Five Important Indigenous People's Issues for the Week of April 2 - April 8, 2008
Creating a European Indigenous People’s Movement
An American friend of mine has proposed that native Europeans should create a European Indigenous People's Movement. I have hesitated with supporting this because it sounded a bit too extreme. However, in more and more European cities, the native population is being pushed out of their own neighborhoods by immigrant gangs. The natives receive little or no aid from their authorities, sometimes blatant hostility, when faced with immigrant violence. In an age where the global population increases with billions of people in a few decades, it is entirely plausible, indeed likely, that the West could soon become demographically overwhelmed. Not few of our intellectuals seem to derive pleasure from this thought.
Bat Ye'or in her book about Eurabia has documented how the European Union is actively allowing Muslims to colonize European countries. The next time EU leaders complain about China's treatment of minorities, I suggest the Chinese answer the following: "Yes, we represent an anti-democratic organization dedicated to subduing the indigenous people of Tibet, but you represent an anti-democratic organization dedicated to displacing the indigenous peoples of an entire continent." There is no love lost between me and the Chinese Communist Party, an organization responsible for the deaths of tens of millions of its citizens, but even Chinese authorities do not actively seek to displace their own people with violent Muslims. European authorities do. Read the rest of the story here....
Montes Azules: México’s Stolen Wealth
On November 13, 2006 the community of Viejo Velasco Suárez in Chiapas, México was attacked by paramilitary forces reinforced by approximately 300 agents of the state police. The result was four dead, four missing, and 31 persons displaced. Among the dead was a pregnant women and the missing included a disabled women and her elderly father, whose body was later found. Two other men remain missing. This massacre forms part of the state’s low-intensity warfare against the peoples of Chiapas. What is at stake is nothing less than México’’s rich biodiversity and natural resources sought after by multinationals and private landowners.
In 1972 the government granted 614,321 hectares of the Lacandona jungle to 66 Carib (now called Lacandones) families, ignoring the more than 1500 Tseltal, Chol, Tojolabal, and Tzotzil indigenous groups who inhabit the area. Later in 1985, 7,627 additional hectares were granted to the Lacandones. Furthermore, in 1978 president Echeverría signed a decree setting aside over 300,000 hectares of land within the Lacandona as a bio-reserve (Montes Azules). Again, the inhabitants were not consulted. For decades, these groups had been requesting that their land rights be recognized with little success. These two decrees engendered a conflict that is still raging in the area. It has, also, been a strategy of divide and conquer, pitting group against group while the federal and state governments slowly dismantle the progressive rights gained after the Mexican Revolution of 1910-1920. Read the rest of the story here....
Finland's Indigenous Sami People Fear Assimilation
There are growing concerns among the Sami people in Finland that their traditional way of life as an indigenous people is under threat. "The difficulty facing us is that we are facing comprehensive and complete assimilation all the time," Pekka Aikio, former president of the Sami Parliament told IPS.
The Sami are recognised in the Finnish Constitution as an indigenous people. They have an elected parliament that handles their affairs, and have the right to receive services in their own language. But parts of the state administration do not pay attention to the constitutional recognition, says Martin Scheinin, professor of international law at the Åbo Academy in Turku city, 170km from capital Helsinki. Read the rest of the story here....
New South American Constitutions Fail Indigenous Peoples
Bolivia adopted a new constitution in December 2007 which gave more rights to the country's indigenous peoples. However, the far-reaching autonomy a number of the country's nine provinces exacted for themselves has made daily life for members of indigenous communities anything but easier.
Nearby Ecuador, meanwhile, is working on a new constitution on its own, but the initial results of this drafting process have not met with a warm welcome from its indigenous peoples. Read the rest here....
Russian Lukoil Tries to Pacify Arctic Indigenous People
When an airplane carrying Lukoil workers crashed in the far north of this Arctic region three years ago, killing 29 of 52 people on board, many blamed the weather.
When, one year later, in March 2006, a helicopter carrying victims' relatives to a commemoration ceremony at the crash site also fell, killing another person, the indigenous people thought something else was at play. The land, they said, was cursed.
One of the newest oil-producing regions in Russia, the Nenets autonomous district is home to lucrative projects for Lukoil and Rosneft. It is also home to a population of 7,000 indigenous Nenets whose livelihood and semi-nomadic way of life are being increasingly threatened by the growing oil industry. Read the rest here....
Last weeks Five Key Indigenous People's Issues can be found here.
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