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4.2

Aboriginal Practices Play a Role in Reducing Global Warming

Each year, an area of Australia larger than Great Britain goes up in smoke as a result of wildfires. The flames are destructive, of course, but it turns out that the fires’ smoke may be even more problematic, as each year it adds some 3 million tons of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases to the atmosphere, significantly contributing to global warming.

Indigenous Journalists Create Technology and Advocacy Network

In October, indigenous journalists created a technology-based organization, RED AIPIN, at the Agencia Internacional de Prensa India (AIPIN) seminar to defend indigenous journalists and disseminate information, as well as to become an umbrella organization for other indigenous groups or news groups. Journalists from Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Ecuador, Mexico, Panama, and Peru are the main participants within the alliance; however, any newsgroup with a focus on indigenous peoples is welcome to join.

Canada Arrives at Controversial Reparations Agreement

Aboriginal survivors of Canada’s residential-school era have mixed emotions about the Canadian federal government’s November 23 decision to pay CAD $2 billion in reparations to survivors.

Miscarriage of Justice

On January 11, United States District Court Judge Paul G. Rosenblatt issued his decision in Navajo Nation v. U.S. Forest Service, ruling against six Native American tribes that had sued to stop the expansion of a Forest Service ski area on Arizona’s San Francisco Peaks. The plan would produce snow from water reclaimed by a Flagstaff sewage treatment facility and was the final step in a larger expansion scheme approved in a 1979 court decision.

A Cup of Truth

The most common product in the fair trade system is coffee. The fair trade pricing system was created as a safety net for coffee farmers. It guarantees that growers’ cooperatives receive at least $1.21 for a pound of nonorganic green coffee beans, and $1.36 for a pound of organic beans, even if the market price falls below that level. Fair trade buyers also must pay a five-cent-per-pound social premium that the cooperative may use as it sees fit, often for development projects (though coop members may vote to have the premium divided among them).

Guatemalan War Widows Keep Weaving and Their Community Alive

In the 1980s the women of Guatemala’s department of Sololá, in the Canton Pujujil region on the edge of Lake Atitlán, watched as their community slowly disintegrated under the pressures of the country’s decades-long civil war. Most of these women were widows, and many had already been forced to move to the city or to send their children to the city to find jobs in order to support their families.

Tradition Keeps Water Flowing in the Philippines

In the northern Philippine region of Besao, where my family has its roots, agriculture is the backbone of life, and rice is a staple food. So water is valued as much as land. But for the 10,000 iBasao (the people of Basao), management of their water resources is challenged by depleted supplies, deforestation, overlapping claims to water sources, “alternative” development strategies, insufficient infrastructure, and cash crop farming.

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