Share

29.4 (Winter 2005) Water Rights and Indigenous Peoples

What Makes Culture: Theater- La FOMMA

La FOMMA [Fortaleza de la Mujer Maya or Strength of the Mayan Woman] is a Mayan women's playwright cooperative in Chiapas, Mexico, formed in 1994. The grassroots organization performs plays dealing with women's rights, domestic and cultural issues, and reproductive health. Proceeds support La FOMMA’s bilingual literacy, women’s rights, and professional development activities. The all-women theatre group will tour New England from
March 27 to April 10, 2006.

Review: Oil on Ice

Oil on Ice
2004, 58 minutes
Co-produced and directed by Dale Djerassi and
Bo Boudart
Distributor: Bullfrog Films PO Box 149, Oley, PA 19547

Oil on Ice is an award-winning documentary about the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) and the controversy over drilling for oil within the protected area. The film takes the viewer on a captivating journey through a land enriched by Native Alaskan culture and threatened by the bulldozers and pipelines of the oil industry.

Review: Mauna Kea: Temple Under Siege

Mauna Kea: Temple Under Siege
2005, 56 mins
Directors: Puhipau, Joan Lander
Producer: Na Maka o Ka 'Aina
Distributor: Na Maka o Ka 'Aina,
P.O. Box 29 Na'alehu, Hawaii 96772-0029

Mauna Kea: Temple Under Siege portrays the ongoing tensions between the Western scientific community's notion of progress and indigenous cultures' concept of the sacred.

On the island of Hawai'i, Mauna Kea's peak—the highest in the Pacific (14,000 feet)—provides views of some of the world's clearest skies.

Review: Like a Loaded Weapon: The Rehnquist Court, Indian Rights, and the History of Racism in America

In his new book, Like a Loaded Weapon, University of Arizona law professor Robert A. Williams, Jr. calls for a revolution. Not a violent revolution, nor even one that involves taking to the streets, but an immediate and transformative political event nonetheless. As it did in Brown vs.

Native Americans Fight to Save Sacred Site

The San Francisco Peaks are revered as a sacred site in Arizona, integral to the cultural and spiritual identity of at least 13 tribes in the Four Corners area. They are at the center of a current legal battle that could determine the future of Native American religious freedom.

Guatemala Radio Project

Guatemala community radio stations prove essential to relief efforts in the wake of Hurricane Stan
 

The importance of community radio stations throughout Guatemala became especially apparent in the devastating aftermath of Hurricane Stan. On October 1, Hurricane Stan ravaged Guatemala, leaving 654 people dead, 828 people missing, and at least 120,000 homeless.

Water Law and Indigenous Rights in the Andes

    In Andean countries, widespread protests over violations of traditional rights have resulted in
    creative reform proposals to secure indigenous water rights and water system management.

 

For Rosa Guamán, indigenous leader in the Licto district in Ecuador, as for most campesinos and indígenas in the Andean countries and in Latin America, water rights express more than just the access to a crucial resource.

Tribal Women's Struggle for Water In India

    Aided by the NGO Lokadrushti, indigenous women in Western Orissa, India, have mobilized
    effectively to gain greater access to water to improve livelihoods in their drought-prone villages.

Drought. Death. Disease. Dissolution of families. Without sufficient water, these were stark realities of life that the tribal Indian women of Nuapada district in Western Orissa refused to accept. To salvage their villages, their families, and their livelihoods, the tribal women launched grassroots efforts to bring water to their villages in the late 1980s.

Traditional Water Management Practices of the Kankanaey

 

    Traditional religious beliefs and customary laws have enabled the Kankanaey of Besao in
    northern Philippines to sustain their land's natural resources despite current challenges.

 

With agriculture as the backbone of life and rice as a staple food, water is valued as much as land in Besao. This municipality in northern Philippines is home to more than 10,000 people of the Kankanaey ethnolinguistic group.

The Black Mesa Controversy

 

    Complex issues confront the Hopi and Navajo tribes as they struggle to protect the critical
    Navajo Aquifer and salvage jobs upon the closing of the Black Mesa Coal Mine.

As of January 1, 2006, one of the most contentious U.S. coal mining operations, the Black Mesa Mine on Hopi and
Navajo reservations in northeastern Arizona, will close.

Syndicate content

Cultural Survival helps Indigenous Peoples around the world defend their lands, languages, and cultures as they deal with issues like the one you’ve just read about.

Learn More

To read about Cultural Survival’s work around the world, click here. To read more articles on the subject use our Search function and explore 40 years of information
on Indigenous issues.

Do More

For ways to take action to help Indigenous communities, click here.

Donate

We take on governments and multinational corporations—and they always have more resources than we do—but with the help of people like you, we do win. Your contribution is crucial to that effort. Click here to do your part.