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Inter-Community Conflicts New Considerations for Resource Disputes

Conflicts, like sagas, do not end quickly. They more often are punctuated by periodic successes or new challenges than by victory or defeat. Such is the story for some of Nicaragua's indigenous peoples. In its August 2001 decision in the Case of the Mayagna (Sumo) Awas Tingni Community v. Nicaragua, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights established a groundbreaking precedent for state recognition and protection of indigenous peoples’ rights to land and natural resources in accordance with their customary use and occupancy patterns.

Introduction: 25 Years of the Indigenous Movement in the Americas and Australia

For over 500 years, the chronicle of almost any 25 year period of contact between indigenous peoples and colonists in the Americas or Australia has been quite simple. The Indians and Aborigines lose. Each of their many groups has suffered new and unfamiliar diseases, military conquests, abortive uprisings, land losses, colonist encroachments, legal restrictions, simple neglect, and broad discrimination among other abuses. The last quarter century, however, has been qualitatively different.

Indigenous People and Democracy in Latin America

The naming of peoples is an act of power. Nearly five hundred years after Christopher Columbus designated all of the native inhabitants of the Americas as indios ("Indians"), the rallying cry of indigenous (and other) people of Spanish-speaking "Latin" America rang forth: "After 500 years of domination, auto-determination in 1992!" The call came from diverse peoples in sovereign nation-states, most of which had recently emerged from military dictatorships to enjoy elected, democratic governments.

Preface

As an environmental lawyer engaged in protecting threatened ecosystems throughout North and South America, I have witnessed the destruction of rivers, lakes, seas, and forests, along with the ancient societies that occupy these precious environements.

No Hunting! Biodiversity, indigenous rights, and scientific poaching

IN A RECENT ARTICLE, THE Mexican novelist Carlos Fuentes denounced the US invasion of Panama as the Bush Administration's declaration of its intent to hunt whomever, whatever, and wherever it likes in Latin America. Fuentes warned, "If we do not post `No Hunting' signs, our lands will be poached on. We must set up our signs quickly and be prepared to enforce them with prudence and a firm will."

Of course, the United States has been stalking political prey in Latin America for many years now.

The Monastery as a Medium of Tibetan Culture

The Buddhist monastery has traditionally served as a primary locus for the generation and preservation of Tibetan culture, both material and intellectual. That function of the monastery has been gravely threatened by the Chinese invasion of Tibet in 1950 and the subsequent oppression and destruction during the periods of "liberation" and of the Cultural Revolution.

Grassroots Development: Not Just Organic Farming and Good Faith

Grassroots development - the term has a fresh, wholesome, democratic ring to. A group or a community takes control of the reins of change and works to determine its future, on its own terms.

The imagery it evokes contrasts with that of large-scale national development and the international funding it usually requires. Cultural Survival Quarterly has illustrated numerous cases in which national development is the outcome of decisions that are not only imposed on small societies but often violate their rights to land and natural resources.

Shuar Children: Bilingual-Bicultural Education

While the morning mist still hovers above the streams and rivers of the jungle east of Ecuador's Sierra de Cutucu, Shuar Indian adults head off to tend their gardens and pastures. Meanwhile, their children walk to a small building in the center of a recently nucleated settlement. It's new school, the settlements first in fact. Their parents built it.

Many schools in Latin America are constructed in a similarly communal way.

Development and Resource Management - Mexico's Huichol Carpentry Workshop

Four main tributaries How through, the Sierra Madre Occidental in Mexico's state of Jalisco carving precipitous canyons several thousand meters deep; the sandy soils of the surrounding mountains allow a forest composed largely of scrub oak and pine. Until quite recently, this combination of formidable terrain and poor soils allowed the resident Huichol Indians a rare, and for them desirable degree of isolation.

Anticipating Colonos and Cattle in Ecuador and Colombia

Awa-Coaiquer Land and Resources Management Project

Who and where on earth are the Awa-Coaiquer Indians? Such questions would have remained largely unanswered, even in Ecuador and Colombia, but for an article in the Sunday color supplement of Quito, Ecuador's El Comercio printed in early 1982. Part of the explanation is geographic; the people live in dispersed settlements that span the Ecuador-Colombia border along the isolated western slopes of the Andes amidst the world's wettest tropical rainforest.

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