights, Land Rights, Water

Lasqueti Island – In response to the announcement of the approval of permits for the shipment of US thermal coal through Greater Vancouver, the Fraser River, and up the Salish Sea to Texada Island, citizens in the region protested by Occupying the Sabine Channel on Saturday, October 4, 2014. More than 150 people, primarily from Lasqueti Island’s 426 population, came out in boats and on the shoreline to object to the Salish Sea being the staging ground for the export of dirty Thermal coal from Wyoming and Montana to Asia. Several boats were also there from Texada and Thetis islands. Disallowed by US ports to date, this polluting and dirty coal will come by train across the border to the Fraser/Surrey docks (up to 2 trains per day, each train up to 1km long.)

Support Indigenous Struggles Against Corporate Onslaught

October 16, 2014 Rebecca Kemble, www.progressive.org Resist! Climate Change, Energy, Environment, Fracking, Indigenous Rights, Land Rights

This year Seattle and Minneapolis proclaimed the second Monday in October Indigenous Peoples’ Day. They are the latest U.S. cities to join the trend that began in Berkeley in 1992 to supplant Columbus Day with a formal recognition of the people who have survived over five centuries of genocide, war, dislocation, discrimination, and social exclusion in the nations that were subsequently developed in the Americas. Multinational corporations have replaced kingdoms, empires and the Catholic Church as the prime agents of devastation and wealth extraction, but the exploitative dynamic remains fundamentally the same 522 years after Christopher Columbus first dropped anchor in the Caribbean.

Ts’ka7 Warriors Burn Down Mine Bridge

October 16, 2014 West Coast Native News, www.westcoastnativenews.com Resist! Energy, Environment, Indigenous Rights, Land Rights

With much discussion with Elders Councils and around Sacred fires and ceremonies the Secwepemc Ts’ka7 Warriors have acted out their collective responsibility and jurisdiction to and in the Ts’ka7 area by deactivating the Imperial Metals Ruddock Creek mine road. Imperial Metals Corporation never asked for or received free, prior and informed consent to operate in Secwepemc Territory. The Imperial Metals Mount Polley mine disaster, in the area known as Yuct Ne Senxiymetkwe, the absolute destruction and devastation of our Territory has never been answered for. No reparations have been made.

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